Person and society

a view of V. P. Tugarinov

Thomas J. Blakeley

pp. 101-105

in: Studies in East European Thought 28 (2), 1984.

Abstract

We can, in view of what we have said, ask if Tugarinov is doing a sort of structuralism; and, however we answer that question, one will want to know if he is doing something that can succeed, at least better than other moderns who have attempted a similar enterprise.The answer is that Tugarinov is doing a sort of (quasi-Aristotelian) structuralism — at least in the sense of refusing any absolute fixity to history, and of asserting a multi-level poly-directionality to the historical flow — an approach that suffers from most of the weaknesses of other such structuralisms.If Tugarinov succeeds better than other moderns — and we think that he does — this is because he refuses to make of historicism a relativism, maintaining a certain "categorial integrity" that is within history but not historical. In this he identifies with the best in the philosophic tradition; but it is not at all clear how he remains "Marxist".