“The Invisible Community” of Vladimir Bibikhin

Abstract

This article discusses several difficulties that the researcher of Vladimir Bibikhin's work inevitably faces. A number of these complications are related to the “external” definition of the direction of Vladimir Bibikhin's thought. In this regard, two sets of questions arise: 1) the attitude of Vladimir Bibikhin to the official late Soviet line of philosophy; 2) the problem of describing that “invisible community” of contemporaries who, even if they cannot be called like-minded people in the strict sense, nevertheless formed that single context that allowed not to feel creative isolation. At the same time, it is not so much about the “influence” understood in the strict sense (which undoubtedly took place) but about creating a kind of “atmosphere”, i.e. background that allows each of the participants in this community to develop their ideas. The disclosure of the last set of questions moves towards the consideration of the topic of attitude to modernity and its approval through their creative searches. Another series of difficulties relates to the “internal” demarcation and definition of Bibikhin's work. On the one hand, purely chronologically, we can talk about his work's pre-lecture and lecture periods. The article proposes considering the first period as a statement of accomplices, interlocutors of that horizon of thought, which will receive thematic disclosure in the second period. On the other hand, the very thematic diversity of the author's courses, if considered in chronological order, points us to the author's own unified way of thought as a philosopher.