Philosophical Arabesques

by Bukharin, Nikolai

• ISBN13: 9781583671023
• ISBN10: 1583671021
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-30
• Publisher: Monthly Review Pr

Summary

Bukharin'sPhilosophical Arabesqueswas written while he was imprisoned in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, facing trial on charges of treason, and later awaiting execution after he was found guilty. After the death of Lenin, Bukharin cooperated with Stalin for a time. Once Stalin's supremacy was assured he began eliminating all potential rivals. For Bukharin, the process was to end with his confession before the Soviet court, facing the threat that his young family would be killed along with him if he did not.While awaiting his death, Bukharin wrote prolifically. He consideredPhilosophical Arabesquesas the most important of his prison writings. In its pages, he covers the full range of issues in Marxist philosophy--the sources of knowledge, the nature of truth, freedom and necessity, the relationship of Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. The project constitutes a defense of the genuine legacy of Lenin's Marxism against the use of his memory to legitimate totalitarian power.Consigned to the Kremlin archives for a half-century after Bukharin's execution, this work is now being published for the first time in English. It will be an essential reference work for scholars of Marxism and the Russian revolution and a landmark in the history of prison writing.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Voice from the Dead	7	(24)
Helena Sheehan
Editorial Note by Monthly Review Press	31	(3)
Author's Foreword	34	(1)
Author's Introduction	35	(2)
The Reality of the World and the Intrigues of Solipsism	37	(10)
Acceptance and Nonacceptance of the World	47	(20)
Things in Themselves and Their Cognizability	67	(1)
Space and Time	68	(13)
Mediated Knowledge	81	(2)
The Abstract and the Concrete	83	(9)
Perception, Image, Concept	92	(6)
Living Nature and the Artistic Attitude toward It	98	(6)
Rational Thought, Dialectical Thought, and Direct Contemplation	104	(9)
Practice in General and the Place of Practice in the Theory of Knowledge	113	(11)
Practical, Theoretical and Aesthetic Attitudes toward the World, and Their Unity	124	(7)
The Fundamental Positions of Materialism and Idealism	131	(8)
Hylozoism and Panpsychism	139	(7)
Hindu Mysticism and Western European Philosophy	146	(8)
The So-called Philosophy of Identity	154	(9)
The Sins of Mechanistic Materialism	163	(7)
The General Laws and Relations of Being	170	(7)
Teleology	177	(9)
Freedom and Necessity	186	(7)
The Organism	193	(7)
Modern Science and Dialectical Materialism	200	(7)
The Sociology of Thought: Labor and Thought as Social-Historical Categories	207	(7)
The Sociology of Thought: Mode of Production and Mode of Representation	214	(10)
On So-called Racial Thought	224	(8)
Social Position, Thought, and ``Experience''	232	(9)
The Object of Philosophy	241	(7)
The Subject of Philosophy	248	(7)
The Interaction of Subject and Object	255	(7)
Society as the Object and Subject of Mastering	262	(7)
Truth: The Concept of Truth and the Criterion of the Truthful	269	(6)
Truth: Absolute and Relative Truth	275	(7)
The Good	282	(10)
Hegel's Dialectical Idealism as a System	292	(16)
The Dialectics of Hegel and the Dialectics of Marx	308	(23)
Dialectics as Science and Dialectics as Art	331	(8)
Science and Philosophy	339	(6)
Evolution	345	(7)
Theory and History	352	(7)
The Social Ideal	359	(10)
Lenin as a Philosopher	369	(8)
Notes	377	(18)
Index	395