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115 Vladimir Solov'ev and the Legacy of Russian Religious Thought in the Works of Gustav Shpet Maryse Dennes The task of studying Vladimir Solov'ev's legacy as well as that of Russian religious thought in the works of Gustav Shpet should come as no surprise since the publication of Tatiana Shchedrina's book on the intellectual biography of Gustav Shpet in 2004. So far only a few papers have been devoted to this topic (see Boiko; Cassedy; Noskov; Epina, "G.G. Shpet," "Tvorchestvo"). The approach I use here will shed further light on this subject. I attempt to demonstrate that such a legacy is not only present in Shpet's works, but also has a pivotal role, insofar as it allows the Russian philosopher to take an active part in developing classical philosophy, thanks to the introduction of elements from the Russian religious tradition. It is indeed surprising to find Gustav Shpet—commonly considered a nonreligious philosopher—standing on the borderline between Russian religious thought and classical Western philosophy . In philosophy, according to Shpet, questions—in the way they are formulated —are invested with a national specificity, whereas scientifically accurate answers must reveal a universal meaning "for all people and for all languages" ("Ocherk" 12). Does that mean that Gustav Shpet, when using concepts from the tradition of Russian religious thought, does so because he has not yet answered with enough scientific precision the questions he has asked? In fact, Shpet's use of such concepts is his way of signalling questions that cannot receive their answers in the rationally delineated manner characteristic of the Western tradition. What remains a philosophical problem for Shpet is the "I," its limits and social significance. And this is the reason why when trying to define the specificity of the "I"—without succeeding in getting a "scientific" answer—Shpet keeps on using a concept borrowed from Russian religious thought, that is, not quite liberated from its national specificity. This concept is sobornost'. It allows the philosopher to distinguish himself from all the Western philosophers, who—since Kant and Fichte, and, in particular, within the framework of Protestantism—have set the "I" as the starting point of philosophy and thus have defended subjectivism. This also allows Shpet to discover traces of subjectivism even in philosophers who criticized this 116 Maryse Dennes trend (Natorp, Husserl). By referring to several Russian philosophers, Shpet was indeed able to put forward the concept of sobornost' which allowed him to open new vistas in research concerning the essence of the "I"—and thus to indicate what we must understand when talking about consciousness. These Russian philosophers mentioned by Shpet in his 1914 book, Appearance and Sense, and later, in 1916, in "Consciousness and Its Owner," are among the most conspicuous representatives of Russian philosophical-religious thought: Pavel Florenskii (qtd. in Appearance and Sense), as well as Sergei Trubetskoi and Vladimir Solov'ev (qtd. in "Consciousness and Its Owner"). Shpet seldom referred to Solov'ev in his texts. Indeed, the references are almost exclusively concentrated in "Consciousness and Its Owner" and they apparently do not seem—at first sight, at least—to concern the main theme of the treatise. They are rather like corns strewn in the text in order to strengthen Shpet's philosophical approach and hypotheses. Above all, Shpet refers to Solov'ev to enlist his help in raising the question about the essence of consciousness. It is instructive to quote this short text: I will only recall V. Solov'ev's warning: "As a matter of fact, not only should every answer be checked through precise thinking, but this is also demanded of every question. In daily life, one can ask, without much thought, 'Whose overcoat is this?,' or 'whose galoshes are those?'" But, in philosophy, are we really entitled to ask "whose consciousness is it?" . . . This very question is a philosophically unacceptable expression of a dogmatic certainty about the unrelated [bezotnositel'nom] and self-identical being of individual existences . But it is exactly this certainty that needs to be examined and justified by indisputable logical conclusions [drawn] from self-evident data . . . In the present state of things, to the question "whose consciousness is it?" . . . one can and must reply: that's unknown [neizvestno]." ("Soznanie" 76-77) Here ends, in Shpet's text, the first reference to Solov'ev's article published in 1897 and dealing with the first principle of theoretical philosophy. It may be interesting...

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