Timofey Ivanovich Rainoff as a histprian of russian philosophy

Abstract

The essay deals with history of creation of the «Outlines of the history of Russian philosophy of the 50–60s» written by T.I. Rainov (1890–1958), a historian of natural science, literary scholar and a philosopher. The authors show specificity of T.I. Rainov’s methodology both against the background of the historiography of Russian philosophy and in the broader context of the historical-philosophical program proposed by the German classical idealism. It is indicated that the basis of the methodology of historical and philosophical works of the 19th – early 20th centuries, regardless of their national and scholarship, was the approach most clearly expressed in the Hegelian historical and philosophical concept. The essence of this research method involves either the complete elimination of the socio-psychological aspects of the history of thought, or it relates them to secondary, «background» elements of the historical development of philosophy. It is shown that T.I. Rainov’s essays on the history of Russian philosophy represent one of the first attempts to apply the idea of social conditioning of knowledge, anticipating the scientific program of modern sociology of scientific knowledge. It is revealed that the basis of the methodology of T.I. Rainov is the sociological doctrine of E. Durkheim, namely his concept of mechanical and organic solidarity, on the basis of which Rainov examines the social conditions that determined the specificity of the philosophy of the 1850-1860s shown by him. The comparison of Rainov’s interpretation of the philosophy of the period under consideration and similar approaches presented in the famous works of G.G. Shpeta, B.V. Yakovenko, E.L. Radlova and A.I. Vvedensky. An important part of the study is the reconstruction of T.I. Rainov before the revolution of 1917. On the basis of archival sources, the biographical context of the writing of the work is reconstructed and its dating is proposed. The study used the traditional tools of history and the history of philosophy: methods of archival search, historical reconstruction and hermeneutics of texts.