K.N. Leont’ev’s Views from the Early 1870s in the Context of Civilizational Discussions Concerning Russia and Europe (P.Y. Chaadayev, N.Y. Danilevsky, V.F. Ern): Russian Ideal and Salvation of the Western World

The article examines the cultural-political and religious-philosophical ideas of the Russian thinker K.N. Leont’ev, which were dedicated to the clarification of the civilizational relations between Russia and the Western world. These ideas are articulated in the context of statements made by Russian intellectuals of the XIX – early XX century (P.Y. Chaadaev, N.Y. Danilevsky, V.F. Ern) within the framework of a comparative-analytical approach in the field of research on the philosophy of Russian history. The author emphasizes the civilizational unity between the Western and Eastern worlds as two original centers of universal Christian culture, which arose on the basis of Greco-Roman antiquity. Leontiev’s teachings helps to reveal this thesis, it provides a perspective for understanding the civilizational unity of the Christian world, although shaken by church divisions. The a priori Russian-European antagonism, which was defended by Danilevsky and to which it is customary to elevate Leontiev’s philosophy, in fact wasn’t familiar to the latter. Admiration for the old European culture, set as a model for Russian philosophy by Chaadaev, was unconditionally shared by Leontiev; but at the same time that did not prevent him from being the strictest critic of egocentrism, which struck the European consciousness in modern times. Leontiev’s spiritual criticism is essentially similar to V.F. Ern’s spiritual criticism, which was equally directed against the intellectualism of European civilization. The latter was practically expressed in German militarism and both thinkers saw salvation from it in the resolutely offensive actions of the Russian government. Leontiev’s thought, despite the failure in terms of its political implementation, nevertheless exists in a transhistorical dialogue with the work of other Russian intellectuals and allows us to see the civilizational unity of East and West, the maintenance of which primarily depends on spiritual and cultural efforts.