The letters of S. I. Hessen and I. I. Lapshin, two Russian Neo-Kantian philosophers, were written in the early post-war years. These letters bear witness to the later period in the life and work of their authors, a period of hardship, tragic losses and hopes. Both philosophers were deeply embedded in the intellectual landscape of Russian emigration. They were also known and valued by their peers in the countries that gave them refuge, Poland and Czechoslovakia, where they not only published their works, but also taught young scholars. Hessen, being considerably younger than Lapshin, continued teaching and actively publishing after the war, including outside Poland. Lapshin in Czechoslovakia was less in demand, but continued preparing his works for publication. The reflections of the two authors shed light on the idea content of their later works, which is particularly valuable in reconstructing the conception of the texts which were not completed at the time of their death and have survived only in the shape of plans and rough notes. It is also interesting that in their letters Hessen and especially Lapshin expound the Kantian element of their philosophical views as well as sharing their impressions of the development of philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century.
The conceptualization of ideological influences in philosophy is usually unidirectional: from tradition-source to tradition-recipient. The history of Russian neo-Kantianism demonstrates other possibilities for conceptualizing philosophical reception: documenting the facts of reverse influence forces us to look for new ways of interpreting this philosophical movement. The uniqueness of the historical situation, which cannot be ignored when analyzing the fate of Russian Neo-Kantianism, makes it necessary for the historian of ideas to turn to the study of intellectual biographies, professional connections, and in general the “sphere of conversation” in which the transformation of the ideological horizon took place. The emigration of intellectuals from Russia in the late 1910s and early 1920s, termed the “philosophers’ ships”, not only provoked unprecedented existential shifts in individual personal trajectories, but also gave rise to new intellectual phenomena, conceptual networks and cultural-institutional clusters. Reconstructing the intellectual biographies of two Russian thinkers, Simon Kaplan and Jacob Klein, whose philosophical development took place in the symbolic Marburg, we uncover difficult problems of self-identity, intellectual relevance, and creative fulfillment in emigration. Kaplan, fascinated by the philosophy of religion of Hermann Cohen, head of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, found himself in demand in the United States in the innovative “Great Books” educational program as an expert on Kant and the Bible and as the translator of Cohen’s major work on the philosophy of religion into English. Klein brought to the New World a reputation as an expert in the history of ancient mathematics and Renaissance science, revealed himself as an expert in Plato’s philosophy and an excellent organizer of the educational process, and contemporary research interest turns to him as a phenomenologist.
The reception of Kant’s philosophy in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century was focused mainly on religious and ethical issues, although it did not exclude theoretical and cognitive questions. The search for textbooks that would adequately and at the same time comprehensibly introduce students and the educated public to the basic ideas of the Kantian philosophical system led two professors at Kazan University, Alexander S. Loubkin and Petr S. Kondyrev, to the textbook on philosophy for beginners by Friedrich Wilhelm Daniel Snell, the German Kantian philosopher, pedagogue and populariser. The work they did in preparing the Russian edition of that textbook was not confined to translation, although the translation of the philosophical text itself required scrupulous terminological work, since there were as yet no equivalents for many philosophical terms in Russian. Each of the translators provided parts of the textbook with their own explanations and additions, with the parts on moral philosophy and philosophy of religion attracting the most interest and polemical objections. Loubkin’s criticism of Snell and thus in most cases of Kant concerns such key concepts and provisions of Kantian practical philosophy as practical reason, the end of moral acts, the distinction between thing and person, the categorical imperative, the feeling of respect for the moral law and others. The real stumbling block for Loubkin was Kant’s solution to the problem of the relation between religion and morality and his choice of a foundation for morality. Loubkin suggests that the moral is grounded in religion and proposes as the criterion of morality the correspondence of an act to the Divine Will.
At the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century there is a widespread renewal of interest in the “Project Enlightenment” and its relevance for the present day. The subject has rarely been touched upon in Russia. However, the concept “enlightenment” can be found in Russian present-day public discourse. Here the different Russian traditions in the interpretation of enlightenment are taken up once more. The changes and modifications of the concept “enlightenment” in Russian intellectual history lead to an understanding of the discourse of enlightenment in contemporary Russia. First of all, I sketch the most significant stages in the history of the concept of enlightenment in Russia. Important in this context is an anti-enlightenment campaign initiated and supported by the Tsar and the Church which claimed the concept of enlightenment as its own. A continuation of this movement can be found in some areas of contemporary public discourse which are essentially controlled by representatives of the Church. On the other hand, one finds in the media popular presentations of up-to-date scientific research where the principles of modern rationality and their importance for a culture of humanity are excluded. I show also the place of Kant’s philosophy in this tradition and conclude with a thesis concerning the prospects of the “Project Enlightenment” in Russia today.
Abstract Clinical trials have proven oncolytic virotherapy to be safe but not effective. We have shown that oncolytic viruses (OV) injected into intracranial gliomas established in rodents are rapidly cleared, and this is associated with up-regulation of markers (CD68 and CD163) of cells of monocytic lineage (monocytes/microglia/macrophages). However, it is unclear whether these cells directly impede intratumoral persistence of OV through phagocytosis and whether they infiltrate the tumor from the blood or the brain parenchyma. To investigate this, we depleted phagocytes with clodronate liposomes (CL) in vivo through systemic delivery and ex vivo in brain slice models with gliomas. Interestingly, systemic CL depleted over 80% of peripheral CD163+ macrophages in animal spleen and peripheral blood, thereby decreasing intratumoral infiltration of these cells, but CD68+ cells were unchanged. Intratumoral viral titers increased 5-fold. In contrast, ex vivo CL depleted only CD68+ cells from brain slices, and intratumoral viral titers increased 10-fold. These data indicate that phagocytosis by both peripheral CD163+ and brain-resident CD68+ cells infiltrating tumor directly affects viral clearance from tumor. Thus, improved therapeutic efficacy may require modulation of these innate immune cells. In support of this new therapeutic paradigm, we observed intratumoral up-regulation of CD68+ and CD163+ cells following treatment with OV in a patient with glioblastoma. [Cancer Res 2007;67(19):9398–406]
SapC-DOPS is a novel nanotherapeutic that has been shown to target and induce cell death in a variety of cancers, including glioblastoma (GBM). GBM is a primary brain tumor known to frequently demonstrate resistance to apoptosis-inducing therapeutics. Here we explore the mode of action for SapC-DOPS in GBM, a treatment being developed by Bexion Pharmaceuticals for clinical testing in patients. SapC-DOPS treatment was observed to induce lysosomal dysfunction of GBM cells characterized by decreased glycosylation of LAMP1 and altered proteolytic processing of cathepsin D independent of apoptosis and autophagic cell death. We observed that SapC-DOPS induced lysosomal membrane permeability (LMP) as shown by LysoTracker Red and Acridine Orange staining along with an increase of sphingosine, a known inducer of LMP. Additionally, SapC-DOPS displayed strong synergistic interactions with the apoptosis-inducing agent TMZ. Collectively our data suggest that SapC-DOPS induces lysosomal cell death in GBM cells, providing a new approach for treating tumors resistant to traditional apoptosis-inducing agents.
