Other relevant keywords: Jewish Humor, Philosophical Poetry, Systemic Pluralism
Leonid Stolovich (1929–2013)
Leonid Naumovich Stolovich, Professor Emeritus at the University of Tartu and Doctor of Philosophical Sciences (Leningrad State University), specialized in aesthetics, theory of values, and the history of philosophy. He authored more than forty books and over five hundred scholarly articles in twenty languages.
In the 1960s, Stolovich developed his so-called “sociocultural model” of art and the category of beauty, sparking heated discussion in Soviet postwar aesthetics. In his subsequent works, Stolovich analyzed the place of aesthetic values in the axiological hierarchy and in the principles, structure, and basic types of artistic creativity. In the 1980s, he discovered and published Immanuel Kant’s “Tartu Manuscript,” previously considered lost, adding his own commentaries. In the 1990s, Stolovich published a comprehensive work on the history of aesthetic axiology, Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (Krasota, dobro, istina, 1994), from its origins in antiquity to the middle of the twentieth century. He also produced a distinctive monograph on the history of Russian philosophy (Istoriia russkoi filosofii: ocherki, 2005), and numerous philosophical articles on the typology of philosophical trends, the metaphysics of laughter, and other topics. In the philosophy of religion, Stolovich took the position of agnosticism. He defended culture and its values based on the principle of “systemic pluralism,” which implied the dialogical interaction of different philosophical and religious systems, where none possessed the absolute truth.
Systemic Pluralism
In one of his signature works, Pluralism in Philosophy and the Philosophy of Pluralism (Pluralizm v filosofii i filosofiia pluralizma, 2005), Leonid Stolovich methodically develops the concept of “systemic pluralism” in philosophy. Stolovich talks here “about conceptual pluralism and not ontological pluralism of being,” defining “systemic pluralism” as follows: “If the elements which are encompassed by the system are heterogeneous and seemingly … incompatible with each other, then the system of such elements forms a systemic pluralism” (Pluralizm v filosofii 19).
In his book, Stolovich compares the notion of “systemic pluralism” to related ideas, including eclecticism, tolerance, and wisdom. He also applies his approach to religion and theology, where “systemic pluralism” takes the name of theological agnosticism. He argues that it “conducts an uneasy dialogue with religion and atheism and represents a certain kind of conceptual pluralism” (Pluralizm v filosofii 127). For Stolovich, theological agnosticism has two manifestations: “One of them is doubt in the existence of God, the affirmation of the impossibility to settle the very question of his existence. The second type … presupposes … faith in the reality of God but develops a thought of him being unknowable, unfathomable (128). Stolovich continues:
Being situated somewhat between theism and atheism, theological agnosticism presumes tolerance based on the suitability of the pluralistic worldview. It defends the freedom of conscience of a person free to profess any religion or to not be religious at all. Theological agnosticism is not a lack of faith. Without believing in the supreme power that stands above the world, it is filled with faith in universal human values, including [those in] the moral sphere. (138)
History of Philosophy
Stolovich finds another important application of his principle of “systemic pluralism” in studying the history of philosophy and, more specifically, Russian thought. The two-volume classic, A History of Russian Philosophy, written in the 1940s by Russian émigré and Orthodox priest Vasily Zenkovsky, emphasized Christian influences, spirit, and the character of Russian philosophical speculation. Soviet textbooks, on the contrary, focused on the secular and anti-religious trends in Russian thought—seeing the evolution of the Russian intellectual tradition as moving toward atheism. In contrast to those two polarizing perspectives, Stolovich’s History of Russian Philosophy (2005), written in the post-Soviet period, argues for the impossibility of reducing Russian philosophy to religious or secular versions, to either Orthodoxy or atheism. Stolovich maintains that modern Russian thought displays various trends, schools, and approaches that any single underlying theme, principle, or intuition cannot capture.
