Philosophical Reflections on the Changes in Eastern Europe

148 Pages·1998·2.348 MB·English

by  William L. McBride

PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS
ON THE CHANGES IN
EASTERN EUROPE
Philosophy and the Global Context
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Philosophical Reflections on the Changes in Eastern Europe (1 998)
by William L. McBride
PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS
ON THE CHANGES IN
EASTERN EUROPE
William L. McBride
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanlzarn Boulder New York Oxford
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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Copyright O 1999 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McBride, William L.
Philosophical reflections on the changes in Eastern Europe /
William L. McBride.
p. cm.- (Philosophy and the global context)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8476-8797-X (hardcover : alk. paper)-ISBN 0-8476-8798-8
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Europe, Eastem-Politics and government-1989- -Philosophy.
2. Post-communism-Europe, Eastern. 3. Social values-Europe,
Eastern. 4. Social change-Europe, Eastern. I. Title.
JN96.A58M39 1999
947' .0009'0494~12 98-35373
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
@
TM~phaepe r used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Chapter One The Bygone Era
Chapter Two Today
Chapter Three Conversions and Continuities
Chapter Four Theory and Practice: Philosophical
Politicians and Philosophy as Political
Chapter Five Values
Chapter Six The Throne, the Altar, and the Cottage
Chapter Seven Worldviews: From One Materialism to
Another?
Index
About the Author

