HOW WE STUDIED PHILOSOPHY - MOSCOW UNIVERSITY IN THE 1950S

This text consists of two parts. The first part is an interview given by Aleksandr Moiseevich Piatigorskii to Vadim Nikolaevich Sadovskii. B oth are graduates of the Department of Philosophy at Moscow State Univ ersity in the first postwar years. Meeting in London in 1992, they dec ided to discuss how they studied philosophy at that time. As time was short, for all practical purposes only Piatigorskii's reflections were recorded on tape. Hence, on the suggestion of the editorial board, a second part, containing Sadovskii's account of these same topics, was produced-written in Moscow, of course. A few words about the authors a re in order. A.M. Piatigorskii was a student in the Department of Phil osophy in 1947-52; V.N. Sadovskii studied there in 1951-56. After grad uating from Moscow State University, Piatigorskii taught until the end of 1955, when he returned to Moscow to work at the Institute of Orien tal Studies and later at the Institute for Scientific Information in t he Social Sciences. In the late sixties he left for Great Britain, whe re he soon received an invitation from the School of Oriental Studies of London University; he serves there as professor to this day. His bo ok The Philosophy of a Byway [Filosofiia odnogo pereulka] (Moscow, 199 2) was recently published in Russia; it merits its own discussion. V.N . Sadovskii worked for a time in Moscow publishing houses after gradua ting from the department. Beginning in 1958 he worked at the Institute of Philosophy, then on the journal Voprosy filosofii, at the Institut e of Natural Science and Technology, and since 1976 at the Institute o f Systems Analysis, where he currently heads the section on philosophi cal and sociological problems of systems research.