Stolovich believed that his novel, pluralistic approach to the history of Russian philosophy would better align with the development of a new, post-Tsarist and post-Soviet Russia. He wrote: “Pluralistic philosophy can provide a theoretical ground for human freedom and political democracy … Pluralism presupposes tolerance, and tolerance, which does not lead to the cessation of pluralism, can be considered a social ideal of the highest value” (Pluralizm v filosofii 317).
Universal Human Values
Despite being a “systemic pluralist,” Stolovich argued for the importance of universal human values (obshchechelovecheskie tsennosti) within his ethical philosophy. In his essay “The ‘Golden Rule’ of Morality as the Universal Human Value” (“‘Zolotoe pravilo’ nravstvennosti kak obshchechelovecheskaia tsennost’,” 2008), he defended this unifying position against the historical and intellectual background of the twentieth-century’s infamous “re-evaluation of all values” (Nietzsche), which he argued had led to world wars, mass genocide, and totalitarian horrors. As a Jewish scholar who survived Stalinism, Stolovich grappled with uncomfortable questions of post-totalitarian times: “How is it possible … to talk about values after Auschwitz and Kolyma? What is the value of a value if the words ‘There is nothing more valuable than the human being’ are uttered by a cannibal?” (Mudrost’, tsennost,’ pamiat’ 126). His ethical solutions are nevertheless optimistic and based on the universal application of the Golden Rule of morality.
For Stolovich, universal human values are the only “alternative to the self-destruction of humankind” (Mudrost’, tsennost,’ pamiat’ 165). In another essay on ethics, “Theory of Value” (“Teoriia tsennostei,” 2009), he writes: “The dialectic of value and life … consists in the fact that not any life has value, but life in its contraposition to death, as life that affirms the human personality in its free development” (Filosofiia. Estetika. Smekh 75).
Humor and Poetry
On a personal level, Leonid Stolovich was an indefatigable wit and punster. In his later years, when he felt unwell and could no longer leave home, he would make puns on the history of the Soviet restriction of movement, joking that he was “banned from leaving not only the country but even the house.” In 1996, he published a book of Jewish aphorisms, jokes, and anecdotes called Jews Joking (Evrei shutiat), which was reprinted several times.
Leonid Stolovich was also a skilled and original poet who wrote and published his poetry from a young age. He was especially good at creating poetic landscapes, which demonstrated a philosophical and metaphysical view of nature. In his philosophical lyrics, one can find the following quatrain:
Life, it is rich or wretched.
If you describe it precisely, –
It is a road that beckons us
From nothingness to nothingness. (Razmyshleniia 77)
Although not a religious person, Stolovich was undoubtedly a spiritual man and philosopher from whose pen came these lines:
It’s incomprehensible, whose whim
Is life – this lasting miracle. (Razmyshleniia 60)
Spinoza is often quoted as saying that philosophers do not laugh but only understand. Leonid Stolovich was a different kind of thinker. He laughed amicably, versed with elegance, and imbued his philosophy with compassion and humanism.
Mikhail Sergeev, September 2024
Bibliography
Stolovich, Leonid N. Evrei shutiat: evreiskie anekdoty, ostroty i aforizmy o evreiakh. St. Petersburg: Lenizdat,1999.
—. Filosofiya, estetika, smekh. St. Petersburg – Tartu: Akademicheskii proekt, 1999.
—. Istoriia russkoi filosofii: ocherki. Moscow: Respublika, 2005.
—. Krasota, dobro, istina: ocherk istorii esteticheskoi aksiologii. Moscow: Respublika, 1994.
—. Mudrost’, tsennost’, pamiat’: stat’i, esse, vospominaniia (1999 – 2009). Tartu – Tallinn: InGri, 2009.
—. Pluralism v filosofii i filosofiya pluralizma. Tartu – Tallinn: Ingri, 2005.
—. Razmyshleniia: stikhi, aforizmy, esse. Tartu – Tallinn: Ingri, 2007.