ABSTRACT
The image of Plato as the generator of the Eastern spiritual tradition partly relied on an opposition with the rationalizing tendencies of Western philosophy, which was said to have grown out of the Aristotelian tradition. The turning point in Plato's thought to positive or 'practical' idealism was, according to Vladimir Solov'ev, only partly motivated by strictly theoretical considerations. Solov'ev's somewhat idiosyncratic account of Plato's personal tragedy was one of the last pieces he wrote before his untimely death in 1900. Perceptions in Russia of Plato's philosophy were to a considerable extent shaped and modified by developments in historical knowledge about philosophy more generally. Most historians of Russia would agree that the striking progress in Russian humanities scholarship in the closing decades of the nineteenth century was, to a great extent, due to more sustained interaction and exchange with the European scientific community as a whole.
