In this "lucid primer of Russian thought" (The Times Literary Supplement), Lesley Chamberlain finds that during the last two centuries Russian intellectuals have asked two fundamental questions, "what makes a good man?" and "what is the right way to live?" The nineteenth-century ideal of a happy man living in a just society became, in Russia, a quest to effect the wholesale transformation of society. Chamberlain shows how this moral passion, manifesting itself in philosophy and literature, existed in both pre- and post-revolutionary Russia. She reveals that 1917 did not represent the watershed we once thought, and shows how the dreams of a plain and simple life reached its negative apotheosis under Lenin. In Motherland, Lesley Chamberlain has produced a radical new interpretation of Russian intellectual history that, finally, gives a glimpse in to the soul of that singular country.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Delving fearlessly into her complex and understudied subject, Chamberlain provides a useful synthesis of 200 years of thought by nearly 40 Russian philosophers. Her philosopher-by-philosopher account portrays an important, if flawed, theoretical geography that has earned its place in the philosophical tradition, despite Russia's inferiority complex stemming from Nicholas I's closing of all philosophy departments in universities in 1826. Russian thinkers defined themselves against a Western perspective—Hegelian knowledge, Cartesian individualism, Adam Smith's political economy—that, in their view, simply could not comprehend the culture and society of Russia. Among these thinkers, Lenin is the most influential, and the book's argument can't help turning on his 1908 treatise, Materialism and Empirio–criticism. Yet in trying to provide a balanced view of all relevant figures, Chamberlain misses an opportunity to make Lenin's devastating philosophy the book's compelling center. The progression toward totalitarianism is subtle but clear in hindsight, a result of Russia's precarious position on the physical and moral outskirts of the Western world: Russian disdain for the West, its sense of being morally superior, always contained the shadow of a fear that Russia was the inferior place. This useful reference and historical corrective should inspire further study into a neglected but rich intellectual landscape. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Chamberlain is an uncommonly attractive writer--and she remains so even when taking on the daunting task of summing up a nation's philosophy." -- Martin Rubin, The Atlantic Monthly
"Clever, civilized...Chamberlain's forte is drawing subtle connections between widely different thinkers." -- Edward Skidelsky, New Statesman
"If Chamberlain didn't exist, students of Russian intellectual life couldn't invent her. She's too outside-the-box in her career, prose, and nervy insights...her books provide an overview of a philosophical tradition most Western professors in the discipline hardly know." -- Carlin Romano, Chronicle of Higher Education
"The value of this book is that it offers a small window into the mental universe of underground men everywhere." -- Mark Lilla, New York Times Book Review
"With its impressive range of intellectual sympathy and understanding, Motherland is an intrepid, non-Russian contribution to the familiar quest for a Russian truth." -- Rachel Polonsky, TLS --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
"Clever, civilized...Chamberlain's forte is drawing subtle connections between widely different thinkers." -- Edward Skidelsky, New Statesman
"If Chamberlain didn't exist, students of Russian intellectual life couldn't invent her. She's too outside-the-box in her career, prose, and nervy insights...her books provide an overview of a philosophical tradition most Western professors in the discipline hardly know." -- Carlin Romano, Chronicle of Higher Education
"The value of this book is that it offers a small window into the mental universe of underground men everywhere." -- Mark Lilla, New York Times Book Review
"With its impressive range of intellectual sympathy and understanding, Motherland is an intrepid, non-Russian contribution to the familiar quest for a Russian truth." -- Rachel Polonsky, TLS --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Makes Russian philosophy approachable,
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This review is from: Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia (Hardcover)
If one wanted to understand the fundamental difference in Russian and American worldviews which lies at the root of the current cooling in relations, the following passage from Lesley Chamberlain's new book on Russia's philosophical legacy would be a good place to start:The Russian moral antipathy to Utilitarianism has been remarkably consistent... [Russia was] less prosperous, technologically less advanced, admittedly, but Russian culture was morally of a higher type because it was interested in something other than crude statements of `I want' and `this is mine'... As early as Odoevsky [1840s] the country's desire not to be Western turned into a vision of itself as a mystical world economy running on selflessness. Idealism, uniqueness and separateness have long been central elements of the "Russian Soul," and this superb volume brings a bit of order and understanding to the eclectic and elusive topic that is Russian philosophy, making it approachable for the general reader. (Reviewed in Russian Life)
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
sophisticated approach to intellectual history,
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This review is from: Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia (Paperback)
Many of the basic doctrines of philosophy escape me. I tend to think: I think, therefore I am a thinker, forever removed from the real world in which policy rules among a bunch of spiteful authoritarian thinkers who don't care what I think. Lesley Chamberlain mentions Nietzsche, Rilke, Bakhtin, Heidegger, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and other thinkers who struggled with problems that are difficult to describe. I think she mentioned a book called The Yawning Heights. Bakhtin's theories on the novel are used as an excuse to mention a novelist who claims that the absurd instances in his writing attempt to capture the kind of experiences that doctrines imposed upon people produce. The ways in which a technocratic society attempts to set things up so they will run forever turns into the problem that the entire world is facing at the end of the book.
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