Russian Thought on the Origination of Greek Philosophy

Abstract

The article is a historiographical and theoretical overview of the basic concepts of the genesis of ancient Greek philosophy in the Russian and Soviet philosophical literature in 19-20th centuries. While the first information about antiquity appeared in Russia in the 10th century, the author indicates that the scientific study of ancient Greek philosophy in Russia began only in the 19th century. One of the first original research in this area belonged to the O. Novitsky. He put forward the idea of the development of Greek philosophy from mythology and religion of more than half a century before F. Cornford and K. Joel. This concept was developed creatively by S. Trubetskoy. He argued that the philosophy of the Greeks is a special phase of their religious ideas.
The Soviet history of philosophy was dominated by the class approach, which required to consider the philosophy of the ancient Greeks as a direct reflection of the contemporary level of development of the productive forces and ideology of the slave-owners. Concepts of philosophy genesis conformed with the requirements of the political situation. Thus, the epistemogeneous concept corresponded to the Communist Party course to fight against religious vestiges in Soviet society and apologetics myth in a bourgeois political thought. According to this concept philosophy arose from science as opposed to religion and from the fight against religion. And hypothesis of oriental influence on Greek philosophy corresponded with rapprochement with the countries of the Third World and criticism of eurocentrism.
In the late 1950s – early 1960s, there was a number of original concepts, that were manipulating Marxist methodology as a lively and ductile material. One of the greatest historians of philosophy was A. Losev, who created a distinctive methodology for the study of the genesis of philosophy. Interesting theories were offered by J. Golosovker, A. Chanyshev, F. Cassidy and other scientists. Philosophical debates had obtained more vivid character and theoretical value.
The author emphasizes that the conflicting approaches to the problem of the origin of ancient Greek philosophy are attempts to answer the questions of profound character. The debate between supporters of autochthonous and Oriental hypotheses about external sources of Greek philosophy is called on to answer the question: how and where philosophy emerged? The question “what philosophy emerged from?” defined the dispute about the spiritual sources of philosophy between the adherents of mythogeneous and epistemogeneous concepts. And finally, the question of “how and why philosophy emerged?” accompanied discussions about social, ontological and other conditions of the emergence of philosophy.