“Where there is order, there is a will that preserves it”: philosophical motifs in I.P. Pnin’s poetry

The paper highlights features of the ideological and philosophical content in the works by I.P. Pnin (1773–1805), a Russian poet, writer, and publicist of the Enlightenment. He occupies an important position within the framework of the Russian revolutionary tradition, which goes back to A.N. Radishchev. The research is based on the philosophical aspects of Pnin's lyrics, special attention is paid to his anthropological and socio-philosophical views. The paper traces connection between Pnin's religious position and his ideas about the human free will. It notes that Pnin's philosophical position turned out to be, in a certain sense, more flexible and voluminous than the mechanistic materialism of P.-A.-T. Holbach and his associates, which was oriented towards science of the 18th century. The paper shows that Pnin's works represent the entire range of problems and ideas of the Enlightenment, and his understanding of characteristics of that era is in many ways consonant with the Kant's answer to the question “what is the enlightenment”.

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