IFN
a Soviet philosophical discipline
pp. 93-114
in: , Soviet historiography of philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1997Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to present the outlines of IFN as it existed in the period of 'stagnation": from about 1975 until the beginning of perestrojka in 1986. This was a period of unprecedented bloom in IFN, both quantitively and qualitatively making it an important part of Soviet philosophical culture. Its prosperity was partly caused by unfavorable political conditions for philosophy in general, which made IFN an "ecological niche" to which Soviet philosophers, esp. the šestidesjatniki escaped [Ch.2.vii, 3.v]. But even as 'second best" it was of great importance, yielding results that otherwise might not, or to a lesser extent, have been achieved: it made an impressive body of texts and other source material available in Russian, it created a vast army of specialists who studied many philosophers, schools and currents from philosophy's past, it produced a fairly complete account of philosophy's history, and it led to the develoment of a theory of the history of philosophy that was immediately linked to historiographical practice. At the same time, it left out significant parts of the philosophical heritage and severely distorted others, it was an important pillar of the ideology of Soviet philosophy, and it had to find a compromise with official Soviet philosophy.