Teodor Oizerman

Theodor Iliich Oizerman, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Date and Place of Birth

Born May 1 (14 n.s.), 1914 in Petroverovka village, Tiraspol uyezd, Kherson Governorate (Russian Impire).

Education

• Graduated from Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History, Faculty of Philosophy, in 1938.
• Post-graduate studies: Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History, department History of Philosophy (1939–1941).

• PhD in Philosophy (1941). PhD Thesis: «Marxist-Leninist theory about transformation from necessity into freedom» (Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History).
• DSc in Philosophy (1951). DSc Thesis: «Development of the Marxist theory on the experience of revolutions of 1848» (Lomonosov Moscow State University).

• Full Member of the USSR/Russian Academy of Sciences (1981);
• Full Member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (since 1993: Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities /Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften);
• Member of the International Institute of Philosophy (Paris, France);
• Honorary Doctor (honoris causa) of Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (1981).
• Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1966);
• Professor (1953).

List of Publications

BOOKS

• Ambivalence of the Philosophy. Moscow: Kanon+Reabilitatiia, 2011. – 400 pages.  
  
• The Birth of Marxism. Moscow: Kanon+Reabilitatiia, 2011. – 600 pages.  
  

The scientific analysis of Marxism, free of its ideological purposes, beyond doubt shows that the main thing in this doctrine (however impossible this may seem at the first glance) is not the proof of the necessity of abolishing of private property of the means of production but the substantiation of both the possibility and the necessity of elimination of poverty and the manysided development of the human abilities and needs by means of radical reconstruction of the society – no matter whether this process takes place in a revolutionary or in evolutionary way.

The real humanism of Marxism is not an ideology but a historically developing awareness of the essential solidarity of all the peaples of our planet without any exception. It is some conscientious, moral awareness, independent of any ideological preferences – awareness of the fact that real humaneness is gradually becoming and in course of time will surely become an attribute of the humanity despite the numerous counterstands challenging it. The scientific content of Marxism is a theoretical justification of the humanistic worldview without which the scientific-technological or any other kind of social progress is meaningless.

• Meta-Philosophy: The Theory of the Historical Process in Philosophy. Moscow: Kanon+Reabilitatiia, 2009. – 440 pages.  

The antinomies into which philosophy falls, the crises that rock it, the retreats and withdrawals, the following of the beaten path (including the errors of the past), the rejection of real philosophical discoveries in favor of fallacies long taken for truth – do just these characterize philosophy? Philosophy is the spiritual image of mankind, and its achievements and mistakes constitute the most vital content of man's intellectual biography.

• Kant and Hegel: A Comparative Study. Moscow: Kanon+Reabilitatiia, 2008. – 520 pages.  
• The Problems. The Socio-Political and Philosophical Essays. Moscow: Perspectiva, 2006. – 653 pages.
• Justification of Revisionism. Moscow: Kanon+Reabilitatiia, 2005. – 688 pages.   
• Marxism and Utopism. Moscow: Progress-Tradition, 2003. – 568 pages.   

Bernstein's articles in «Die Neue Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie», later published as a book «Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie», caused indignation among social-democratic party leaders both in Germany and in other European countries. Not all of them were orthodox Marxists, but all of them couldn't accept the fact that their respectable college had set to critical analysis of some theoretical propositions of Marxism which had real political meaning. Being the member of the social-democratic party Bernstein was subject to severe criticism not only in Germany. George Plekhanov and Vladimir Lenin, russian Marxists in emigration, declared «bernsteinianism» to be the bitterest enemy of Marxism, the traitor of the interests of the worse than a adherent of a different faith.

So the bigaboo of revisionism appeared. Paradoxically the followers of scientific socialism in this way stepped back from the main imperatives of scientific reserch, according to which principles are not the speculative postulates but fundamental theoretical generalizations of empirical data. These generalisations don't remain unchangeable, but are subject to further development and often to revision or even more to negation.

• Philosophy as A History of Philosophy. Sanct-Petersburg: Aletheia, 1999. – 447 pages.
• Theory of knowledge by Kant. Moscow.: Nauka, 1991. – 200 pages. (with I.S.Narsky).

in English, German, and other languages

• Philosophie auf dem Wege zur Wissenschaft. Berlin, 1989. 
• The Main Trends in Philosophy. A Theoretical Analysis of the History of Philosophy. Translated by H. Campbell Creighton, M.A. (Oxon). Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1988. – 324 pages. – transl. into Persian as "مسايل تاريخ فلسفه".

