Ethics ratings and subsets for every nation: Russia
Moral Contours
Historical figures
Avicenna was a Muslim philosopher, theologian and scientist of great learning, knowledgeable of previous Islamic scholarship and open to sources from both Graeco-Roman Europe (especially Aristotle) and India. In turn his own writings came to be widely read in European universities. Writing mainly in Arabic or Persian, he emphasised the compatibility of reason with faith in all spheres, including that of medicine which was his major specialism. His multi-volume Canon/Laws of Medicine remained authoritative for more than 500 years. Its prescriptions extend from hygiene to contraception and the treatment of STDs. They show a very practical approach to moral education.
Life and Work
An introduction to Avicenna's life and work from the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry on Avicenna
Writings
Berlin Rabbi, then army chaplain during WW1. From 1933 political leader of German Jewry, refusing to leave till deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp for 3 years till 1945. Resettled in London - chair of World Union of Progressive Judaism. Wrote extensively, propounding morality as the core of being Jewish - active response to divine commands.
Life
Jewish Virtual Library article on Leo Baeck
My Jewish Learning article on Leo Baeck
Video
His familiarity with Marxist philosophy from his early academic years, stayed with him when he espoused the thinking and beliefs of the Russian Orthodox Church and into the decade leading to the Revolution. He was a critical believer who challenged the superficial theocracy of Tsarist culture, but he also questioned the emergent version of Marxism. His independent mindedness cost him his position teaching Philosophy at Moscow University; he left for Berlin in 1922. From 1924 onwards he lived, wrote and taught in or near Paris, with an increasing intellectual following. His theology was distinctive in its focus on the prospect of spiritual transformation – different from both legal conformity and the socialist optimism of Marxism which he saw as dangerously oppressive of human freedom. Creative energy is the source of genuine freedom.
Life
Life of Berdyaev from Russiapedia
Life of Berdyaev from the Berdyaev Library Project
Writings
Dramatist and story-teller, he was a shrewd observer of human behaviour and the temptation to ‘sell-out’ which come from worldly recognition and status. He put integrity ahead of public preferment, as instanced by his loyalty to a fellow author (Gorky) instead of any royal reward.
Life
Writings
Video
Fyodor Dostoevsky, now recognised as a novelist of global significance, draws on his own experience of industrial poverty, military training, gambling indebtedness, legal vacuity, religious hypocrisy and personal epilepsy to explore what it means to be human. His sense of authentic Christianity is at odds with rational egoism and external obedience.
Life
Writings
Proponent of a distinctive approach to the human future based on extensive reading, travelling and consultations with scholars and mystics across the world. He established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Paris. As well as working closely with the individuals both singly and as a group, he set out in writing the full range of his philosophical system. It promised the liberated immortality which he believed to be at the heart of all religions. There is now an international network of groups practising Gurdjieff’s teachings - the ‘Fourth Way’ which includes mind-body exercises and ‘truth dancing’. Intellectually and economically challenging.
Life
- Gurdjieff biography with links to much more information about him and his followers
- 'George Gurdjieff: seeker of truth' - extensive illustrated biography with links to many more materials
- Gurdjieff International Review, containing a wealth of information about Gurdjieff
Works
Video
Original thinking Protestant philosopher, who was sceptical of what can be learned from sceptical metaphysics. A rational faith grounded in the human experience of ‘cosmic awe’ – wondering at the universe, and of the conscience – inner moral sense. The test of the latter (the ‘categorical imperative) is whether or not a principle of moral action can be universalised – if it can, then it deserves to be acted on, but not otherwise. His position is sometimes characterised as ‘critical idealism’.
Life
Writings
Russian Orthodox Christian theologian and writer who was a strong and influential advocate of the Orthodox Church as the truest and best expression of Christianity. It is centred in ‘Sobornost’ – a unity of togetherness in the Holy Spirit – which differentiates it from what he saw as a Roman autocratic version of the historical catholicity of the Church, as also from the splintering individualism of Protestants. He advocated an open education, free from state controlling of the human spirit.
Life
Writings
Alexandra Kollontai, lifelong Russian socialist, with revolutionary inclinations, actively campaigning for feminist causes relating to marital freedom and collective childcare. She advanced a theory of non-possessive sexual love which she practised enthusiastically.
Life
Writings
Video
Russian neuropsychologist. He studied with Vygotsky, used his medical skills to ameliorate the lives of persons damaged by brain injuries (especially during conditions of war). At the same time he developed an understanding of complementarity between the physical workings of the brain and the human mind. He had to deal with the continuous threat of anti-semitism.
Life
Idiosyncratic explorer of the bounds of human understanding. From a background in the natural sciences he became convinced of what he called the ‘fourth dimension’. His thinking coincided with that of Gurdjieff with whom he collaborated intermittently. Highly regarded by contemporary British intellectuals when he moved to London in the 1920s, opinions of his scholarship range from brilliant wisdom to speculative twaddle.
Life
Biographies of Ouspensky and additional materials by and about him
Writings
A selection of books by Ouspensky
Boris Pasternak was a leading Russian writer of 20th century – poet, novelist and translator. From a versatile artistic, and historically Jewish background, he spanned pre-revolutionary and Stalinist years as well as the beginnings of the emergence of a greater liberation. Highly regarded by his contemporaries within Russia, and strongly controlled by authorities who were aware of the power of his words, he was disappointed by what emerged from the promises of Communism. Nevertheless, he retained an expressly moral hope that things might be other than they were.
Life
Nobel Prize biography of Pasternak with links to further materials
Entry on Pasternak in the Jewish Virtual Library
Biography of Pasternak from Poets.org
Writings
Ivan Pavlov was a physiologist who is seen as pioneering the potential credibility of human behaviour as dependent on prior conditioning of the brain. His views were based on his researches in digestion and circulation fields of medical biology, but the implications of his findings were extrapolated to learning theories in education and political brainwashing programmes in his own country and internationally – to which he took great exception.
Life
Nobel Prize biography of Pavlov with links to other resources
Writings
Russian educated, she moved to America in 1926 where she propounded a distinctive moral philosophy through her novels and academic writings. She styled herself a rationalist, believing in ethical egoism in preference to altruism and supporting unregulated free enterprise. These are the components of the stance which she termed ‘Objectivism’.
Life
- An account of Rand's life and work from the Jewish Virtual Library
- Entry on Rand in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Writings
- Overviews and analyses of all of Rand's writings
- Ayn Rand Institute website with links to a wide variety of resources
Video
Arguably one of the world’s greatest novelists, in particular for War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy was prolific in his writing and in his family size (his wife had 13 children). He had direct experience of military command as well as farm management, and was an acute observer of social and political movements and struggles in his country. His own moral stance was in process of continuous development, culminating in a radical individual asceticism and pacifism.
Life
- Entry on Tolstoy in the Encyclopedia of World Biography
- Entry on Tolstoy in Russiapedia
- Tolstoy's life, work and significance
- Tolstoy and antisemitism
Writings
- Works by Tolstoy on Project Gutenberg
- Introduction to Tolstoy's writings
- What then must we do?
- Tolstoy's writings on nonviolence
- Anna Karenina
Lev Vygotsky was little known outside Russia during his short life. He became familiar and famous elsewhere from the 1970s onwards. He is best known for his work on cognitive development which combined empirical and theoretical studies. He observed the interdependence between language and thinking as they emerge in particular social contexts. His notion of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is widely used as a model for childhood learning both in play and teacher/adult interaction with any learner. Moral education is a joint exercise – scaffolding which builds an individual understanding of right and wrong
Life
Writings