A Treatise by V.V. Rozanov’s On Understanding: In Search of Wholeness

Abstract

The problem of wholeness retains its relevance for philosophical knowledge. Re­lativism and pluralism, associated with the development of individual scientific branches, generates the problem of multiple descriptions of the world. The con­sequence of this is the impossibility of understanding, the condition of which is wholeness. In modern philosophy this problem is considered in the context of two approaches, the bases of which are contradictory – rational and existen­tial. For Russian philosophy the problem of wholeness is the key one, and its solution is carried out through the existential approach. This approach is demon­strated by the philosophical treatise “On Understanding” by V.V. Rozanov. At the same time, researchers of Rozanov’s early work note the combination of rational and existential approach in his treatise. In our opinion, a conceptual reconstruc­tion of Rozanov’s doctrine can change and enrich the perspective of considering the problem of wholeness. This article is devoted to identifying the philosophical innovations that V.V. Rozanov in his treatise “On Understanding” contributes to the study of the problems of wholeness within the framework of Russian philosophy. The author raises the question of how Rozanov enriches the prob­lematic of wholeness in the Russian tradition, and how he managed to synthesize the rational and existential approach in the context of this problem. To achieve this goal the author shows how the problem of wholeness is revealed in the doc­trines of “sobornost” and “living knowledge” of the Slavophiles, the concept of “all-in-oness” and the true “sobornoe” knowledge of V.S. Soloviev, the philo­sophy of “sobornoe soznanie” and the authentic “soznanie” of S.N. Trubetskoy. The author makes a conceptual reconstruction of Rozanov’s doctrine of under­standing in the aspect of the problems of wholeness. The thesis is defended that in the existential approach to the problem of wholeness, typical of Russian philosophy, Rozanov inconsistently integrates a rational moment, describing the mechanism of the appearance of ideas through the registration of being by the ideas of reason.