G. Shpet and His Place in the History of Russian Psychology

Abstract

The recently published story by D. Granin entitled "Diehard" presents N. V. Timofeev-Resovskii's recollections of Moscow University in the first years after the revolution. According to his account, an interesting philosophical circle was active there at the time: "The logical and philosophical circle was headed by Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, who was disturbing minds with unprecedented paradoxes and shaking the most unshakable foundations of this world, and Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin, a great mathematician who was able to find a philosophical meaning in mathematics."1 V. Kaverin also tells how tremendously impressed he was by a lecture by Shpet, given in 1919 before the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University.2