If Dostoevsky claimed that all Russian writers of his day "came out
from Gogol's 'Overcoat, '" then Edith W. Clowes boldly expands his
dramatic image to describe the emergence of Russian philosophy out
from under the "overcoat" of Russian literature. In Fiction's
Overcoat, Clowes responds to the view, commonly held by Western
European and North American thinkers, that Russian culture has no
philosophical tradition. If that is true, she asks, why do readers
everywhere turn to the classics of Russian literature, at least in
part because Russian writers so famously engage universal
questions, because they are so "philosophical"? Her answer to this
question is a lively and comprehensive volume that details the
origins, submergence, and re-emergence of a rich and vital Russian
philosophical tradition. During the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, Russian philosophy emerged in conversation
with narrative fiction, radical journalism, and speculative
theology, developing a distinct cultural discourse with its own
claim to authority and truth. Leading Russian thinkers--Berdiaev,
Losev, Rozanov, Shestov, and Solovyov--made philosophy the primary
forum in which Russian debated metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical
questions as well as issues of individual and national identity.
That debate was tragically truncated by the events of 1917 and the
rise of the Soviet empire. Today, after seventy years of enforced
silence, this particularly Russian philosophical culture has
resurfaced once again. Fiction's Overcoat serves as a welcome guide
to its complexities and nuances. Historians and cultural critics
will find in Clowes's book the story of the increasing refinement
and diversification ofRussian cultural discourse, philosophers will
find an alternative to the Western philosophical tradition, and
students of literature will enjoy the opportunity to rethink the
great Russian novelists--particularly Dostoevsky, Pasternak, and
Platonov--as important voices in the process of shaping and
sustaining a new philosophy and ensuring its survival into our own
age.
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