On the Peculiarity and Typological Integrity of Russian Philosophy: Nelly Motroshilova on National Philosophical Legacy

Abstract

In the article the author deals with N.V. Motroshilova’s works devoted to the history of Russian philosophy, briefly putting them into the context of the historiography of Russian philosophy over the past three decades and highlighting several points that seem to him decisive for Motroshilova’s optics. Outlining the key problems of the historiography of Russian philosophy in recent decades – the conceptual and methodological gap between Russian philosophy and modern philosophical thought, as well as a sort of corporate gap within the Russian professional philosophical community, – the author tries to demonstrate that Motroshilova’s historical and philosophical studies are an example of successful overcoming of both these gaps. An attempt is made to explain the research and personal reasons for the significant place that Vladimir Solovyov’s thought occupies in Motroshilova’s historical and philosophical heritage. From the author’s point of view, this is explained not only by the fact that Solovyov’s philosophical thought represented the most vivid material for proving Motroshilova’s two fundamental ideas – a paradigm shift in philosophical thinking that occurred simultaneously at the turn of the 19th 20th centuries both in Russian and Western philosophy, as well as their essential unity, – but also by using the Solovyov’s type of historical and philosophical reasoning. In addition, this attention to Solovyov’s heritage could be explained by deep sympathies for the relative “middle ground” of his position. In the second half of the paper the author reveals one of the key Motroshilova’s ideas – the concept of the “spontaneous parallelism” of Russian and Western philosophical thought, as well as the tendency to a typological historical and philosophical reconstruction, and the problem of Russian-European philosophical dialogue.