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Chaadayev as Russia's First Philosopher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Mary-Barbara Zeldin
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Extract

The title of this paper might suggest that it is intended to describe Chaadayev's philosophy. This is not so. An attempt will be made, rather, to argue the following points: first, that Chaadayev is chronologically the first philosopher of Russia because earlier persons to whom that distinction has been attributed do not really deserve it; second, that, unlike these so-called predecessors, Chaadayev in his writings provides a body of material which qualifies as a philosophy and which is presented as such; and third, that his philosophy is distinctively Russian, even though Chaadayev combines many Western philosophical characteristics with his native Russian outlook.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 473 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1978

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References

1. See Zeldin, Mary-Barbara, “The Influence of Immanuel Kant on Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev,” to be published in Studies in Soviet Thought, May 1978 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. This hardly resembles the approach which leads Descartes to discover the Cogito and the reliability of clear and distinct ideas; nor, surely, can it be said to be similar to that of Kant in the first Critique \

3. See Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev: Philosophical Letters and Apology of a Madman, trans, and with an intro. by Mary-Barbara Zeldin (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1970), p. 32. These two optative basic principles of the nature of reality contrast strikingly with the categorical statements of Western philosophers. Descartes concludes after pure theoretical investigation, that he is and is a thinking substance, thus leading to the further conclusion that reality is basically substantive and that it has a mental aspect; Kant concludes, after theoretical investigation, that reality is unknowable in itself and known only with the additional contribution of our own mental activity (Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith [London, 1929; second impression with corrections, 1933], p. 148: “The understanding … is itself the lawgiver of nature …” ). In neither case, so far as knowledge proper is concerned, is there an appeal to the optative, to what ought to be.

4. See Appendix 1.

5. See Appendix 1. It should be observed here that for the Russian Marxist reality itself may be said to be divine (see Mary-Barbara Zeldin, “The Religious Nature of Russian Marxism,” The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 7, no. 3 [Fall 1969]: 207-15), but it does not, as in the other case, have a divine source aside from itself; to think in terms of a source beyond reality is a complete denial of the principles of dialectical materialism.

6. See p. 476 and Appendix 2.

7. See Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev, p. 160. There is no evidence of Chaadayev's having any of Hegel's work in his three thousand-volume library (nor even in his first library, which he sold to his cousin in 1821). The second library did include, however, an 1835 French translation of Willm's book on Hegelian philosophy and a copy of Marheineke's book on Hegel. McNally, R. T., in Chaadayev and his Friends (Tallahassee, 1972), pp. 191–93 Google Scholar, argues against Falk ( Heinrich, Falk, Das Weltbild Peter J. Tschaadajews nach seinen acht “Philosophischen Brief en” [Munich, 1954])Google Scholar that Chaadayev knew Hegel's views well though only at second hand and that he was strongly opposed to these views. It is difficult to see how this could be the case if he knew only versions of Hegelianism as presented by interpreters. McNally finds Chaadayev's opposition to Hegel, as expressed in his letter to Schelling (see Gershenzon, M. O., Sochineniia i pis'ma P. la. Chaadaeva [Moscow, 1913-14], vol. 1, p. 246 Google Scholar), particularly strong. I do not, especially considering Chaadayev's usual style. It is, rather, an expression of a popular philosophical attitude with little philosophical content. Whether or not Chaadayev knew Hegel after 1836 and whether he was then opposed to the German philosopher is not relevant to a discussion of the Letters, since all of them were composed several years earlier at a time when no Russian was particularly acquainted with Hegel (see Falk, Das Weltbild Peter J. Tschaadajeivs, p. 122). Historical orientation at that time was much more likely to have come from Herder, if it came from any Western source; Chaadayev owned a copy of Herder's Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit which he apparently acquired prior to writing the Letters.

8. Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev, p. 135; cf. Letter V, ibid., p. 95.

9. To be sure, the idea of organic unity is to be found in Schelling, and Chaadayev was certainly fond of Schelling. He could just as well, however, have found it in Kant, notably in the Critique of Judgment. Insofar as personality is retained in the unity Chaadayev has in mind, Kant is the more likely candidate. There is no reason to suppose that Kant influenced Chaadayev here, however, since there is no indication that Chaadayev even knew of the existence of the third Critique. The idea could just as easily have native roots. On the other hand, it should be noted that Chaadayev says, in the fifth Letter: “It is to the direction [Kant] gave to philosophy that we owe all the sound ideas there are in the world today, and even I myself am but a logical consequence of his ideas” ﹛Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev, pp. 103-4; italics added).

10. Preface to Sochineniia N. K. Mikhailovskogo, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1896), pp. v-vi.