(i.e. speculation regarding the future). Neither qua fact nor qua methodology is the process elucidated and firmly established. Lavrov should at least have paid due attention to the problems of historical method formulated by Mill, who built here upon a Comtist foundation—to say nothing of the discussion of the wider problems of the philosophy of history.
I may content myself therefore, in this study, with indicating what were the problems with which Lavrov busied himself, for the results of his investigations were of comparatively little moment. It was important in relation to Russian conditions that Lavrov should have occupied, nay tormented, his mind with the philosophical problems of his day. He did good service here, and showed his strength by his avoidance in the theoretical field of the materialism to which his contemporaries succumbed; but his influence in this direction was negative rather than positive. Lavrov's subjectivism would have been of considerable importance in the development of Russian thought had he been able to state precisely the boundaries and the range of subjectivism, and had he been able to present an epistemological criticism of his objectivist Russian contemporaries and predecessors. He failed, too, to assume a definite position in relation to contemporary adversaries of materialism. He gave special approval to Jurkevič, the opponent of Černyševskii, but characterised him by the vague epithet of "dialectician."[1] Moreover his polemic against Pisarev and Antonovič, against the nihilists and their radical opponents, dealt only with their depreciation of morality and their contempt for the idea of duty, for a usual the metaphysical and epistemological problem was far too cursorily considered.
To express the matter concisely, the essence of Lavrov's philosophic weakness lies in his failure to take a profounder view of the relationships between Kant and Comte. Kant's criticism was quite unhistorical; Comte's positivism was thoroughly historical, but quite uncritical; Comte, Hegel, Darwin, and Spencer were the spokesmen of contemporary historism, of evolutionism. Now how is Kant's criticism to be associated with this historism and evolutionism? Can criticism and historism be harmonised, and if so, how? German philosophy is still occupied with these questions to-day, and
- ↑ Lavrov thought well also of Giljarov-Platonov, the theologian, speaking of him and of Jurkevič as "our ablest contemporary dialecticians."
