Andrei Bryantsev is a Russian philosopher, an objective idealist, a state adviser of the XVIII century. One of the first to introduce the Russian public to Kant's philosophy. He referred to the universal laws of nature - Leibniz's law of continuity, the law of "frugality", as well as the law of conservation of the amount of matter and forces in nature.
The childhood and youth of Andrei Bryantsev
Andrei Mikhailovich Bryantsev was born on January 1, 1749 in the family of a church servant-clerk in the Odigitrievskaya desert near Vologda. Now, at this place in the Vologda Oblast monastery, remains of pre-revolutionary bricks are found inside the earthen rampart.
Andrey Bryantsev was orphaned early. He was brought up in the Vologda Theological Seminary. The love of learning and the desire for further improvement prompted him to leave his homeland, and without graduating from the Vologda Theological Seminary, having a few cents in his pocket, he went on foot to Moscow and entered the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy on the course of theology and philosophical sciences. He also did not finish it, refusing to get a haircut as a monk.
In 1770, giving up his spiritual career, Bryantsev became a student at Moscow University, a student, and later associate professor D.S. Anichkov and S.E. Desnitsky. In addition to the philosophical course, he studied the exact sciences, jurisprudence and foreign languages.
Philosopher career
In 1787, at the end of the university course, Andrei Bryantsev became a master of philosophy at Moscow University. Continuing education. Having defended his dissertation for the degree of Master of Philosophy "On the criteria of truth", he was awarded the scientific degree of Master of Philosophy and Free Sciences.
In 1779, Bryantsev was identified as a teacher of Latin and Greek at a university gymnasium.
In 1789, after the death of D.S. Anichkov, he was promoted to extraordinary professor.
From 1791 to 1795 he served as a university censor. Since 1795 - becomes an ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics at Moscow University. In this position remained until the end of his life. His master's thesis "De criterio veritatis" (1787) remained unreleased.
From 1804 to 1806 he was the director of the Pedagogical Institute. In addition, Andrei Bryantsev performed a number of other duties - the dean of the ethical and political department of the university, the director of the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, the censor at the university printing house, a member of the school committee, the dean of the ethical and political department, etc.
In the years 1817-1821. Adjunct under Bryantsev was Davydov, who was primarily engaged in the teaching of philosophical disciplines. Andrey Bryantsev did not create his own original system. At the beginning of his career, he mainly adhered to the X. Wolf system, which he then supplemented with some elements of Kantianism, and he relied not on the work of I. Kant, but on the works of one of his followers - F.V. D. Snell.
Creativity of the philosophy of Bryantsev
According to Andrey Bryantsev, nature, on the one hand, is a physical whole, mechanically constructed body, subject to the law of causality. On the other hand, it is a “moral whole”, in the three kingdoms of which the expediency established by God prevails. All things are not only “conjugated” in time and space by a “physical connection”, where the present is determined by the past and contains the reason for the future, but they are also connected through goals (“end causes”) prescribed by the creator.
Andrey Bryantsev attributed Leibniz's law of continuity, the law of "thrift" to the universal laws of nature, as well as the law of conservation of the amount of matter and forces in nature, which he formulated based on the ideas of Descartes, Bilfinger, Mendelssohn.
Bryantsev was one of the first to introduce the Russian public to Kant's philosophical views.
Bryantsev did not create his own original philosophical system and was influenced by German thought: at first he kept to the system of H. Wolf, then moved on to the position of Kantianism. Here the main source for him was the work of the Kantian
Andrei Mikhailovich Bryantsev interpreted the laws of nature in the spirit of causal teleological parallelism. According to Bryantsev, the basis of the universe is a kind of "incomprehensible activity" that animates all its parts.
In general, Bryantsev's philosophy can be described as deism with a touch of mechanism. "The Universe in the thing itself is an immeasurable body, mechanically constructed, and composed of innumerable parts of various sizes and hardness, which are mutually conjugated by the universal law." The philosopher adhered to the theory of many worlds and an infinite variety of forms of organic life, i.e. views for the church consciousness of that time are unacceptable. Bryantsev’s free-thinking was limited to the framework of academic constructions and did not affect his university career.
