Changing Societies & Personalities, 2022 Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 980–983 https://doi.org/10.15826/csp.2022.6.4.213 BOOK REVIEW Heidegger in Russian Philosophical Thought: History of Reception and Current Interpretations Yury M. Romanenko, (Ed.). (2021). M. Khaidegger i russkaia filosofskaia mysl’ [M. Heidegger and Russian philosophical thought]. Izdatel’stvo Russkoi Khristianskoi gumanitarnoi akademii. Ekaterina S. Lebed Surgut State University, Surgut, Russia Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russia Martin Heidegger remains one of the most popular philosophers among Russian intellectuals. The collection under review seeks to suggest some answers to the question as to why it is so. This volume showcases the range of Russian specialists in Heidegger’s philosophy who reflect on Heidegger’s reception in Russia and his influence on contemporary Russian thought. The volume is divided into three major parts: historical reception, current interpretations, prospective venues. The first chapters discuss the interrelations between Heidegger and his contemporaries among Russian philosophers. In Proekt germenevticheskoi fenomenologii: G. Shpet i M. Khaidegger [Project of hermeneutical phenomenology: G. Shpet and M. Heidegger], N. Artemenko engages in comparative analysis of two projects of hermeneutical phenomenology. On the one hand, Artemenko discusses Gustav Shpet’s hermeneutics, which was expounded in his Iavlenie i smysl [Appearance and Sense] (1914) and Germenevtika i ee problemy [Hermeneutics and its Problems] (1918). Shpet’s hermeneutical phenomenology is juxtaposed with Heidegger’s early works such as Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizität) [Ontology. Hermeneutics of Facticity] (1923). In his narrative, Artemenko demonstrates Heidegger’s philosophical trajectory. In Artemenko’s account, Heidegger began his phenomenological studies with an unconventional reading of Aristotle in his works of 1916–1923. These studies culminated in his hermeneutics of facticity. Artemenko then shows how hermeneutics was replaced with phenomenology and Heidegger developed his own phenomenological project. Finally, as Artemenko demonstrates, Heidegger put forward his original approach to the question of being. Shpet’s philosophical project was akin to Heidegger’s. Received 18 December 2022 © 2022 Ekaterina S. Lebed Published online 30 December 2022 kkovaleva2@yandex.ru https://changing-sp.com/ Changing Societies & Personalities, 2022, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 980–983 981 Their philosophical approaches both originated in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology: “To be conscious is to make sense” (p. 7). Yet, while Husserl was mostly concerned with transcendental subjectivity, Shpet focused on language consciousness, which, in his view, was embedded in concepts, and on logos, which was socially determined. Later Heidegger, on the other hand, advanced the notion of being-in-the-world (Dasein) and posited language as a basis for making sense of the world. In his later works, Heidegger glorified poets as makers of the language. S. Konacheva highlights the transformative nature of Heidegger’s philosophical project and compares it with V. Lossky’s mystical search for the divine in her chapter Filosofskaia mistika kak transformativnaia filosofiia: Martin Khaidegger i Vladimir Losskii [Philosophical mysticism as transformative philosophy: Martin Heidegger and Vladimir Lossky]. Beginning with philosophical mysticism as an alternative to traditional philosophical methods of cognition (с. 35), Konacheva shows the importance of medieval philosophy for Lossky. Lossky believed that medieval philosophy and mysticism shared the principle of “absolute loyalty”, and both these approaches valued “affective immersion into knowledge” (p. 38) rather than abstract and formal cognition. As Konacheva explains, medieval mysticism, in Lossky’s view, is a path to “complete experience” and the supreme orientation toward the transcendence (polnotoi opyta i orientatsiei na transtsendentnost, p. 39). But Lossky is mostly concerned with the interpretation of religious experience itself rather than with the analysis of the religious mind or religious subjectivity (p. 42). Thus, Konacheva concludes, despite certain similarities with philosophical mysticism, Heidegger’s approach can be better described as a mysticism of the experience of time. In the chapter Khaidegger, Lukach, Lenin i Sovetskii Marksizm [Heidegger, Lukacs, Lenin, and Soviet Marxism], A. Savin focuses on the interpretations and criticism of Heidegger’s philosophy in the Soviet period. Savin divides the Soviet reception of Heidegger’s ideas into three markedly different periods. In the first period, Boris Bychowsky highlighted existentialist motives of Heidegger’s philosophy such as “being-toward-death”, and anxiety and thrownness (die Geworfenheit) of the human existence (Dasein). The second period was marked by the interpretation of György Lukács who claimed that Heidegger’s philosophy reinforced anxiety and homelessness, and thus contributed to the development of Nazism in German society. During the “thaw” period, however, and in later Soviet philosophy—the final third period—for the Soviet philosophers, Heidegger represented the philosophical concern with creativity. The latter was regarded as central to human personality and to genuine culture of human societies (p. 78). Savin concludes that while at first the Soviet philosophy was highly critical of Heidegger’s philosophical provenance and approach, in the course of its gradual reception by the Soviet philosophers trained in Marxism, Heidegger’s philosophy was selectively adapted and some of its essential elements, which were relevant for the Marxian perspective, were adopted. In Diskussii o filosofii M. Khaideggera v ontologicheskom obshchestve Sankt- Peterburga [Discussions on M. Heidegger’s philosophy in Ontological Society of Saint Petersburg], A. Patkul offers a rich account of intense philosophical discussions of Heidegger’s ontology among intellectual circles of Saint Petersburg. Patkul https://changing-sp.com/ 982 Ekaterina S. Lebed demonstrates how these discussions were reflected