Where is the common ground?

interaction and transfer between European and Russian philosophical culture

Evert van der Zweerde

pp. 259-277

in: Andrea Zink, Rosalinde Sartorti, Annett Jubara (eds), Crossing boundaries, Studies in East European Thought 62, 2010.

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss and analyze three instances of exchange and interaction between Russian (incl. Soviet) and (West) European philosophical culture: the correspondence between Merab Mamardašvili and Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida's visit to Moscow in 1990, and a joint Russian–German publication by Nikolaj Plotnikov and Alexander Haardt. The focus is on the implicit mutual perception of philosophical cultures and on the "micro-politics' of discourse that is at stake in their interaction. Also, it is shown how different contexts—labelled "philosophical culture', though not in any deterministic sense—are at work in the mutual perception between individual thinkers. Even if philosophical thinking tends to transcend the parameters of "glocal' situations, this involves a job that needs to be done, individually and collectively, by the philosophers involved. Consequently, this dimension has to be taken into account when analysing such instances of encounter.

Cited authors

Derrida Jacques

Haardt Alexander

Althusser Louis

Plotnikov Nikolaj