Rammohun Roy and Pyotr Tchaadaev: Philosophers at the Crossroads of Western and Eastern Cultures

Abstract

Indian Rammohun Roy and Russian Pyotr Tchaadaev are juxtaposed as cross-cultural philosophers in Modern social thought. Being at the crossroads of the West and the East cultures in their countries, they have demonstrated the special resemblance in their worldviews and paradigm of thinking. Based on compara­tive analysis of philosophers’ existential circumstances and texts, the author de­scribes them as ‘problematic thinkers’ (M. Buber) who destruct quietness in their societies, form the problematic field of social thought and philosophy in the epoch of modernization, and create grounds for the self-understanding by Indian and Russian societies. The conventional description of paradigm of thinking by Ram­mohun Roy and Pyotr Tchaadaev is presented in the article. The universalistic approach is laid down in the paradigm ground; it permit to search for a unity and universality in diversity of natural and human worlds. The unity discovers through relation of their own social reality with the Other one (this role plays the West). Problems are raised and resolved in special trajectory “understanding of the Otner – thinking on their Own – a creation of some project of Eastern – Western synthesis”. Owing to the paradigm as well as the raised themes R. Roy and P. Tchaadaev have created the epochs in the history of thought and culture in India and Russia respectively.