in various publications such as articles, collected volumes, and—no less importantly—in dissertations of the academic community of Saint Petersburg. The second part of the collection entitled Aktual’nye Interpretatsii [Current interpretations] includes several chapters that explicate Heidegger’s relations with philosophical legacy and philosophical traditions. In Greki i istina iskusstva u Khaideggera [The Greeks and the truth of art in Heidegger], A. Krioukov discusses Heidegger’s reception of Greek philosophy and his interpretation of the notion of truth—alêtheia (unconcealment, Unverborgenheit). This notion is instrumental in Heidegger’s ontological approach to the art and the artwork (p. 157). In the chapter Apofaticheskie momenty v filosofii Khaideggera: temporal’nost’ i negativnost’ [Apophatic elements in Heidegger’s philosophy: Temporality and negativity], D. Lebedev begins with a brief survey of apophatic thought and then analyses apophatic elements in Heidegger’s philosophy. Lebedev’s argument highlights the ontological distinction between being and existence and demonstrates that it is apophatic methodology that is deployed by Heidegger in his analysis of being. In the chapter Filosofskaia pozitsiia M. Khaideggera i uroki politicheskikh transformatsii XX veka [Philosophical attitude of M. Heidegger and lessons of political transformations of the 20th century], D. Goncharko focuses on a more poignant question—that of Heidegger’s political views. The author argues that Heidegger did not intend to spell out a full-fledged political ontology or political philosophy, but his “politics of silence” and abstention from public expression of his opinions were grounded in his philosophy. Goncharko places Heidegger’s political views in juxtaposition with a wide range of political theories such as I. Kant’s critical philosophy, H. Arendt’s political ideals, P. Bourdieu’s philosophical sublimation, and A. Badiou’s ontology of event. The author concludes that poetry becomes a secularized political discourse in later Heidegger (p. 205). The last chapter Khaidegger v prostranstve analiticheskoi filosofii: pro et contra [Heidegger in the territory of analytical philosophy: Pro et contra], S. Nikonenko analyses various interpretations of Heidegger’s philosophy in the analytical tradition beginning with Bertrand Russell’s and Rudolf Carnap’s reactions to Heidegger’s project. While Heidegger’s method and the way of doing philosophy were largely rejected by the analytical philosophers, there were two strands of interest in Heidegger’s philosophy. The first is related to the comparative analysis of Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophical approaches. The second refers to the selective reception of Heidegger’s ideas by American philosopher Richard Rorty (p. 251). The third part of the collection Perspektivnye voproshaniia [Prospective venues] begins with A. Durnev’s Sobytiinoe vremia v filosofii Martina Khaideggera: kontekst i osnovnye idei [Time of the event in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy: Context and key ideas], which offers an extensive analysis of the notion of event in Heidegger’s philosophy. Drawing on phenomenology of Claude Romano and hermeneutics of Vladimir Bibikhin, the author traces the development and reception of this notion and “ontology of event” in post-Heideggerian philosophical thought. Durnev describes how Heidegger in his later works showcases the notion of the Changing Societies & Personalities, 2022, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 980–983 983 event (p. 264), which he already used in his earlier Sein und Zeit, but endowed it with a different meaning and function. In the next chapter Ontologicheskaia tematizatsiia voobrazheniia v uchenii M. Khaideggera i ee filosofskie implikatsii [Ontological thematization of imagination in M. Heidegger’s doctrine and its philosophical implications], Yu. Romanenko discusses the complex and tense relations between ontology and epistemology, beginning with Kant and culminating in Heidegger. Romanenko claims that the notions of imagination and the imaginary fell victim to the revolutionary discourses, in which revolution was regarded as a certain imaginary. This approach to revolution as an imaginary leads the author to an extensive exploration of the various interpretations of the notion of revolution and its imaginaries. A. Vavilov analyses Dylan Trigg’s phenomenology of horror from the perspective of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology in the chapter Aktual’nost’ khaideggerovskoi germenevtiki zhutkogo v sovremennoi filosofii [Heideggerian hermeneutics of the uncanny and its reception in contemporary philosophy]. While Trigg addresses Heidegger’s philosophy tangentially and mostly in a critical manner, Vavilov demonstrates the allusions and the borrowings in Trigg’s arguments. The final chapter Martin Khaidegger i budushchee: pochemu u tekhniki netekhnicheskaia sushchnost’ i zachem nuzhna poeziia v XXI veke? [Martin Heidegger and the future: Why does the technic have non-technical essence and why do we need poetry in the 21st century?] relates the conversation of A. Mikhailovsky and N. Piliavskii on Heidegger’s attitude to the technic and technical revolution along with the technic’s origins, limits, and its conditions of possibility (p. 365). On the one hand, Heidegger sees grave danger in the development of the technic and technical progress, but on the other hand, the technic is indispensable element of the art and is integral to human creativity (p. 372). This volume presents a wide variety of views on Heidegger’s philosophy in Russia and shows the gradual reception of his ideas as new translations appeared over the decades and as the interpretations by “banned” Russian philosophers became available (G. Shpet, V. Lossky, etc.) to a wide Russian public. It offers new insights into the relations between Heidegger’s methodology and philosophical project, on the one hand, and contemporary strains of philosophy such as hermeneutics, phenomenology, and analytical philosophy. It also provides an excellent foundation for further reflection on Heidegger’s thought and its adaptation to Russian philosophical tradition. https://changing-sp.com/