Interview

Lesley Chamberlain

Lesley Chamberlain is the author of Motherland, a book about the history of Russian philosophy from the 19th century onwards, and has another book on the subject coming out soon. Rick Lewis asked her about her books and about Russia’s philosophical past.

What motivated you to write a book on the history of Russian philosophy?

I came to Russian philosophy via German literature, when I was fired by the use Thomas Mann made of the ‘Russian’ element. That led to an interest in the Russian intellectual tradition in its own right. Tracing the German philosophical sources for characteristic Russian attitudes and the metamorphosis of German aesthetic idealism in Russia opened up a whole field in the history of ideas. But I’d like to distinguish between ‘philosophy’ and ‘thought’ in the Russian context. For the best part of two centuries the subject studied in Russia and the West was ‘Russian social and political thought’, which effectively meant the utilitarian and egalitarian, activist tradition leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution.

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