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O.Spengler’s Perception of the Concept of the Crisis of Culture within Early 20th-Century Russian Thought

Student: Miroshkin Sergei

Supervisor: Alexander Mikhailovsky

Faculty: Faculty of Humanities

Educational Programme: Philosophy (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2021

In the presented work "O.Spengler’s Perception of the Concept of the Crisis of Culture within Early 20th-Century Russian Thought", the author analyzes two concepts of the end of history and the crisis of culture developing in parallel in the European and Russian philosophical traditions. On the one hand, there is the religious philosophy of history presented by Russian thinkers, which in its own way answers questions about the meaning and subject of history, the religiosity of culture. On the other hand, there is Spengler's morphology of history. As the author finds out, these disciplines have developed in different ways due to the influence of different philosophical traditions. If the greatest role in Spengler’s philosophy was played by F. Nietzsche, cursing Christianity, and I. V. Goethe, who could not call himself a Christian, then Russian religious thinkers felt the impact of a whole pleiad of Christian thinkers and, in particular, V.S.Solovyov. Nevertheless, the author notes that such a diametrically opposite attitude to history and culture cannot be just a consequence of the philosophical tradition. Thus, Spengler's teachers - Goethe and Nietzsche - to one degree or another, were subject to religious influence in the field of ontology and eschatology. Spengler ignores these moments in his philosophy; he refuses the field of application of the Goethe method, where his religious views on nature, humanity and God are concentrated, as well as ignores the meaning of the current crisis of culture in Europe, which, in Nietzsche's opinion, is to purify grounds for a new religious doctrine of superhumanity. Conversely, Russian religious philosophers have an optimism about the new culture and history coming after the catastrophes that happened, which V.S. Solovyov did not share at the end of his life, resigned to the decline of culture and the coming of the end of history. Thus, the author comes to the conclusion that a possible explanation for such a difference in reality is the cultural crisis experienced by Europe, which the Russian philosophers of the early 20th century were able to avoid in the intellectual dimension.

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