Tikhonova S.V., Melnichuk D.V. The Disciplinary Status of Social Philosophy in Russia and the West: Different Academic Logics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/lp.jvolsu.2026.2.4
Sophia V. Tikhonova
Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy), Doctor of Sciences (Jurisprudence), Professor, Department of Theoretical and Social Philosophy, Saratov State University
Astrakhanskaya St, 83, 410012 Saratov, Russian Federation
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https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2487-3925
Dmitry V. Melnichuk
Candidate of Sciences (Physics and Mathematics), Associate Professor, Department of Function Theory and Stochastic Analysis, Saratov State University
Astrakhanskaya St, 83, 410012 Saratov, Russian Federation
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6689-8904
Abstract. The article examines the disciplinary status of social philosophy in Russia and in Western academic contexts using a comparative approach. The authors treat social philosophy as an indicator of transformations in philosophical knowledge and show how different academic logics shape its institutional position, subject boundaries, and modes of scholarly legitimation. In the Russian tradition, social philosophy has developed as an autonomous philosophical discipline with a stable subject matter, a specific methodological horizon, and an extensive system of educational and academic certification. The authors trace its development in the post-Soviet period, analyze the strategy of de-ideologizing the philosophical legacy of dialectical and historical materialism, and demonstrate how reforms of the nomenclature of academic specialties contributed to clarifying and strengthening the disciplinary identity of social philosophy. In Western academic contexts, social philosophy is not institutionalized as an autonomous discipline. The authors show that social-philosophical problematics are distributed among sociology, social theory, political philosophy, and critical studies, as a result of which social philosophy functions as a distributed form of intellectual practice. An analysis of interdisciplinary competition, based on Richard Kilminster’s concept of the “sociological revolution” as interpreted by Andrew Scott, reveals the connection between changes in the role of philosophy and transformations in the institutional and epistemological conditions of knowledge production in Western social theory. The article also addresses the impact of digitalization and the hybridization of scientific knowledge on the erosion of disciplinary boundaries and the reconfiguration of the academic identity of philosophy. In conclusion, the authors argue that the differences between the Russian and Western models of social philosophy reflect not a hierarchy of scholarly significance, but different strategies for adapting philosophical knowledge to the conditions of interdisciplinarity and digital society. Funding. This research was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 25-28-03014, https://rscf.ru/project/25-28-03014/.
Key words: social philosophy, disciplinary status, academic logics, interdisciplinarity, philosophy of social sciences, digital society, institutionalization of knowledge, social theory.
Citation. Tikhonova S.V., Melnichuk D.V. The Disciplinary Status of Social Philosophy in Russia and the West: Different Academic Logics. Logos et Praxis, 2026, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 35-44. (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/lp.jvolsu.2026.2.4
The Disciplinary Status of Social Philosophy in Russia and the West: Different Academic Logics © 2026 by Tikhonova S.V., Melnichuk D.V. is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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