Letters of Yuri Fedorovich Samarin to Countess Maria Fedorovna Sollogub (1864–1876)

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 283-357
Author(s):  
Andrey A. Teslya
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Reform Period ◽  
Systematic Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
Russian Intellectual History ◽  
Preparatory Work

The present publication with comments includes the letters of Yuri Fedorovich Samarin to Countess Maria Fedorovna Sollogub (nee Samarina, the correspondent’s sister) in the period of 1864–1876. The special interest to the published materials is called for by the three circumstances: first, Samarin’s epistolary heritage of 1960– 1876 has been published only partially, in contrast to his correspondence of 1840–1850; second, due to family and spiritual kinship Samarin’s letters to his sister touch upon all aspects of his activities in the period, including his work in zemsky and city self-government bodies and preparatory work for foreign publications; third, due to the systematic character of the correspondence, the reader can see a kind of Samarin’s diary supplemented in the comments with extensive quotations from the letters to his younger brother Dmitry Fedorovich, with whom Samarin was especially close. In that way, Samarin’s letters to Countess Sollogub are important both as example of Russian intellectual history and as material on the history of Russian nobility daily life in the post-reform period that allows us to have a view of the life of one of the most well-known Russian families of that period.

Philosophical Madness

1837 ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Paul W. Werth
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Russian Intellectual History ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Blank Slate ◽  
The Stranger

Among the stranger literary products of 1837 was an essay called Apology of a Madman. Together with companion Philosophical Letters, this text represents a fundamental moment in the history of Russian thought and makes its author, Peter Chaadaev, a central figure in Russian intellectual history. For these texts not only played a major role in precipitating a grand debate between Westernizers and Slavophiles about Russia’s place in the world, but also laid the foundations for all subsequent philosophies of history in Russia. And by positing that Russia constituted a blank slate on which virtually anything could be inscribed, the Apology exerted a powerful influence on anyone contemplating Russia’s future. Chaadaev’s interventions in 1836–7 thus gave birth to a particular way of thinking about Russia’s past and future, and the country would not be the same without them.

A Brief Orientation

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Riggsby
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Roman World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Broad Variety ◽  
Classical Knowledge ◽  
Alternative Set ◽  
High Technologies

This book investigates information technologies in the classical Roman world—their invention, diffusion, and use, and the interactions among those processes. The focus is on conceptual developments—e.g., “mapping,” “weighing,” “listing”—rather than material ones—e.g., “codex,” “abacus.” (Within the area covered, however, the interaction of concepts with the materiality of their actual uses will be a recurring theme.) It also focuses principally on “high” technologies rather than, say, literacy or numeracy in general. Perhaps paradoxically, this will end up setting the book against most work to date on classical knowledge regimes. Scholarship has typically dealt with intra-elite and largely discursive phenomena. As a result, we know a good deal about the intellectual history of antiquity’s formalized disciplines (e.g., rhetoric, philosophy, law, literature, grammar) and how they competed with and inflected one another. By contrast, my goal is to uncover an alternative set of regimes which were generally not theorized in antiquity, but which informed the practices of daily life, and did so in a broad variety of social locations (even if some had elite origins). These turn out to include relatively advanced technologies like complicated lists, tables, and textual illustrations....

scholarly journals Another outlook on Russia. Letters from the “Russian Archive”

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-196
Author(s):  
Andrzej Walicki ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
State University ◽  
Czeslaw Milosz ◽  
New Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
Expert Assessments ◽  
Russian Intellectual History ◽  
Polish Scientist ◽  
Moscow State University

The article presents previously unpublished letters written by Andrzej Walicki (15.05.1930–21.08.2020), a worldly renowned Polish historian of Russian thought, to Professor Michael Maslin, the head of the Department of the History of Russian Philoso­phy at Lomonosov Moscow State University. Walicki’s letters (1997–2019) together with books, articles and other materials formed his gift to the abovementioned Department. Walicki himself referred to these materials as “my small Russian archive”. The letters are written in excellent Russian and require no additional revision or stylistic improvement. This publication retains the letters in their full originality including some phrases of Pol­ish origin. These unique epistles reveal Walicki’s individual creative worldview. The let­ters contain new information about the details of Walicki’s biography and his work in Poland, Russia, USA, Great Britain, Japan, Australia. The letters provide a unique per­spective on the “flow of ideas”, which was Walicki’s personal conception of understand­ing and interpretation of the Russian intellectual history from the Enligh­tenment through the Russian religious and philosophical Renaissance of the twentieth century. The letters discuss his interactions with Sergei Gessen, Isaiah Berlin, Leszhek Kolakowski, Czeslaw Milosz, George Kline, James Scanlan, Leonard Shapiro, Martin Malia, Richard Pipes, Nicholas Riasanovsky, James Billington etc. A special attention is paid to the critique of the Western and especially Polish Russophobia based on various superstitions and stereo­types about Russia as well on a lack of knowledge, various kinds of bias and blunders. Of considerable interest are Walitsky’s expert assessments of the ge­neral state of the scien­tific historiography of Russian philosophy, its fundamental diffe­rences from Soviet dog­matic Marxism, of which the Polish scientist was a consistent critic.

Proverbs 1–9

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael V. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
General Reader ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of

In Proverbs 1–9, Bible scholar Michael V. Fox translates and explains the meaning of the first nine chapters of this profound, timeless book, and examines their place in the intellectual history of ancient Israel. This thorough study of Proverbs includes a survey of the collections of ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, as well as innovative and insightful comments. In addition to the translation and commentary proper, Fox includes several extended thematic essays on Proverbs 1 9, covering such themes as the origins of personified wisdom, what wisdom is, and where wisdom can be heard, plus an appendix of textual notes. The format of the commentary makes it accessible to the general reader and also provides materials of special interest to scholars. This is the first of a two-volume commentary that accords Proverbs the depth of study it deserves.

scholarly journals Old and New Perspectives on Iosif Volotsky's Monastic Rules

Slavic Review ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Goldfrank
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of

Scholarly debate in the West, and to a large extent also in the Soviet Union, concerning the fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Russian monk losif (né Sanin) Volotsky (Joseph Volotsky), 1439-1515, has generally centered on his political ideas and the interpretation of his Prosvetitel' (Enlightener, or Illuminator) . The monastic side of his activities is often played down or neglected, even though the most important aspect of his daily life for fifty-five years was his serious pursuit of the monastic and (for thirty-eight years) abbatial vocation. In the provincial Volokolamsk Monastery, which he founded, he not only entered into ecclesiastical politics and composed the didactic apologetics and inquisitional invectives that comprise his sixteen-discourse (originally eleven) Enlightener but also wrote two monastic Rules, which are very important sources for his life and for the religious and intellectual history of his time.

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