Appendix A: A Letter from Volgograd

 

                                                                                    Volgograd, December 18, 1993

Dear Mr. Clinton C. Gardner,

Recently I have visited Moscow and made the acquaintance of Mr. Vitaly Makhlin. He gave me your address and I decided to write a letter. After our telephone conversation in July, 1993 I was impatiently waiting for a letter from you, but unfortunately the post is late.

After our telephone conversation I learned much that was new to me about Professor Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. My provincial isolation begins to relax and I know now that many people in my country show interest for the speech thinking.

In November, 1993 a scientific conference “Philosophical Tradition, Its Cultural and Existential Dimensions” took place. It was organized by The Russian University for the Humanities in Moscow. I delivered a lecture “The Overcoming of Metaphysics and the Temporal Thinking of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.” The lecture has received an enthusiastic welcome. As far as I know it was the first detailed presentation of Rosenstock-Huessy's conception in Russia. It seems to me that the seeds must sprout. At the same time I have read your remarkable book “Between East and West.” It impressed me deeply.

I decided to write this letter in order to continue our scientific contacts. Your telephone call was a fortune and a real shock for me. After the decades of the Soviet epoch the foreign countries became for us something unreal.

Thanks to your book and to the conversation with Mr. Vitaly Makhlin I know something about you and now I must say some words about myself. I am a professional philosopher and professor at the Volgograd State University. I am the head of the department of culture and art.

My former interests were connected with the history of the Russian philosophy and with the ideas of existentialism. Now I became the ardent adherent of Rosenstock-Huessy's ideas and I cannot live and think as if nothing has happened. It is interesting that the significance of Rosenstock-Huessy's ideas came to light thanks to the conceptions of the Russian religious philosophy (I mean, of course, my own way of thinking).

Mr. Vitaly Makhlin invited me to take part in the translation of Rosenstock-Huessy's work “Out of Revolution.” May I ask you to send me this book in order that the translation will speed up?

I am afraid of abusing your generosity, but I would be very thankful for every material concerning Rosenstock-Huessy's life and thought. I am also eager to correspond with everybody who devoted himself to the development of Rosenstock-Huessy's philosophical heritage. Would you mind helping me?

With kindest regards, Yours,

Sasha Pigalev

 

Appendix B: An E-Mail from Siberia

 

December 09, 2001

Dear Mr. Gardner,

      We are writing you from Tomsk, Russia. In our city the Center of Social Development “Imya” was founded (this month), which was based on E. Rosenstock-Huessy’s idea of metanomics (“Imya” means “Name” from Russian). This Center gets together different specialists of Tomsk State University and other institution of our city: psychologists, psychotherapists, philosophers, physicians etc.

      The aim of the center’s activity is to create and improve the conditions of people joint living. The Center implements different projects in spheres of social therapy, education and consulting.

      We edit Almanac of metanomical experience “Imya”, which is supposed to include the short (but important) works by ERH, related scholars and texts by contributors of the Center. The first issue of the almanac (from October, 6, 2001) contents “You and Me” and “I Am an Impure Thinker” (translated by I.A. Pigalev).

      We are ready to collaborate with you in translating and popularization works by ERH, also in devising his ideas in social practice (first of all to devise the method of metanomics in application to psychotherapy, psychology, social work and education).

At the 1st -- 2nd of November 2001, the conference “Existential experience and education” was given by the Center. The theme of metanomics was nearly the main on it.

We hope to meet with you for dialogue on authentic language.

Yours sincerely, Lukyanov, Oleg , Center of Social Development “Imya”. 

 

Appendix C: Continuing on the Web

 

      As you’ll see at the beginning of the Notes section below, you can find on this book’s Web site many pictures that illustrate events and people described in the preceding text. That Web site is also a starting place for other related links described below. Its address is:   http://clintgardnervt.googlepages.com .

      I think it’s still dawning on us what an incredible resource the Web is becoming for discovering new ideas—and making the connections which could advance them. Already almost every name and subject in this book’s index can be looked up in cyber space, in about three seconds—by entering it in Google. I’ve checked that time for the Norwich Congregational Church and the St. Sergius Institute in Paris. Rosenstock-Huessy, Solovyov, Berdyaev, and Bakhtin take only two seconds!

      However, vastly more important than instant information is instant communication. If I’m at my computer, it may take you only a few seconds to hear back from me! Just send me comments or questions at: clintgardnervt@gmail.com.

      Then, if you’d like to join a discussion group on this book and related themes, some friends and I have just set one up. To join us, send an e-mail to: beyondbeliefgardner-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Soon I expect you’ll find some lively dialogues there. For example, I hope to instigate a discussion of Eugen and Franz, one in which we’d take up Mark Lilla’s dismissal of Eugen as Franz’s “confused young friend.”  

      If you’d like to join a general discussion of Eugen’s work, simply send an e-mail to: ERHLIST@BIGBLUE.MILLIKIN.EDU.
      Finally, should you be interested in our project Building Bridges: Middle East-US, we’re at: www.BuildingBridgesMEUS.org.

      E-mail us at: info@BuildingBridgesMEUS.org

 

 

[NOTES, BIBLIOGRAPY, AND INDEX will be published on the Web in January 2007]

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