Russian Images of Greek Thought, or Vladimir Solovyov’s Plato

Abstract

This article deals with the interpretation of Plato’s thought and heritage by Vladimir Solovyov, the famous Russian philosopher of the late 19th century. The article shows the specifics of Solovyov’s approach to the “Platonic ques­tion”, its relation to Plato’s research in philology and the history of philosophy in Western Europe at that time. The author of the article considers Plato’s Solovyov’s hermeneutics through the prism of the concept of “assimilation”, op­posing his understanding to other attempts at historical and philosophical inter­pretation. For Solovyov, to understand Plato’s thought means to understand Plato as a living personality, and a living personality is a developing personality, going through crises to new achievements. This idea is taken by Solovyov from the tra­dition of German philology. However, Solovyov takes a different look at the driving force that forced Plato to move from one way of thinking to another. Love as primum mouens in the creative development of Plato connects the Plato of European philology with the inner self-perception of Solovyov himself, who was not only a speculative philosopher, but also a lyrical poet. In a certain sense, the main philosophical theme of Solovyov, the theme of total unity, is just an ob­jectification of the lyrical pathos of love, which became the basis of his interpre­tation of Plato.