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Recently we released the preliminary results of our survey of the Russian Philosophical Community. And now we’d like to introduce a comment by Professor Vadim Vasiliev, one of the organizers of this project. This comment is the essence of the survey. You could learn the most crucial points about Russian philosophers from it.
“We published the results of our big survey of the Russian philosophical community. And we have the following picture. The major classics for us: Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Marx. Among Russian philosophers: Soloviev, Berdyaev and Mamardashvili. The most significant contemporary authors: Chalmers, Žižek and Habermas. Russian philosophers don’t recognize that philosophy is science, believe in God, consider themselves realists and transcendentalists, are convinced of the deterministic world and the existence of free will, accept the possibility of a priori knowledge, and believe that physical reality is given to us not directly but through mental imprints. Consciousness is not physical, and not only human beings have it. Morality has a social rather than a biological nature. Moral truths cannot be proved. Aesthetic values are subjective. David Chalmers, one of the main characters of our survey, has recently conducted a similar survey of English-speaking philosophers. The main authority for them is David Hume. They recognize the objectivity of moral and aesthetic values, they do not believe in God, and they identify consciousness with activities in the brain. But not all of them believe people are zombies.”
