Neo-Kantianism, Russian

A rather amorphous movement, Russian Neo-Kantianism, in the first decades of the twentieth century, found its most visible and enduring representatives in A. Vvedenskii and his student/disciple I. Lapshin, both of St Petersburg University, who together took a distinct stance within the movement as a whole. Both were chiefly concerned with epistemological issues although their respective publications revealed a much wider field of interests. Both maintained an allegiance to the spirit of Kantian philosophy while devoting little attention to the intricacies of the three Kantian Critiques. In addition, at Moscow University G. Chelpanov adhered to the ideality of the Kantian categories although he upheld an ultimate realism. In the social sciences P. Novgorodtsev and B. Kistiakovskii defended positions revealing a significant debt to the Baden School of German Neo-Kantianism, and as such they were deeply involved in methodological investigations. Several others (N. Berdiaev, P. Struve, G. Shpet) within Russia also briefly espoused a Neo-Kantianism after abandoning Marxism and before moving on to a usually more idealistic stance. Still another, younger group a decade later, centred chiefly around the journal Logos, maintained an idiosyncratic, though not fully articulated, amalgam of Kantian and Hegelian doctrines. The Bolshevik Revolution led to a decimation of what remained of the movement within Russia and a dispersal of its members, who became increasingly isolated from current philosophical trends and issues.