Философические письма. Апология сумасшедшего

by Petr Iakovlevich Chaadaev

Book by Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev

Genres: Philosophy, Russia

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Пётр Я́ковлевич Чаада́ев — русский философ и публицист, объявленный правительством сумасшедшим за свои сочинения, в которых резко критиковал действительность русской жизни.

Reviews

[Славея Котова]

Безспорно интересно четиво, особено предвид факта, че полага основите на най-големия философски спор в Руската история.

Благодаря на издателство Парадокс, че издадоха Чаадаев, както и на Камен Лозев за превода. Бележките под линия са изключително на място и достатъчно информативни.

П.П. едно вечно актуално наблюдение на Чаадаев е, че поради огромната територия на Русия, тя вместо история е получила география.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chaadayev was a friend of Pushkin and a contemporary of the Decemberists. He was acquainted with one of the Decemberists, but not part of their movement. He was always an independent thinker. He was part of the generation influenced by the experience of Western Europe in the military campaigns that followed Napoleon's retreat from Moscow and the new sense of Russia as a major European power after the Napoleionic wars. His generation gave us the "superfluous man" - that uniquely Russian type of men who were sophisticated and wanting more for themselves and their country but without direction and without the political means to effect change.

Sometimes Chaadayev hits the nail on the head. He was one of the first to openly articulate in print the idea of Russia as immature country, lacking the cultural foundations that made Western Europe strong. I liked the way that he separates the moral/spiritual from the physical and scientific, but then seeks to unify them. I liked how he sees a key part of Russia's problem as a spiritual malaise. I was not so happy with his belief that Christianity provided the answer to all of Russia's problems, though his brand of Christianity was not one that a lot of Russians would have recognized. His idea of history driven by a long term move toward unity helped along by the actions of great men was interesting though, I think, flawed. I found his choice of heroes and villains a bit strange. He admires Moses, David and Mohammed (!), but despises the ancient Greeks, the Renaissance and the Reformation. It's an odd combination of thinking from both the left and right at the same time, so it is easy to see how both the Slavophiles and the Westernizers were able to find things to like in Chaadayev's writing. Chaadayev's written output was severely curtailed by the Tsar's censors and by his incarceration as a madman. It's a shame because he could have contributed greatly to the intellectual debates of his era and would no doubt have developed more mature philosophical ideas over time. Chaadayev asks essentially the same question as Chernyshevsky and Lenin after him - "What is to be done?" But he has different answers. If we had been lucky enough to have more of Chaadayev and perhaps if Herzen had been allowed to do his work in Russia instead of from abroad, Russia could have gone in a different direction that would have spared us the assassinations, repressions, revolution, collectivization, purges, stagnation and kleptocracy that came in Chaadayev's wake. Sadly, the Russia of today still has many of the same problems that Chaadayev saw almost 200 years ago.

[Mego Naga · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know only that petr chaadaev was declared mad and was sent to an asylum my the czar after "apologize of a madman "was published. The chairman of the board was shoot and the other were fired or exiled for allowing it to be printed. Chaadaev died in a lunatic asylum.