Soviet Studies in Renaissance Philosophy as a Basis for Developing a New View on History (1960-1980s)

The aim of this article is to show that in the 1960-80s, Soviet researches on Renaissance philosophy elaborated a view on the history of European civilization, according to which the main tendency in European history (since the Renaissance up to now) consists in an ever more complete revealing of man as an absolute and infinite being which realizes its absoluteness by creating culture. The author shows that, although sharing this general perspective on the Renaissance, the different Soviet thinkers evaluate its historical role in disparate ways: Aleksej Losev holds that the Renaissance has produced an individualistic ideology, which has led the European culture to its present-day crisis; on the contrary, Leonid Batkin and Vladimir Bibixin claim that it is precisely because the aims proposed by the Renaissance have not been realized, that we are facing the modern spiritual crisis. [Publishers' text].