Vladimir S. Bibler: A Remarkable Russian Philosopher

ABSTRACT This article discusses a new conception of logic developed by the well-known Russian philosopher Vladimir Solomonovich Bibler. Analyzing prior methods of thinking and previous types of logics, he came to the conclusion that they were historically determined and that modern European logic was oriented toward science (which was at the center of culture in the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries) and represented a doctrine of science. This modern logic reached its supreme form in the logic of Hegel, who brilliantly presented the entire path of the cognizing mind but also considered it the sole form of comprehension. Hegel’s enormous influence found its manifestation in the treatment of all previous logics, from ancient to the medieval, viewed as preparatory stages of Hegelian logic. However, Bibler saw the limitations of Hegel’s approach to logic in the very fact that its starting point was not justified in the logic itself but accepted without reflection, just as Newton, the founder of modern European science, had abandoned consideration of the starting point of mechanics, force, analyzing only its appearances. As a result, Hegel’s logic seemed absolutely complete, requiring no further development. Bibler believes that each logic must justify its starting point extra-logically: Modern science ends up in a paradox, particularly in the logic of justifying set theory. Bibler thinks that being enters into logic in the form of another logic. Bringing the findings of Mikhail Bakhtin, who discovered the dialogical character of culture, into his own conception of logic, Bibler argues that his new logic should be dia-logic, the logic of a dialogue, rather than a mono-logic like Hegel’s. It needs to focus not on science but on culture; it could therefore be called a logic of culture and will examine understanding rather than cognition.