William James in Russian Culture by Joan Delaney Grossman; Ruth RischinReview by: John RyderTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring, 2004), pp. 360-365Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40320997 .

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360 Book Reviews

William Jumes in Russian Culture Joan Delaney Grossman and Ruth Rischin, editors Lexington Books, 2003 xi + 259 pp.

Alexander Etkind, the author of one of the chapters in this interesting volume, begins his essay as follows: "When we speak of the migration of ideas into another culture, we ordinarily refer to the process of assimilation, transformation, or distortion. However, concerning the ideas of James, it is more interesting to consider, not how accurately another culture perceived them, but rather what use it made of them, what were their consequences, what responses they evoked." This is quite well said, especially with respect to someone like James, for whom the import of ideas lies not so much in their roots or in their abstract claim to truth, but in their effects, their results, their consequences. On the whole, William James in Russian Culture is an attempt to elucidate those consequences, to tease out the impact that James had on Russian culture from the late nineteenth through the end of the twentieth centuries. In this regard the book is successful, if uneven. The reader comes away with two things: a deeper sense of James's work that results from seeing the impact of his thought on Russian psychologists, philosophers, poets and religious thinkers, especially at the turn of the twentieth century; and a fascinating glimpse into Russian intellectual culture of that period. These are both worthy results, and they indicate the value of the book for anyone interested in James or Russian intellectual history.

I have one major objection to the volume, which I will make now and then move on to the book's more interesting and noteworthy characteristics. The objection is that in it virtually no attention is paid to discussions or treatments of James during the Soviet period, which is to say during most of the twentieth century. The essays cover several aspects of the relation between James and Russian psychology, religion and poetry from the 1890s through the teens, and then abruptly jump to the 1990s. The reason for this is, presumably, that from the point of view of Jan Delaney Grossman and Ruth Rischin, the editors of the volume, nothing sufficiently interesting was written about or done with James during the Soviet period to warrant even a single essay. That this is the editors' view is clear from the couple of pages that they devote to the Soviet period in their introduction, in which they suggest that mainstream intellectual life in the Soviet Union was so thoroughly dominated by ideological considerations that there is no point in taking it seriously. In this regard they echo what for decades has been an article of faith for American academics: Marxist ideology had so distorted academic and intellectual life in the Soviet Union that for us there is nothing to be gained from a serious study of it.

This is a tricky subject, in part because there is more than a kernel of truth in

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Spring 2004, Vol. XL, No. 2

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Book Reviews 361

the Cold War era assumption that nothing interesting could possibly go on in mainstream Soviet academic culture. The full truth, however, is much more nuanced, and we do ourselves and Soviet academics a disservice by dismissing them as readily as we do. Some years ago I had the occasion to undertake a study of Soviet era works on the history of American philosophy, including those on James.1 It became clear through that study that the impact of ideology on philosophy changed over the course of Soviet history. In the early Cold War years, for example, studies of James and pragmatism were dominated by ideological concerns, and they had a clear "know the enemy" character. In their introduction Grossman and Rischin cite as an example Yuri K. Melvil's 1957 book American Pragmatisms and they are accurate in doing so.2 They also

justifiably cite A.S. Bogomolov's influential Anglo-American Bourgeois Philosophy in the Epoch of Imperialism, published in 1964.3The title of the latter clearly enough indicates its ideological character.

The editors, however, draw two common but nonetheless mistaken inferences from the observation that in these two texts scholarship is prostituted to ideology. First, they seem to infer that there is nothing of philosophical or

generally intellectual interest or value in them, and second, they infer, or leave it to the reader to infer, that such a dominance of ideology pervaded the entire Soviet era. There is indeed philosophically interesting material in these works, if one has the patience to look for it. More importantly, the fact is that Soviet academic culture changed and developed over time. The dominance of ideology in the 1950s and early 1960s faded, gradually, as more reasonable philosophical commentary became more the norm. Grossman and Rischin might have referred to some of the Soviet works that deal with James and pragmatism in general from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, for example by N.S. Yulina and I.N. Sidorov.4 They might also have referred to Melvil's own later remarks on James, especially his last two unpublished essays from 1992, where he explicitly says that his and other "bitter attacks" on James in earlier works were unjustified.5 In fact, with this and much more material ready to hand, surely it would have been possible and worthwhile to include an essay on the development of the treatment of James through the Soviet period. At the very least it would have helped to counteract the still prevalent willingness, perhaps even eagerness, of American scholars to

ignore the subtleties and in many respects the richness of Soviet intellectual life, and it would have plugged a gaping whole in the volume that need not be there.

