The lasting effects of the debate over canon-formation during the 1980s affected the whole field of Humanities, which became increasingly engaged in interrogating the origin and function of the Western canon. In philosophy, a great deal of criticism was, as a result, directed at the traditional narrative of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century philosophies—a critique informed by postcolonialism as well as feminist historiography. D. F. Norton, L. Loeb and many others1 attempted to demonstrate the weaknesses of the tripartite division between rationalism, empiricism and (...) critical philosophy.2 As time went on, symptoms of dissatisfaction with what has... (shrink)

The article analyzes Petro Kudriavtsev’s historical philosophical conception in the context of basic tendencies and reference points of development of historical philosophical science in Europe in 19th – the beginning of 20th cent. For this purpose, the place and significance of reception of European philosophy in the P. Kudriavtsev’s historic philosophical works are identified. Furthermore, the article discusses the complex of philosophical and historical ideas that appeared to be productive for development of Kudriavtsev’s original historical philosophical conception. The latter is (...) proved to be formulated in the process of deep creative interpretation of European historical philosophical studies achievements, such as ethics and philosophical constructions of the European thought. The author finds out the particularity of the P. Kudriavtsev’s original approach to understanding of historical philosophical process, based on comprehension of rationalism and empiricism, two opposite models of historical philosophical knowledge. Besides, the author argues for the similarity in approach to the history of philosophy between P. Kudriavtsev and the representatives of historical-philosophical tradition after Hegel. Reconstruction of P. Kudriavtsev’s historical philosophical conception allows the author to conclude, on the one hand, that conception reflected one of the central problems in Western European philosophy on the edge of 19 th – 20 th centuries – the problem of values. On the other hand, the conception was aimed to oppose the relativistic and nihilistic tendencies, which dominated in Modern European philosophy. (shrink)

In the last few decades, the historiographical categories rationalism and empiricism have been criticized for their limitations to explain the complex positions and the links held by the philosophers tradiotnally attached to them. This narrative was firstly conceived by Kantian German historians and began to become standard at the turn of the twentieh century. Nonetheless, nineteenth-century French historiography developed other narratives by which early modern philosophers were classified according to alternative criteria. In the first edition of Histoire comparée des systémes (...) de philosophie (1804), Joseph-Marie Degérando distinguishes three first-order early modern schools founded by Bacon, Descartes and Leibniz, respectively. Degérando introduces the empiricism and rationalism distinction as one among others, and not as the fundamental one. In addition, he separates empiricism from experimental philosophy. The last one, along with speculative philosophy, is said to conciliate senses and reason. As a result, this account offers philosophical groupings different from those constructed by the standard narrative. Furthermore, it draws on labels and classification criteria which were part of the early modern philosophical discourse. (shrink)