Existential in Russian Thought (on V.P. Vizgin’s “Faces and Subjects of Russian Thought”. Moscow, 2016. 360 p.)
Keywords:
Russian philosophy, V.P. Vizgin, existential philosophy, resonance, G. Marcel, L. Shestov, Platonism, philosophy of unitotality, P.A. FlorenskyAbstract
Victor Vizgin’s book “Persons and Subjects of Russian Thought” concerns the ideas and thinkers of
so called “Golden and Silver Age of Russian culture”, as well as the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.
The article traces the development and relationship between the two basic trends of Russian philosophy, highlighted by the author, namely existential (accentuating the subjective-personal origin of the
thought) and platonistic (relegating to objectivism, rationalism and ontologism) trends. The concept
of “resonance”, which is used by Vizgin to describe the philosophical kinship and similarities of
ideas under discussion, is analyzed in the paper. It also deals with Victor Vizgin’s understanding of
the nature of existential thinking, and some peculiar characteristics of Russian philosophy, e.g. its
strong affinity with literature.
