DOI: https://doi.org/10.17072/2078-7898/2019-4-492-503

Formation of philosophical anthropology in the USSR: a historical and philosophical analysis

Oleg A. Ustinov
Ph.D. in Philosophy,
Head of the Scientific and Educational Department

Cultural and educational center «Dubrava» named after Archpriest Alexander Men,
16, Parkovaya st., Sergiev Posad, Moscow Region, 141308, Russia;
e-mail: olustinov@rambler.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2994-2339

The article deals with the formation of philosophical anthropology in the framework of Soviet philosophical science in the 1950–1980s. It was during this period that a number of researchers set a task to humanize Marxism after they had received the opportunity to reconstruct Marx’s anthropology referring to primary sources. The result of these searches was the recognition of the problem of man as the central point of K. Marx’s philosophy and philosophy in general, as well as the justification of the need to develop a comprehensive philosophical discipline which was called «human science». The article reconstructs and explores the basic concepts of philosophical and anthropological thought of the 1950–1980s: the «new man» project, the problem of alienation, the relationship between the social and the biological, freedom and necessity, personality and society, the problem of the meaning and purpose of life. It is concluded that innovative philosophers («anthropologists») of that period could not completely get rid of the ideological dogmatic patterns introduced into philosophy, but they managed to analyze the phenomenon of man in his not only collective but individual being; the analysis was accompanied with conclusions about the self-worth of a person and their right to auto-determination. Later, in the mid-1980s and 1990s, after the abolition of ideological control, this set of ideas was used by Russian scientists as paradigmatic for the formation and institutionalization of philosophical anthropology as a separate philosophical discipline in a constructive dialogue with non-Marxist concepts of man.

Keywords: philosophical anthropology, Soviet Marxism, man, biological and social, subjective factor in history, meaning of life, personality and society.

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Received 13.09.2019

For citation:

Ustinov O.A. [Formation of philosophical anthropology in the USSR: a historical and philosophical analysis]. Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Filosofia. Psihologia. Sociologia [Perm University Herald. Series «Philosophy. Psychology. Sociology»], 2019, issue 4, pp. 492–503 (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.17072/2078-7898/2019-4-492-503