Abstract

The object of this research is the worldview of the famous pre-revolutionary publicist, thinker and public figure Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov. The subject of the study is the problem of the influence of positivism on M. O. Menshikov's system of views on the essence and nature of religion. The current research talks about the instability of his religious views, sometimes about their inconsistency at different stages of his life. There is also a significant influence on Menshikov's worldview of positivism, one of the most important cultural trends of the XIX century. However, this question does not have a detailed consideration: what exactly did this influence manifest itself in, how absolute was it. Accordingly, the purpose of our study is to examine Menshikov's views on religion from the point of view of their ideological origins in positivism. The research material is Menshikov's early diary entries, which have not been published at the moment and have not been studied in a similar context. The methodological base of the research includes both general scientific (analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, causal, etc.) and private scientific methods (hermeneutical, biographical and comparative historical analysis). Their totality is aimed at an objective study of the continuity of ideas, taking into account Menshikov's biography and the historical context in which Menshikov's personal arguments were written. The scientific novelty of the research lies in identifying and describing the direct influence of positivism on Menshikov's worldview in general and on his idea of religion in particular. A comparison of the semantic structures of the thinker's statements about religion with the key principles of the positivists of the 19th century allows us to conclude that the continuity of the ideas of positivism is partial. His understanding of religion is based on the binary intersection of positivist and rationalistic principles. On the one hand, Menshikov, like many positivists, refuses a metaphysical understanding of the essence of religion. He calls for rechecking her system of views with empirical and exact sciences. But on the other hand, it leaves the deductive method of decisive importance in essential cognition. Also, the principle of evolutionism is accompanied by the rejection of agnosticism, which was then characteristic of positivist philosophy. This puts his views on this issue in opposition to positivism.