That is my objection, and having made it I will happily move on to the many worthy aspects of the book. The essays can be divided for purposes of

commentary between those that undertake a comparative study of James and one or another important Russian figure, those which consider the relation between

James' ideas and the Russian intellectual atmosphere, and those that discuss the direct influence of James on the Russian intelligentsia. In the first category there is a comparative study of James and Dostoevsky by Robin Feuer Miller, two

comparative essays on James and Tolstoy, one by Donna Tussing Owen and the

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362 Book Reviews

second by Andrew Wachtel, an essay on James and Maxim Gorky by Barry P. Scherr, and a comparative study of James and the Symbolist poet Viacheslav Ivanov by Gennday Obatnin. In the second category there is a piece by Joan Delaney Grossman on James in relation to the religious and artistic milieu in turn of the century Russia, and another by Edith W. Clowes that discusses James in relation to post-Soviet Russian work. The third category, i.e. essays that discuss James' direct influence, includes Randall A. Poole on the reaction to James within the Russian Psychological Society at the turn of the twentieth century, a piece on the philosopher Lev Shestov's reaction to James by Brian Horowitz, and finally a somewhat speculative essay on the impact of James' approach to religion on the early twentieth century religious thinker Dmitry Konovalov.

First let me make the point, which readers of the Transactions will no doubt already have noticed, that there are no professional philosophers among the contributors to the book. While that may make some uneasy, any concern is unwarranted. First, the authors of the essays are all quite able scholars, and they handle their material, including the discussions of James' ideas, with sensitivity and insight. Second, and in some ways more importantly, those of us with an appreciation for the significance of James' ideas should not fall prey to the narrowly professional prejudice that only a philosopher can do justice to another philosopher's work. James would certainly not have thought so, and there is no good reason for us to reinforce the debilitating professionalization and compartmentalization of intellectual life that the last century has foisted upon us. If there is an issue concerning the adequacy of academic work it should have to do with the competence with which a subject is approached and handled, not with the bona fides of an author. And in this respect all the essays in this volume stand up admirably.

One of the interesting, though perhaps not surprising, features of James' place in Russian culture is that he was interesting almost exclusively for his psychology and his religious sensibilities. There is some discussion among Russian scholars of his pragmatism, but not very much, and what there is tends to be less than appreciative. The noteworthy exception to this is a 1910 essay on James by Lev Lopatin for the Russian Psychological Society in which, according to Poole, "Lopatin called James one of today's greatest thinkers and declared that the future of philosophy belonged to pragmatism." Philosophy, Lopatin thought, was in crisis, and he "sees in pragmatism an exit from its current moribund state" (pp. 133-34). Aside from this positive assessment of James' pragmatism and pragmatism in general, where James was highly regarded it was for his psychology and phenomenology of religion.

The first of James' works to appear in Russian translation was an abridged, textbook version of The Principles of Psychology in 1896, and the next major works to be translated were The Will to Believe in 1904 and Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragmatism in 1910. His work in psychology had an immediate impact on Russian psychologists and philosophers (the two were not

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Book Reviews 363

professionally separated yet), due largely to the fact that they, like James, tended to be struggling with the tension between science and spirituality. They were attracted to James' attempt to retain a commitment to developing psychology as a science without succumbing to the influence of positivism. In James' hands psychology was to encompass the full range of human experience, an approach that had an extremely sympathetic hearing in Russia. The leading Russian psychologists were interested in retaining a meaningful sense of spirit in their understanding of human being, and so James appealed to them. They and many other Russian intellectuals also took religion, and the "spiritual" in its religious sense, quite seriously, and James' obvious attraction to religious experience and his willingness to make a prominent place for it in his psychology resonated well. And in the 1890s Russia, especially Petersburg, was abuzz with new movements in art and aesthetics that took the view that art is the medium with a special capacity, more so than science, to penetrate the mysteries of life and nature. Several of James' ideas, not the least of which was his concept of the "stream of consciousness," appealed directly to the representatives of the new movements in the arts. Several essays in the book address these themes directly, most notably Grossman's "Philosophers, Decadents, and Mystics: James's Russian Readers in the 1890s," and Obatnin's "James and Viacheslav Ivanov at the 'Threshold of Consciousness'."

The appearance of The Will to Believe and Varieties of Religious Experience, translated in 1904 and 1910 respectively, further enhanced James' standing among mainstream Russian academic and religious thinkers. Among the latter the reception was not universally positive since so much of James' approach to religion was not consistent with Orthodox theology. Nonetheless the more mystically minded, especially among young Russian religious thinkers, could not help but be attracted by, for example, James' discussion of "The Sick Soul" in Varieties. Alexander Etkind's essay "James and Konovalov: The Varieties of Religious Experience and Russian Theology between Revolutions" provides a fascinating account of one such case.

