Russian Plato vs. Russian Aristotle: Modes of Cultural Appropriation

Abstract

The paper explores the methodological foundations for comparing the phenomena of the “Russian Plato” and the “Russian Aristotle”. The author proposes abandoning the conventional narrative of quantitatively assessing the presence of philosophers in Russian culture or the “significance” of each philosopher in favor of analyzing the various modes of appropriation through which Russian culture incorporated their ideas into its self-definition. A key methodological approach is the distinction between reception as the historically conditioned perception of doctrines, seen in their context, and appropriation as the purposeful, often ahistorical, appropriation of ideas to address the pressing challenges of an appropriating culture. The article centers on commentary, which is viewed not as a secondary genre, but as the primary mechanism of such appropriation, an active form of philosophizing that transforms intuitions into disciplinary languages. Using R. V. Svetlov's keynote article on the “Russian Plato”, it is demonstrated that Plato's legacy, interpreted as a symbolic horizon posing ultimate questions and understood as the “beginning of philosophy”, is shaped within this framework only by the figure of Aristotle, who nevertheless remains in the shadow of the "heroic myth" of Plato. It is argued that this asymmetry is due not to the intrinsic superiority of Platonism, but to the difference in the modes of appropriation: Platonism became a cultural symbol and existential yardstick, while Aristotelianism was appropriated as a methodological and logical toolkit necessary for constructing rational discourses, but lacking a similar symbolic aura. Thus, the “Russian Plato” emerges as the product of a long cultural process of commentary and heroization, while the “Russian Aristotle” emerges as its shadowy methodological foundation. The article concludes that restoring the balance between these two “mirrors” of Russian thought requires an awareness of the commentary nature of the philosophical tradition itself and a transition from a unipolar (Platonic symbolic and spiritual) model of self-description to a bipolar one that takes into account equally the value of both the symbolic horizon and the analytical method.