Faith according to Alexander I. Vvedensky

The article is an introduction to the Polish translation of Alexander I. Vvedensky’s work entitled On the Kinds of Faith with Reference to Knowledge. It contains some biographical information, a short interpretation and translator’s remarks. The article discusses the ideas of Vvedensky, who is identified with Russian academic neo-Kantianism at the turn of the century. His interpretation of Kant was influential for a lot of students at St. Petersburg University. There were many Russian prospective outstanding thinkers among participants of his lectures: Nikolai O. Lossky, Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Ivan I. Lapshin and Semyon L. Frank, for example. Vvedensky was a continuator of Kant’s tradition. Since the Russian philosopher has creatively developed and modified Kantian tradition, he was a reviver of Kantianism, neo-Kantian in this sense, however his neo-Kantianism was different from the philosophical thought of the Marburg School and the Baden School. The Russian philosopher aimed to construct a scientific worldview which sufficed two fundamental rules of science, i.e. systematicity and criticism. The question about the meaning of life plays a fundamental role in making a worldview. Although metaphysical knowledge is, of course, impossible, metaphysical hypotheses can be brought into a worldview based on faith. Metaphysics as morally justified faith is a part of a worldview. We do not have any metaphysical sense different from the moral sense. Vvedensky attributes the gnoseological status to the metaphysical (moral) sense. Gnoseology is the most important discipline of philosophy. Since the theory of the limits of knowledge is based on logic itself, Vvedensky gives this theory a name of “Logism”. The philosopher distinguishes between Russian “Logism” and foreign proofs of impossibility of realization of metaphysical knowledge, i.e. French Positivism, British Empiricism and German Criticism.