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Alexander Herzen-philosopher, novelist, essayist, political
agitator, and one of the leading Russian intellectuals of the
nineteenth century-was as famous in his day as Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky. While he is remembered for his masterpiece My Past and
Thoughts and as the father of Russian socialism, his contributions
to the history of ideas defy easy categorization because they are
so numerous. Aileen Kelly presents the first fully rounded study of
the farsighted genius whom Isaiah Berlin called "the forerunner of
much twentieth-century thought." In an era dominated by ideologies
of human progress, Herzen resisted them because they conflicted
with his sense of reality, a sense honed by his unusually
comprehensive understanding of history, philosophy, and the natural
sciences. Following his unconventional decision to study science at
university, he came to recognize the implications of early
evolutionary theory, not just for the natural world but for human
history. In this respect, he was a Darwinian even before Darwin.
Socialism for Russia, as Herzen conceived it, was not an
ideology-least of all Marxian "scientific socialism"-but a concrete
means of grappling with unique historical circumstances, a way for
Russians to combine the best of Western achievements with the
possibilities of their own cultural milieu in order to move
forward. In the same year that Marx declared communism to be the
"solution to the riddle of history," Herzen denied that any such
solution could exist. History, like nature, was contingent-an
improvisation both constrained and encouraged by chance.
In this brilliant companion volume to her highly praised Toward
Another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance,
Aileen M. Kelly closely examines a humanist strand of Russian
thought that has until now received little notice or understanding.
She finds in the writings of Aleksandr Herzen, Anton Chekhov, and
Mikhail Bakhtin a pioneering emphasis on the role of chance and
contingency in nature and history. Their writing on this theme, she
argues, establishes the importance of these humanists in the
development of European thought. Herzen, the principal subject of
the book, was among the first nineteenth-century thinkers to
challenge the assumptions underlying doctrines of universal
progress. Kelly links Herzen's outlook to the work of such Western
humanists and scientists as Francis Bacon, Schiller, Proudhon, J.
S. Mill, and Darwin. She shows how the view of freedom that Herzen
shared with Chekhov and Bakhtin provides an antidote both to
traditional absolutes and to the boundless relativism of much
postmodern theory. As such it offers an answer to the question now
besetting intellectuals in Russia and the West: how to ground
morality after the collapse of ideological certainties.
In this thought-provoking book, an internationally acclaimed
scholar writes about the passion for ideology among nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Russian intellectuals and about the development
of sophisticated critiques of ideology by a continuing minority of
Russian thinkers inspired by libertarian humanism. Aileen Kelly
sets the conflict between utopian and anti-utopian traditions in
Russian thought within the context of the shift in European thought
away from faith in universal systems and "grand narratives" of
progress toward an acceptance of the role of chance and contingency
in nature and history. In the current age, as we face the dilemma
of how to prevent the erosion of faith in absolutes and final
solutions from ending in moral nihilism, we have much to learn from
the struggles, failures, and insights of Russian thinkers, Kelly
says. Her essays-some of them tours de force that have appeared
before as well as substantial new studies of Turgenev, Herzen, and
the Signposts debate-illuminate the insights of Russian
intellectuals into the social and political consequences of ideas
of such seminal Western thinkers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
Darwin. Russian Literature and Thought Series
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