The Norms of Answerability: Social Theory Between Bakhtin and Habermas

4. ON THE SOURCES OF YOUNG BAKHTIN’S ETHICS

4 ON THE SOURCES OF YOUNG BAKHTIN’S ETHICS (Kant, Vvedenskij, Simmel, Cohen) Aseries of questions guide the following discussion of some of the sources of Bakhtins’ earliest work. What are the origins of his concepts? What is his unique contribution? What did he mean by mixing this or that concept? How did he get to this or that proposition from the place he began? Why and what conceptual shifts does he engage in from one text to the other? How can the core philosophical idea that is directing his program be explained and expanded toward an ethics of the political? These questions cannot be fully answered by any one researcher and so, once again, inquiry is limited to revisiting a background that is already partially covered in the literature with the hope that further nuance and possibly some further explanation can be added. The place to begin is a reconstruction of the most relevant arguments from Kant’s moral philosophy against which Bakhtin proposes his “philosophy of the answerable act or deed” (1993, 28). A reexamination of selective theoretical arguments from three other thinkers that are known to have had an important influence on the young Bakhtin is the next crucial step. The analysis here is necessarily incomplete as I am looking to deepen the understanding of the creative dimension of social action and transcultural ethics that can be derived from his early work, and not to provide a definitive study of his texts. After reviewing the main postulates of Kant’s ethics in the first section below, I introduce two other less acknowledged arguments that have an important influence on Bakhtin’s Toward a Philosophy of the 89 Act. These include the argument for the fourth postulate in Kantian ethics proposed by the turn of the century Russian philosopher, Alexander Vvedenskij, and Georg Simmel’s lesser known discussion on individualism and moral philosophy in Das Individuelle Gesetz, or “The Individual Law.”1 Mihailovic’s well-documented study of the theological and religious ideas that underlie much of Bakhtin’s early ethics does not pretend to have provided an explanation of the most important philosophical sources. On the other hand, he does suggest that Bakhtin’s positive reading of aspects of Kant’s Categorical Imperative need to be read through the interpretation given by the orthodox religious philosopher, Vladimir Solovyov. I do not contest that Solovyov’s religious ideas influenced Bakhtin but I do contest the implication that Bakhtin borrowed mainly from his reading of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. Instead, I argue below that Simmel’s text needs to be recognized as the key influence on Bakhtin’s interpretation of Kant. Brian Poole also makes a case for considering the philosophical influence of Max Scheler and Nicolas Hartmann—most notably on Bakhtin’s use of the concepts of “empathy”and of the “I-for-theself ” and the “I-for-the-Other” (Poole, 1997). Although there is good reason for considering the influence of these thinkers on later works, it is more difficult to demonstrate their impact on the development of Bakhtin’s early ethics. It is true that these concepts first appear in the early essay and that on many points Bakhtin’s philosophy of the subject and participative thinking approximates Max Scheler’s distinct brand of personalism and especially his sociology (1970). On the other hand, Bakhtin’s core argument for the primacy of practical reason is expressed in an ethics of answerability and not an ethics of intentionality , as is the case with Scheler. Bakhtin’s ethics asks the question: How ought I to act?—not exclusively because of my axiological position of intentionality, but how I ought to act toward another so we can both grow in self-knowledge. Scheler’s (1973) ethics, on the other hand, ask the question: How ought I to act, given my axiological position of intentionality and the values that correspond to my idea of the good? Although there is much overlap between the two positions, they are, in fact, posing two very different questions. The young Bakhtin’s works in ethics and aesthetics are thus the subject of a certain degree of controversy regarding the interpretation of his earliest influences. Bakhtin’s ethics derive from, at best, a very general critique of Kant and of Hermann Cohen’s attempt to reform Kant via an ethics of pure will and the transcendence of the juridical subject.2 Cohen is a third major influence that has been cited since the 90 The...