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Kantian Journal

2024 Vol. 43. №4

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Shchedrina T.G. Shchedrina I.O. Stolzenberg J.

Lyubov Axelrod on Kant: Reflections on Marxist Discussions of the 1920s and 1930s in the USSR

DOI
10.5922/0207-6918-2024-4-6
Pages
155-168
Marxism Lyubov Axelrod Kant historical materialism dialectical materialism philosophy of history “mechanicists” “dialecticians”

Abstract

The authors attempt to look back on discussions of Marxist philosophy and historical materialism in this country without censoring, obfuscating, or simplifying issues in order to assess the prospects of their development. They focus on the work of a follower of Georgy Plekhanov, Lyubov Axelrod, who, in developing the concept of historical materialism, turned to Kant. Axelrod’s published works (from early articles and a dissertation on Tolstoy’s worldview, to her mature works on the history of materialism and philosophical-sociological texts on literary classics) and her epistolary legacy (most notably her correspondence with Plekhanov) show that, for her, rethinking the ideas of Kant was a reference point in the “critique of criticism” directed at the epistemological reasoning of Neo-Kantians, on the one hand, and at the Russian thinkers who had embraced “idealism” on the other. This was essentially the approach adopted by scholars at the Historical Materialism Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences (headed by Vladislav Zh. Kelle) and, even more importantly, this approach is still relevant to the study of the principle of historicity in philosophy and science in Russia today. Analysing the debates between “dialecticians” (headed up by Abram M. Deborin) and “mechanicists” (with whom Axelrod is often identified), the authors hold that, in epistemological terms, her scientific-philosophical concepts of the materialist interpretation of the tradition of historicity is a kind of bridge between the pre-revolutionary tradition of “positive” philosophy on Russian soil, and Marxism as it existed in the USSR.

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