Abstract

This article is devoted to understanding the worldview expressed in Vladimir Bibikhin’s Leo Tolstoy’s Diaries. The most important feature of this worldview is its practical nature: Bibikhin focuses on changing one’s view of things instead of trying to develop a doctrine. Practical phenomenology is extremely vulnerable to criticism because of its pre-philosophical nature. Therefore, at this stage, I try to explicate some of the features of this peculiar thought while avoiding trying to find its faults. I draw a connection between Bibikhin’s ontological interpretation of the phenomenon with Heidegger’s concept of detachment (Gelassenheit) as a form of behavior, and illustrate that practical phenomenology turns out to be an ontology of contact. It thematizes the philosopher’s own being and focuses on the problems of the contact made in the “change of view,” in which thought, word, and deed converge. Bibikhin’s practical phenomenology is on the outskirts of modern academic philosophy, gravitating towards understanding philosophy as a way of life, in which the contemplative attitude takes the leading place, paradoxically combining experiment with their perception of “first things,” trust in them, and the ability to describe the indescribable, the “change of view.” This makes practical phenomenology related to the experimental phenomenology of Michel Henry.