This paper examines the influence of American cultural models on Romanian poetry during the late communist period. Using a postcolonial framework, it highlights how and why Romanian poets in the 1980s navigated the symbolic presence of the United States, adopting Westernized perspectives through “self-colonization” strategies (Kiossev in Cultural aspects of the modernization...
This article explores the politics of magical realism and postmodernism in (former) Yugoslavia. Although they were introduced during late socialism, the theoretical debates of that period largely focused on their aesthetic aspects. As I aim to demonstrate in this study, a more substantial scholarly interest in the politics of postmodernism and magical realism only emerged in the...
The figure of Odysseus, situated within the discourse of world literature, presents a subject of contradiction that has been examined through the lens of late Bulgarian literary criticism in the 1980s and beyond, emphasizing the tension between the modern liberal and anti-modern conservative paradigms. This article delves into the depiction of Odysseus as a modern or counter...
This paper addresses the proliferation of “philosophical dialogues” as a genre in Eastern European state socialist philosophy. Focusing on Romania and Hungary, we contextualize this genre by referring to the increased preoccupation with dialogue manifested in the local philosophy after the 1960s, especially stressing the close contacts with Existentialism and its own production...
The centennial of the infamous Philosophers’ Ships (filosofskii parokhod) in 2022 offered an opportunity to examine the story that has been evolving around those involved since the end of the Soviet era. This article discusses the place of Gustav Shpet in the myth of the 1922 steamers. Although he never boarded the steamers, Shpet has come to be associated with their story. In...
Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (1883–1954) was a Russian philosopher whose writings have recently resurfaced among Russian political elites and in contemporary Russian Orthodox Church discourse. This article provides a reading of Ilyin’s main works on violence, The Basic Moral Contradiction of War (1914) and On Resistance to Evil by Force (1925), outlining how Ilyin’s texts have been...
By the time of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Russian political activist Aleksandr Dugin was known as an ultra-nationalist, a fascist, a geopolitician, a Eurasianist, a Heideggerian, and sometimes also as a Traditionalist in the school established by René Guénon. Some, however, hold that Dugin had left Traditionalism far behind, or perhaps had never really been a Traditionalist in...
The first section reconstructs Dugin’s claims to have charted a “fourth political theory” (4PT), which would have broken from “fascism” and “Nazism”, the “third political theory” (as well liberalism and communism, the first and second “PTs” respectively). The second section of the paper critically unpacks four Duginian claims to defend this position, despite his avowed recourse...
This essay historically contextualizes Aleksandr Dugin as an apocalyptic thinker by considering his interpretation of Western history as dominated by an apocalyptic desire for destruction. Exploring this interpretation of Western history through several key figures from the ancient and modern eras (Thucydides, Plato, Augustine, and Hitler), it concludes that Dugin’s...
Dostoevsky’s discourse in The Idiot is aimed—and this is his main artistic task—at developing the artistic language of a previously unknown world, of the singular human experience unfolding within the novel, rather than at conveying a finished, completed plot. The focus of this paper is on the process of constructing this new symbolic language of self-understanding, which can be...
In line with a recent rise in anti-LGBTQ discourse within conservative Russian politics, Aleksandr Dugin has increasingly critiqued “postmodern” theories that allegedly underpin social diversity (sexual, gender, racial, etc.) within the West: queer theory, post-structuralism, and other theoretical accounts of identity and alterity. In Dugin’s argument for a political philosophy...
The article examines the concept of the ‘Russian idea’ and its transformation into a conservative political ideology for the establishing of the so-called ‘Russian world’ in contemporary Russia. The analysis focuses on three levels of conceptual development of this idea: at the level of political technologies—a state level, at the level of university philosophy, and at the level...
Józef Tischner, a Polish twentieth century priest and philosopher, is mostly known for his ideas relating to the theme of solidarity, as well as for his original ‘philosophy of drama’. This article examines selected aspects of his early philosophy, without which those two major contributions cannot be properly understood. I begin by a brief synopsis of three thinkers which have...
The thought of Lev Karsavin—like all representatives of the Russian religious and philosophical renaissance—is deeply rooted in the work and ideas of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. However, instead of focusing on the broad relationship between the two thinkers, we focus here on a specific aspect of their connection: two significant articles by Karsavin on Dostoevsky. These are: Dostoevsky...
This article is an editorial introduction to a special issue of Studies in East European Thought devoted to neopatristics. The circumstances of the creation of the neopatristic synthesis announced by Georges Florovsky during the First Orthodox Congress in Athens are considered. The main philosophical and theological aspects that are currently discussed in the context of patristic...
This essay provides an exploration of the intertwining realms of psychiatry and literature, focusing particularly on the case of Fyodor Dostoevsky. The paper gives an overview of the interest in Dostoevsky’s opus and biography displayed by Italian psychiatry, in particular by Cesare Lombroso and the connection he made between genius and mental illness. The essay is divided into...
Building on the cultural transfer theory of Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, the paper examines the history of Marian Zdziechowski’s interactions with Leo Tolstoy. Its starting point is their correspondence of the 1890s, and the endpoint – Zdziechowski’s magnum opus Pessimism, Romanticism and the Bases of Christianity (1915). The main emphasis lies on two microhistories of...
The authors examine the Slovak ethos of plebeian resistance to the First World War in several of its forms. First, they examine intellectual forms of resistance against war, against its Christian justification. Several Slovak authors emphasized that the First World War was in direct contradiction to Christian ethics, asserting that it served as proof of the failure of all...
The celebrated Russian philosopher, Evald Ilyenkov, draws on Spinoza to solve a key philosophical problem: how exactly does the mind connect to the real world? However, the proposed solution has come under much criticism, for example in a recent special issue of Studies of East European Thought (74, 3). This paper aims to clearly explain the solution, overcoming misunderstandings...
This article presents the context of Georges Florovsky’s letter to Davis McCaughey. The creation of the atomic bomb and the philosophical and theological challenges it caused are also presented. The content of the Report The Era of Atomic Power: of a Commission, which was initiated by the British Council of Churches, and McCaughey’s participation in its writing, are presented as...
The letter from Georges Florovsky to Davis McCaughey is a reflection after reading the Report The Era of Atomic Power: Report of a Commission (1946). Florovsky gives his own arguments against the development of research concerning nuclear weapons and their use. These include: treating an attempt at a technical transformation of the world as a human claim to put oneself in God’s...