In his article “The Megarian and Aristotelian Concept of Possibility”, Nicolai Hartmann attempts to revive an interpretation of the conception of possibility of the Megarians that stood in opposition to the Aristotelian conception of possibility and thus in opposition to the Aristotelian conception of modality in general. In this introduction, I undertake to situate Hartmann’s article in its historical context. Did Hartmann come to adopt this thesis through his study of ancient Greek philosophy? Or did he already have a predilection (...) for the Megarian conception of possibility prior to this? If so, how did this predilection come about? Was there an influence from his friend Vasily Sesemann, who published an article discussing the Megarians the previous year? Or were both Hartmann and Sesemann influenced early on by their mutual Russian teacher Nikolai Lossky, or even by a general tendency pervading Russian thought—itself grounded in the fatalism typical of the Russian collective unconscious—as we find it expressed in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, Lev Tolstoy, and other Russian thinkers? (shrink)

The article considers the theory of cognition of the Russian and Soviet philosopher Vasily Seseman in its relation to the main philosophical orientations in early 20th-century: phenomenology, neokantianism, and intuitionism. Seseman’s theory of cognition is interesting today because, following the tradition of neo-Kantianism, it largely shares the principles and methods of phenomenology, poses epistemological problems that were not explicitly formulated by Edmund Husserl, and offers solutions that are relevant today. The article highlights a common thematic field combining phenomenology, neo-Kantianism, and (...) intuitionism. This field is set by the initial subject-object cognitive attitude, the desire to identify the conditions for the possibility of cognition, the recognition of the presence of a non-linguistic level of knowledge. Moving in this unified theoretical cognitive context of the early twentieth century, Seseman offers his own solution to the following problems: defining the subject of cognition, developing the method of intuition in general and in relation to the contemplation of essence, distinguishing between objective and non-objective attitudes and using this distinction to describe different types of cognition, thematizing the irrational in cognition, and understanding the judgment and its role in the final formation of cognition. Seseman believes that the cognition of reality is preceded by the perception of its objects. He diverges from the Neo-Kantians, who claim that the objects of cognition are formed only in judgment, and holds a position than Husserl, according to whom we perceive the world around us already objectively. However, unlike Husserl, Seseman does not recognize the cognitive nature of perception and argues that knowledge begins with a reflexive fixation of the object of cognition. The cognition of an individual object is embodied in a judgment in which the relation of the object to its environment is fixed and the object is defined as a unique combination of universal properties. Finally, it is shown that the solution of epistemological questions inevitably leads Seseman to ontological issues. (shrink)

This is a translation from the Russian of Nikolai Lossky’s review of Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (1932). The review was published in the Parisian émigré journal Новый Град (Cité nouvelle) in 1932. In this review, Lossky criticizes Bergson for leaving some key problems of the philosophy of religion unresolved, namely that of God’s relation to the world (theism vs. pantheism), that of immortality, as well as that of evil. He also criticizes Bergson’s (...) “extreme biologism” in his explanation of morality, which, in his view, subjectivizes the objects of religion. For Lossky, the symbolic images of the Christian religion are not subjective “fabulations,” but real symbols through which God reveals himself to us. Likewise, according to Lossky, true morality cannot be explained in terms of biological adaptation, but must rely on the foundation of an objective, i.e., Platonic, axiological sphere. (Frédéric Tremblay). (shrink)