This monograph is a theoretical investigation of the process of the history of philosophy. The author examines the polarisation of philosophical systems in their main trends, viz., the materialist and idealist. He traces the struggle between materialism and idealism on the basis of the dialectical-materialist conception of the history of philosophy, and brings out the scientific and cultural-historical significance of dialectical materialism in present-day world philosophical thought.

• Principles of the Theory of the Historical Process in Philosophy / by T. Oizermann and A. Bogomolov. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987. – 348 pages.
• Dialectical Materialism and the History of Philosophy: Essays on the History of Philosophy. Translated by Dmitri Beliavsky. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982. – 287 pages. First published in Russian as «Диалектический материализм и история философии (историко-философские очерки)» (in Spanish as: El materialismo dialectico у la historia de la filosofia. Havana, 1984).
• The Making of the Marxist Philosophy. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981. – 469 pages.
• Problems of the History of Philosophy, 1974. First published in Russian as: Проблемы историко-философской науки. Moscow, 1962 (in French as Théodore Oizerman. Problèmes d'Histoire de la Philosophie, 1973; in Turkish as: Felsefe Tarihinin Sorunları. Istanbul, 1988. 1998). 
• Der junge Marx im ideologischen Kampf der Gegenwart. Frankfurt am Main, 1972.
• Die Enstehung der marxistischen Philosophie. Berlin, 1965. 1980.
• Entfremdung als historische Kategorie. Berlin, 1966.
• Zur Geschichte der vormarxistischen Philosophie. Berlin, 1963.

• Zum Sinn der Frage: was ist Philosophie // Das Geheimnis der Wirklichkeit. Kurt Hübner zum 90. Geburtstag / Hrsg. Volker Kapp und Werner Theobald. Kiel, 2011.
• Kant's categoracal imperative as a subject of critical analysis // Kantovsky sbornik. Selected articles 2008–2009. Kaliningrad, 2011.
• Essay on the Future of Philosophy // News and Views. 2009. № 1.
• On the Russian Nation and Science as the Chief Productive Force // Russian Studies in Philosophy. 2009. Vol. 47. № 4. P. 22–25.
• Paradoxes in the Communist Theory of Marxism // Diogenes. 2009. № 222–223. Vol. 56. Issues 2–3. P. 37–50. 
• The Institute of Philosophy is the Country's Central Philosophical Establishment // Russian Studies in Philosophy. 2009. Vol. 48. № 1 (Summer 2009). P. 26–40.
• The Institute of Philosophy is the Country’s Central Philosophical Establishment // Russian Social Science Review. 2009. № 6 (50). P. 54–68.
• Introduction to Marxism and Utopianism // Russian Studies in Philosophy. 2005. Vol. 44. № 2. P. 5–23.
• The Marxist concept of socialism and real socialism // Social Sciences. 2003. № 1 (34). P. 33–45.
• Is there Liberalism only the Ideology? // Social Sciences. 2003. № 4.
• Marxism and Utopianism // Russian Studies in Philosophy. 2001. Vol. 39. № 4. P. 54–79.
• Towards a Characterization of I. Kant's transcendental Idealism // Russian Studies in Philosophy. 1999. Vol. 38. № 3. P. 7–22. Abstract
  
• I. Kant's Doctrine of the «Things in Themselves» as Noumena // Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 1981. Vol. 41. № 3. P. 333–350. (available in pdf format)

• Adelmann F. J. Rev.: The Main Trends in Philosophy, by T.I.Oizerman (transl. H. Campbell Creighton) // Studies in Soviet Thought. Vol. 41. No. 2 (Mar., 1991). P. 155–157.
• Nemeth Th. Rev .: The Making of the Marxist Philosophy, by T.I.Oizerman // Studies in Soviet Thought. Vol. 25. No. 3 (Apr., 1983). P. 207–209.

Awards

• Silver Medal «For Contribution in the Development of Philosophy» (2009);
• Award «Triumph-Science» in the nomination «Humanities» (2008);
• The USSR State Prize for the monograph «The Making of the Marxist Philosophy» (1983);
• The Plekhanov Prize under the decision of the USSR Academy of Sciences for the monograph «The Main Trends in Philosophy» (1979);
• Laureate of Lomonosov Αward (1965).

• Russian page: https://iphras.ru/oizerman.htm