Coming to terms with the past (IFN 1986 – 1989)
pp. 175-189
in: , Soviet historiography of philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1997Abstract
The purpose of this concluding chapter is to exploit the advantage of hindsight. Perestrojka and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet system meant the end of Soviet philosophical culture [Ch.2.viii]. With respect to IFN, this meant the gradual disappearance of its specifically Soviet conditions. The present chapter discusses five developments during perestrojka which, through their corrective and compensatory character, highlight the determinants of IFN as it existed during its "classicial" period [Ch.4–6]: the subordination of philosophy to ideology, and the ideological functions of IFN, which contrast with the failed attempt to let IFN play a constructive role in the perestrojka-program [7.i]; the process of professionalization and specialization, leading to the transformation of IFN into a "purely historical" discipline [7.ii], and the shift from K(S)BF to an investigation of contemporary Western philosophy that does not serve immediate ideological goals [7.iii]; the function of IFN as "refuge" after 1967 and 1974, and the return of 'systematic" philosophers from this "ecological niche" [7.iv]; the role of the 'sophisticated maistream position" as "link and buffer", the vanishing need for such a covering theory of the history of philosophy as a process and a discipline, and the formulation of alternative conceptions of the history of philosophy, corrective with respect to the 'sophisticated position" [7.v].