Critical Remarks on the Question of a “Moscow School of Metaphysics”

The article analyzes the concept of the “Moscow School of Metaphysics,” an expression proposed by S.L. Frank in 1932 referring to the institutionalization of the initial advancement of Russian thought in the form of a “scientific metaphysics.” S.L. Frank held the rationalism of L.M. Lopatin and the transcendentalism of S.N. Trubetskoy to be the chief methodologies of this movement. S.L. Frank’s institutional identification is judged to be one episode in the search for a general developmental pattern within Russian thought – a movement toward a scientific and systematic philosophy. In his book Russian Philosophy around S.L. Frank. Selected articles (2020) the contemporary investigator of Russian philosophy, G.E. Alyaev turned his attention to the “Moscow School of Metaphysics” as a historical and philosophical concept. Agreeing with Frank, G.E. Alyaev names the alleged participants in the school, excluding V.S. Solovyov considering him a “religious thinker.” Referring to the material in the journal Problems of Philosophy and Psychology and to the speeches of N.Ya. Grot and V.S. Solovyov, the author shows that the philosophical education of Russian society, and in particular of professional philosophers, was not at a level that allowed for the emergence of the school as a scientometric unit. With the final two decades of the nineteenth century in mind, the author prefers to speak not about the school, but about the direction of the philosophical sympathies of Russian educated society toward either positivism or metaphysics. Within the bounds of the latter, there took place a selection of methodological techniques that allowed Russian thought to move toward a scientific metaphysics. The author mentions V.S. Solovyov, with his final articles, as among those who persistently sought the principles of theoretical philosophy. The author also shows that S.L. Frank, who proposed the concept of the “Moscow Metaphysical School,” is far from precise in its application