Acknowledgments
The idea of writing this book first came to me during a visit to Bulgaria
and former Yugoslavia in summer 1990. I owe a debt of gratitude, then,
to the organizers of the Summer School of Varna for having invited me
to speak there, both in that year and in summer 1992. I am also indebted
to the organizers, primarily faculty members of the University of Nik-
SiC, of the special conference entitled "The Meaning of the Changes in
Eastern Europe," which was held in Budva, Montenegro, in May 1991,
just six weeks before Yugoslavia's bloody dissolution began. Thanks
are likewise due to the Hegeler Foundation for supporting my participa-
tion in a conference called "Philosophy and Political Change in Eastern
Europe" that was held in Budapest in March 1992; on the same trip, I
enjoyed the hospitality of the philosophy faculty of the P. J. Safarik
University in PreSov, Slovakia, as it celebrated the four hundredth anni-
versary of the birth of Jan Comenius. The Center for Humanitistic Stud-
ies of Purdue University's School of Liberal Arts awarded me a facili-
tating grant for fall 1993. My opportunity to speak and to exchange
ideas at the Institute for Philosophical Research of the Bulgarian Acad-
emy of Sciences, Sofia, at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski; at the
Democratic Center, Belgrade; and at the University of MiskolC, Hun-
gary, in spring 1995, was abetted by a welcome travel grant from IREX
(International Research and Exchanges Board). The Citizen Ambassa-
dor Program asked me to serve as group leader of a philosophy delega-
tion to Russia and Hungary in fall 1995. Both the University of Zagreb
and the Centre Eidos in Saint Petersburg, Russia, as well as Sofia Uni-
versity once again, hosted me in spring 1996. In spring 1997 I was
an invitee of the American Cultural Center in Sofia, of the American
University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, which sponsored a conference
called "Civil Society in South East Europe: Philosophical and Ethical
Perspectives," which I keynoted, and of the University of Eodi, Poland,
where I spent a delightful and instructive week. The second phase of
. ..
vlll Acknowledgments
the civil society conference was held at Rochester Institute of Technol-
ogy in September 1997, and there I read a version of one chapter of the
present book. I returned to Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski for
the fall 1997 term, where I held a Fulbright lectureship. During that
period, I was also a guest of the Vernadsky Foundation for a conference,
held in Dubna, on the prospects of Russia in the third millennium, as
well as of the Institute of Philosophy of the Serbian Academy of Sci-
ence, Belgrade, and once again of the American University in Bulgaria,
Blagoevgrad; on both of the latter occasions, I also read versions of
chapters of this book, the manuscript of which I completed while in
Sofia. Finally, I returned to Sofia in April 1998 to give a public lecture
summarizing some of its main points. To all of those who were respon-
sible for these various invitations and the various kinds of support con-
nected with them, my heartfelt thanks!
Many of these individuals are included in the following, no doubt
incomplete, list of people to whom I am especially grateful for conver-
sations andlor personal encouragement: Tatiana Batouleva (Sofia), Jo-
seph Bien (Missouri), Elizabeth Bowman (New York), Joseph Catalano
(New York), Alexander Chumakov (Moscow), Lilyana Deyanova
(Sofia), Maria Dimitrova (Sofia), Nelly Dobreva (Sofia), Berta Dragi-
CeviC (Dubrovnik), David Durst (Blagoevgrad), Istvan FehCr (Buda-
pest), Gvozden Flego (Zagreb), Dane Gordon (Rochester), Vladimir
Gradev (Sofia), Alexander Gungov (Sofia), Emilia Ivanova (Sofia), Ali-
son Jaggar (Colorado), Andrzej Kaniowski (todi), Kasia Kaniowski
(t6di ), Serge Konyaev (Moscow), Dragoljub Midunovid (Belgrade),
Natalija MiCunoviC (Belgrade, former Purdue graduate student), Liu-
bava Moreva (Saint Petersburg), J. Christoph Nyiri (Budapest), Lazar
Popov (Sofia), Asija Prohid (Paris), Eleonora Prohid (Belgrade and Sar-
ajevo), GCrard Raulet (Paris), Yvanka Raynova (Sofia and Vienna),
Tom Rockmore (Pittsburgh), Svetozar Stojanovid (Belgrade), and Rob-
ert Stone (New York).
I am also grateful to my Purdue colleagues for their support. I could
name many, but will single out only a few for special mention: Philoso-
phy Department Head Rodney Bertolet, Edith Clowes (foreign lan-
guages and literatures), Leonard Hams, Lewis Gordon (now at Brown),
Martin Beck MatuStik, and Dean Margaret Moan Rowe, together with
the philosophy department's peerless administrative assistant, Pamela
Connelly, and a number of past and present graduate students, espe-
cially (in terms of discussions helpful for this book) Jeffrey Paris.
Finally, special recognition goes to the constant inspiration provided
by my wife, Angela Barron McBride, and by our two children, Cather-
ine McBride Chang and Kara Angela McBride.
Introduction
The collapse of an entire way of life that occurred in Eastern and Cen-
tral Europe in, for the most part, late 1989 and 1990 must rank as one
of the most astonishing events in the astonishing, often tragically aston-
ishing, century that we shall soon be leaving.' Aristotle's often cited
claim that all philosophy begins in wonder merits citation once more:
If these events amaze us, as I think they should, then they are worthy
of philosophical reflection. It was with this conviction that I began plan-
ning the present book some seven years ago.
My motivations for doing so were not just abstractly theoretical and
detached. There were at least two other considerations. First, all of the
regimes and hegemonic political parties that fell from power during
these events claimed adherence to some version or other of Marxism.
The philosophy of Marx-incomplete and riddled with problems of in-
terpretation as we find it, and as thousands of books and hundreds of
thousands of essays have discussed it-is one that I had studied in some
detail and for which I had developed considerable sympathy in my early
professional years.2 That sympathy did not desert me. I never failed to
distinguish between Marx's philosophy and official Marxist-Leninist
ideology and practice, regarding the latter as in many respects a perver-
sion of the former. But it cannot be said to have been so in all respects,
of course, and then things become complicated. Some of these compli-
cations will be explored in the course of this book. But at any rate it
became clear that, perverse as it might have seemed, the sudden banish-
ment of the "perversions" of Marxism to the attic of history had re-
sulted, very soon after the events of 1989-1990, in a considerable loss
of interest in Marxism itself. And this development-an unhappy one,
as I saw it-motivated me at least to try to understand its historical
logic.
The other consideration was, from the start, personal. Although I
share Aristotle's belief that "wonder" can be generated among a num-