Dmitry Chizhevsky’s Letter to Leonid Ganchikov (1953)
Keywords:
epistolary, correspondence, Dmitry Chizhevsky, Leonid Ganchikov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, H.W.F. Hegel, M. Heidegger, E. Husserl, logic, ethics, Slavic studiesAbstract
We publish the letter from the philosopher D.I. Chizhevsky (1894–1977), who lived in Germany, to his colleague and compatriot professor L.Ya. Ganchikov (1893–1968), who lived in Italy and worked on the history of Russian religious thought. Chizhevsky, apparently answering the addressee’s questions, essentially sets out his scientific curriculum vitae, with a brief biography and a list of main publications. The letter is an auto-interpretation of the creative heritage of D.I. Chizhevsky, in which the thinker defines his main interest as an attempt to substantiate some issues of logic and ethics by distinguishing those areas in which different types of logical categories are applicable, and also points to the philosophers closest to him – E. Husserl, H.W.F. Hegel, S.L. Frank, N.O. Lossky. The publication of the letter is accompanied by a thorough academic commentary, which fits the information given in it into the context of the life and creative path of D.I. Chizhevsky.
