Philosophy of Mind and Awareness of Philosophy in the Interior of the Soviet Age

Abstract

The article examines a topical issue in the history of Soviet philosophy -the philosophy of mind in the 1950s-1970s. The problems of the philosophy of mind are presented from the point of view of the ideas of freedom and non-freedom, discussions around the problem of the ideal, the specifics of individual and social consciousness, the opposition of philosophical and scientific discourses. An important part of the study is the reconstruction of some of the interpersonal collisions of that time. The article contains an interview with the chief research fellow of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences D.I. Dubrovsky (who started his philosophical career in the 1950s), revealing the personal and theoretical aspects of his life and work. Using biographical method, the author demonstrates that, behind the heterogeneity of views and ideas of Soviet philosophers, there is a single intellectual and life-value orientation of the generation of the 1960s. In historical retrospective, the author shows the features of Soviet philosophy and the way of life of the Soviet philosopher in that period. The article describes the processes of institutionalization of philosophical consciousness in the 1960s, shows the advanced nature of such institutions as the Institute of Philosophy and the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in which worked philosophers who not only had an original vision of the problems of philosophy but also were mediators between national and world thought. In Soviet philosophy of the 1950s-1970s, there were many bright, capable individuals, for whom the truth and the strive for it were more important than political correctness and general indifference. The author reveals the advanced nature of the Soviet philosophy of mind in the 1950s-1970s, in spite of the established stereotypes and uncritical mixing of different stages in the history of Soviet philosophy into one whole. The article is aimed at overcoming ideological and mythological stereotypes around the “Soviet” phenomenon in general and the Soviet philosophy of mind in particular..