The paper focuses on the problem of the “anthropological turn” in Russian Neo-
Kantianism. There are three sources of this “anthropological turn”. The first one is
the concept of man in German Neo-Kantianism which was developed on the basis of
Kant’s ethics. The second one is the influence of Russian culture and history. The
third is the state of Russian philosophy at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the
20th century. The Russian Neo-Kantians (O. Buek, H. Lanz, B. Pasternak, S. Rubinstein)
reflected closely on the doctrine of Leo Tolstoi and on the existence of man in
the contemporary historical changes and cataclysms. They conclude the freedom of
man as his essence depends on the political state of society and its moral base. There is
no genuine existence of man without social politics based on morality and the human
ideal.
