Background
Kedrov, Bonlfatii Mikhailovich was born on November 27, 1903 in Iaroslavl, Russia.
Kedrov, Bonlfatii Mikhailovich was born on November 27, 1903 in Iaroslavl, Russia.
Moscow State University and the Institute of Chemistry of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Held appointments for varying periods at the Moscow State University, at Communist Party’s Academy of Social Sciences and at the Institute of Philosophy and the Institute of the History of the Natural Sciences and Technology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
A Communist Party member since 1918, during fhe Soviet period Kedrov was a prolific and 'nfluential exponent of Marxist Leninist dialecl|cal materialism. Following Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin, Kedrov defined philosophy as the science of the most general laws of the developfnent of nature, society and human thinking—the ^*me formula Engels had used for dialectics. Kedrov advocated dialectical logic as the study of the subjective dimension of the dialectics objectively present in reality. By calling Marxist philosophy a science, Kedrov was opposing those Soviet thinkers who viewed it as an ideology: and by identifying it with 'alectics, he was rejecting what he later called the absurd ontologization’ imposed on Soviet philos°phy by Stalin. His influence thus often countered partisan dogmatism and upheld the ■ndependence and objectivity of philosophy and science. As early as 1948 he was dismissed as editor of the journal Voprosyjilosofii [Problems of hilosophy] for failing to support political strictures on biology and physics. In the Soviet controversy concerning formal logic he defended e two logics’ policy that granted it legitimacy, e never renounced his allegiance to Engels and er»n, however, and in later years he deplored the ack of unanimity among Soviet philosophers on 4uestions of dialectics.