In Latvia, this question is particularly relevant to the history of philosophy. How should we assess a philosophical culture that developed within an ideological system yet was not entirely reducible to its demands? My conference paper examined changes between the Stalinist period and late socialism, when the possibilities for independent philosophical thinking expanded despite the persistence of formal ideological constraints.
These questions also inform my article, “De-Sovietization as Metanoia: Rewriting the History of Philosophy in Latvia”, published in Studies in East European Thought. Drawing on Boris Groys’s notion of metanoia, I understand de-Sovietization as a gradual intellectual reorientation rather than a complete break with the past. Soviet philosophical traditions were transformed, reinterpreted or selectively forgotten as a new philosophical culture emerged.
The challenge, therefore, lies not simply in establishing what happened during the Soviet period, but in understanding how its intellectual legacies continued to shape philosophy after the regime’s collapse.
The article is a part of the research project “Conversions and Ruptures: Epistemic Strategies in Latvian Philosophy during the Soviet Period (1944–1991)” (No. lzp-2024/1-0650). More about the project: https://www.lka.edu.lv/en/research/research-projects/fundamental-and-applied-research-projects/conversions-and-ruptures-epistemic-strategies-latvian-philosophy/
Read the full blog post on Springer Nature: De-Sovietization of Philosophy | Research Communities by Springer Nature
Did Immanuel Kant ever visit his brother in Latvia? What happened to his brother’s gravestone? And how did a satirical 19th-century text end up catalogued as Kant’s work in the National Library of Latvia? Rather than focusing on Kant’s doctrines, my recent study examines how Kant’s legacy has been preserved, reshaped, and at times deliberately distorted in Latvian intellectual and public life.
In 2024, at the international forum “Reason in Riga”, I returned to a topic previously explored in my monograph on the Tartu School of Personalism (Hiršs 2022). Central to this discussion was Gustav Teichmüller (1832–1888), a key mediator of Kantian philosophy in the Baltic region. Although Teichmüller was a sharp critic of Kant and neo-Kantianism, as a professor at the University of Tartu he nevertheless conducted seminars on Kant’s works and actively engaged with his legacy.
In my presentation at the forum, I mentioned as a curiosity the fact that the catalogue of the National Library of Latvia lists Kant as the author of “A Truthful Account of My Journey to Heaven” (Wahrheitsgetreuer Bericht über meine Reise in den Himmel), a satirical work describing Kant’s fictional journey to heaven and his conversations with ancient Greek philosophers. The work was anonymously published by Teichmüller in 1877. The case later appeared in an exhibition on historical “fake news” at the Deutsches Historisches Museum.
Such curiosities, misattributed texts and legends of Kant’s alleged visits to Latvia, reveal how Kant’s name functions as a form of symbolic capital. By examining library catalogues, media discourse, and persistent legends, this research traces how philosophical authority circulates beyond academic philosophy and acquires new meanings over time.
Read the full blog post on Springer Nature: Kant’s Intellectual Heritage in Latvia | Research Communities by Springer Nature
Hiršs, Andris 2022. Person and Personalism: Enduring the Collapse of Idealism. The First Latvian Philosopher Jēkabs Osis. Rīga: LU Akadēmiskais apgāds.
https://www.google.lv/books/edition/Persona_un_person%C4%81lisms/NdUI0AEACAAJ?hl=lv
Hiršs, Andris (2024). Influence of personalism on Latvian theory up to the early twentieth century: substantiality and panentheism. Studies in East European Thought. doi:10.1007/s11212-024-09678-7
Teichmüller, Gustav 1877. Wahrheitsgetreuer Bericht über meine Reise in den Himmel: verfaßt von Immanuel Kant. Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes.