In Search for Soviet Philosophy of Consciousness. A Review on: Soviet Philosophy of Mind: Etudes on History of Ideas. Ed. by A.D. Maydanskiy. Moscow: Kanon+ROOI “Reabilitatsiya”, 2023. 336 p.

Abstract

This text is a review of the collective monograph «Soviet Philosophy of Mind: Etudes on History of Ideas» edited by A.D. Maydanskiy. It is highly improbable that someone will dispute that philosophy of mind is the central (if not main) discipline of contemporary analytic philosophy. Of great importance was identifying the parallels between discussions in analytic philosophy and in what was going on at that time in the Soviet thought which largely existed in the framework of the Marxist-Leninist discourse. The name of the monograph in question suggests that it’s the first systematical historical and philosophical research dedicated to these discussions in Soviet philosophy that to some extent relate to the problems of the philosophy of mind. If our preliminary impression of the book is true, this work has been awaited for a long time. However, the monograph leaves an ambiguous impression. On the one hand, the book tries to fill the gap in the review of the problems of the Soviet philosophy of mind. The «Addendum» contains unique sources (the abstract of Merab Mamardashvili’s Ph.D. thesis, the review of Evald Ilyenkov’s official opponent, etc.), and as a result, the scientific value of the monograph is beyond doubt. On the other hand, there is a clear lack of elaboration of the research methodology. The book tries to convince us that it is arguing with the analytic philosophy of mind but it doesn’t do its job. The reader will unlikely to have a clear understanding of how the Soviet philosophy of mind differs from its Anglo-American alternative: if this kind of comparative analysis took place as one of the goals of the research then it should have been carried out explicitly and systematically. The achievement of this goal is also not facilitated by the lack of consistency in the use of the term «mind»: in different places and without preliminary explanations it is understood either as a phenomenon of nature or as a certain social construct. Among the shortcomings of a different kind, one should point out the incompleteness of the historical and philosophical review.