One is struck on reading these essays by the gulf that must have existed between mainstream academics and theologians on the one hand and the more radical socialist intelligentsia on the other. Not surprisingly during the Soviet

period treatment of pre-revolutionary Russian thought tended to emphasize the radical, more or less Marxist side of the Russian intelligentsia, and it is fascinating to learn here more of the mainstream figures and their work. It would appear that on the whole James had little appeal to revolutionary Russian thinkers of the period, and we know that Lenin himself said no more of James than was necessary to dismiss him totally. But there is, apparently, more to this story than one would think. In this respect one of the more interesting of the book's essays is a piece by Barry P. Scherr on James and Gorky, with the intriguing title "Gorky and God-Building." Gorky appears to have been the only figure active in Russian revolutionary circles to have had anything to do with James. He and

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364 Book Reviews

James in fact met twice during Gorky's visits to the US on behalf of Bolshevism. James apparently made no reference in his letters or elsewhere to having met Gorky, but Gorky was impressed enough with him to discuss the meetings later. Though he had more than a few reservations about James' ideas, there does appear to have been something about them that resonated with Gorky. In the mid- 1920s, for example, he acknowledges that he "can accept a kinship with James..." (p. 191). Scherr makes the case that one of the places this kinship appeared, especially during the 1910s, is in the movement within socialist circles referred to generally as "God-Building." This was an attempt by a number of leading socialist thinkers to link socialism and religion. In the end it was cut short by the hostility Lenin and others had toward religion, but one can imagine how James5 own religious sensibilities, his concern with the moral dimension of human life, and his commitment to making something of the "booming, buzzing confusion" might lend itself to a rapprochement between socialism and religion. In any case, it is an interesting illustration of the breadth of James' appeal, if not direct influence, on Russian intellectual life.

To judge by the essay on the post-Soviet situation, Edith W. Clowes' piece on "James and Vocabularies of Post-Soviet Russian Spirituality," there is little direct interest in James among current Russian intellectuals. There are points of contact, as there were between James and Tolstoy, but not much direct influence. Clowes discusses the similarities between certain of James' ideas and those of the contemporary Russian writers Andrei Bitov, Mikhail Epstein and Petr Gurevich, and interestingly enough it is James' religious sensibilities that provide the richest points for comparison. This is not surprising, since there has in general been a resurgence of religious thought in post-Soviet Russia that manifests itself in many ways. There is an increased interest in pre-revolutionary religious thinkers, there is a number of currently active philosophers, psychologists and others with an interest in religion and "inter-religious dialogue," and there are many others who see a need for religion to provide the values that can fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Soviet era principles and teachings. In such a milieu it is easy to understand how ideas similar to James' might appear and even flourish.

Interestingly, though, there is little interest in James' pragmatism in contemporary Russia. Clowes refers in a footnote to a young philosopher in Saratov working on pragmatism in its classical forms in Peirce, James and Dewey.6 For the most part, though, what interest in pragmatism there is in Russia is in Rorty and "neopragmatism." There was, for example, a symposium on Rorty in St. Petersburg in 1997 the papers from which were published as The Philosophy of Richard Rorty and Postmodernism and the End of the 2ffh Century, and there is an interesting monograph on Rorty by Igor Dzhokhadze published in Moscow in 200 1.7 For interest in more classical pragmatism in Europe, however, one has to look slightly to the west, where in recent years there has been a surge of interest in Poland and Slovakia, and to a slightly lesser extent in

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Book Reviews 365

Germany, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In the end Grossman, Rischin and all the contributors to this volume have

made a valuable contribution to James scholarship and to our understanding of Russian intellectual life, especially at the turn of the twentieth century. The essays in the book will, I am sure, be appreciated by all those with an interest in either.

State University of New York John Ryder

Ryderjo@sysadm.edu

NOTES 1. John Ryder, Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of the

History of American Thought, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999. 2. Yuri K. MelviP, Amerikanskii Pragmatizm, Moskva: Izdatel'stvo

Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1957. 3. A.S. Bogomolv, Angb-Amerikanskaya Bourzhuaznaya Fibsofiya

Epokhi Imperializma, Moskva, "Mysl," 1964. 4. See for example N.S. Yulina, Problema Metafiziki v Amerikaskoi

Filosofa SshA XX Veka, (The Problem of Metaphysics in 20* Century American Philosophy), Moskva, Izdatel'stvo "Nauka," 1978, and I.N. Sidorov, Fibsofiya Deistviya v SshA: Ot Emersona do D'yui, (The Phibsophy of Action in the US: From Emerson to Dewey), Leningrad, Izdatel'stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta.

5. See Ryder, Interpreting America, pp 181-191, and also John Ryder, "Yuri K. Melvil and American Pragmatism," Transactions of the Charles 5. Peirce Society, XXXII, 1996, No. 4, pp. 598-632.

6. The person Clowes refers to is one Vladimir Belov, and she mentions his recent work Obydennoe soznanie i chebvecheskoe bytie (Consciousness of Ordinary Life and Human Being), St. Petersburg, 1997. See Clowes, note 3, p. 222.

7. A.S. Kolesnikov, General Editor, Fibsofiya Richarda Rorti i Postmodernizm Kontsa XX Veka, Sankt-Peterburg, 1997. This collection includes a short

essay on James by A.N. Krasnoshchekov titled "Uil'yam Dzhems v Postmodernistskoi Sisteme Koordinat," ("William James in the Postmodernist Paradigm"), pp 76-78. Igor Dzhokhadze, Neopragmatizm Richarda Rorti, Moskva: Editorial Urss, 2001.

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