HEIDEGGER AND RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHIZING: THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE DISTANCE

The paper offers a critical analysis of a programmatic article by Alexander Mikhailovsky on the reception of “late” Heidegger's philosophy in Russian philosophical community. I mainly focus on the thesis put forth by Mikhailovsky on the peculiar esoterism of Heidegger's “being-historical” thought, demanding a special philosophical practice of a “meaningful silence” considered the only commensurate approach to it. Moreover, according to Mikhailovsky, only Russian cultural and philosophical space (by which he understands mainly Russia's conservative cultural and political thought) retains the ability to perform this kind of silence, while Western researchers and scholars have completely lost it. I put forward the following main arguments against this thesis: 1) several varieties of “esoterism” are simultaneously inherent in early” and “late” Heidegger's philosophy and none of which requires a disavowal of a public scientific discussion and undertaking of a particular socio-political mission instead; 2) Heidegger's conception of the so-called “other beginning” is not a radical-reformist but diagnostic one, that is to say, in its basic intentions it is not active revolutionary but rather quietist; 3) By now, the most substantial contribution to the systematic research of Heidegger's legacy is made by Western interpreters; 4) Heidegger's publishing policy testifies precisely to his intention to prevent ideologized forms of appropriation of his philosophy and, on the contrary, to guarantee the possibility of its systematic scientific reception. In addition to issues of content, I pay attention to the rhetorical form of the article in question. From my point of view, the rhetorical strategy of Alexander Mikhailovsky draws on a general tonality that came to be strongly associated with reception of Heidegger in Russian speaking cultural space due to the translations of Heidegger's works into Russian made in the 1980-90s. In conclusion I, in general outline, present my own – alternative – view on the productive strategies of treating Heidegger's theoretical legacy.