Gustav Shpet's Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural Theory

Problems of Sense, Significance, and Validity in the Work of Shpet and the Bakhtin Circle

192 Problems of Sense, Significance, and Validity in the Work of Shpet and the Bakhtin Circle Craig Brandist The works of Gustav Shpet and the Bakhtin Circle (most notably Mikhail Bakhtin and Valentin Voloshinov) represent two of the most important episodes in the Russian reception of the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy. Each recognized the paucity of systematized thought in Russian philosophy of the period and was dissatis fied with the intuitive, even mystical manner with which language was understood. While nineteenth-century Russian philology reached considerable heights, philosophical reflections on language had developed largely within the bounds of Orthodox theology and this continued to shape the spirit of secular debates on language in the twentieth century and to endow linguistic terms with metaphysical connotations. This, combined with the strong ethical leanings of Russian philosophy, helped the seeds of German idealist philosophy find fertile ground. The result was that Russian philosophy of language often developed impressionistically and was always devoid of an elaborated theory of reference. However, the strong ontological impulses of Russian thought, which partly derived from Orthodoxy, often pulled discussions of cognition away from the identification of metaphysics and the theory of knowledge that constituted the neo-Kantian legacy and pushed Russian thinkers in a direction usually associated with Austrian philosophy. Instead of the neo-Kantian "consciousness in general," the Brentanian intentional consciousness became a central point of orientation for both Shpet and the Bakhtin Circle, but each sought to develop this phenomenological notion in different ways, the former remaining close to the Orthodox heritage while the latter sought a hybrid of phenomenology and neo-Kantian idealism. Personal relations between members of the Bakhtin Circle and Shpet are limited to the mid-1920s when the initiator of the Circle, Matvei Kagan, worked in the Philosophy Section of the State Academy of the Artistic Sciences (GAKhN: Gosudarstvennaia Akademiia khudozhestvennykh nauk) that Shpet directed. A champion of Marburg School Neo-Kantianism, Kagan regularly attended the section's research seminars (RGALI, f. 941 [GAKhN], op. 14, d. 14. l. 69) where he was allied with Problems of Sense, Significance, and Validity in Shpet and the Bakhtin Circle 193 Boris A. Fokht in frequent disagreements with the more "Orthodox" Aleksei Losev (see, for example, the exchange between Kagan and Losev following Fokht's paper on "The Problems of Philosophical Aesthetics in Paul Natorp's Work" in May 1925; cf. the records at RGALI, f. 941 [GAKhN], op. 14, d. 14, l. 55). These discussions continued at least until 1928; see, for example, Losev's and Kagan's interventions following Fokht's paper about Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in December 1927 (RGALI, f. 941 [GAKhN], op. 14, d. 32, l. 15-16). Relations between Kagan and Shpet were always respectful, though from the outset the latter was clear that he disagreed with the former's adherence to Neo-Kantianism (Shpet, "G.G. Shpet M. I. Kaganu" 629). Shpet's familiarity with the work of Voloshinov and Bakhtin is unknown, but both were clearly familiar with Shpet, whose profile was then significant. There are several references to Shpet in publications by the Circle and while there are many points of disagreement, Shpet is generally treated seriously (for an overview, see Bakhtin, Sobranie 388-96). An understanding of Shpet's and the Circle's respective developments of phenomenology requires, however, an examination of the types of German thought that influenced them. Neo-Kantianism, Phenomenology, and Psychology Although influenced decisively by neo-Kantian philosophy, in the 1920s Voloshinov and Bakhtin were also influenced, as recent scholarship on Bakhtin has demonstrated , by such contemporary trends as Lebensphilosophie (Dilthey, Simmel, Bergson), Marxism (Bukharin, Lukács) and the intersubjective phenomenology of Max Scheler . It is also now widely accepted that in the 1930s Bakhtin himself also followed the neo-Hegelian evolution of the Marburg philosophers, particularly as represented by Cassirer. Shpet, meanwhile, flirted with both Marxism and Neo-Kantianism before his conversion to phenomenology (Shpet, "Soznanie" 68, 86; Shpet, "Vvedenie" 554-56), but his enthusiasm for Husserl was complicated by the ontological concerns of the München "realist" phenomenologists and the lingering influence of Orthodox Christianity. Shpet's subsequent ideas developed in a distinctly hermeneutic direction , which included important encounters with Dilthey and Hegelianism. The Circle and Shpet both engaged with Humboldt's philosophy of language, particularly the notion of the inner form of language, although this was mediated by contemporary philosophies of language. In...