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Hermann Cohen and Bakhtin’s early aesthetics

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Abstract

In this article, Bakhtin’s early aesthetics is reread in the context of Hermann Cohen’s system of philosophy, especially his aesthetics. Bakhtin’s thinking from the early ethical writing Toward a Philosophy of Act to Author and Hero in Artistic Activity and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics is followed. In Author and Hero, an individual is in his life conceived as involved in cognitive and ethical action but as remaining without a consummative form; the form, or the ‘soul’, is bestowed upon a person by the creative activity of the artist alone. In his understanding of artistic creativity and the relationship between the ‘hero’ and the author, Bakhtin closely follows Cohen, with the exception that for Cohen the object of artistic form-giving is the universal, idealized man, whereas for Bakhtin it is an individual. In the concept of a ‘polyphonic novel’ as developed in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin, however, considers this view of the activity of the artist (or the novelist) to apply to the “traditional” novel only, while in a Dostoevskyean novel the characters are not subordinated to any defining power of the author. Bakhtin’s theory of the Dostoevskyean novel is thus a return to the emphasis of the cognitive and ethical autonomy of the individual. His understanding of the encounter between persons as a ‘subject’—‘subject’ or an ‘I’—‘thou’ relation has a predecessor, among others, in Cohen.

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Notes

  1. Brian Poole argues, based on both outer and inner evidence, for a later dating of both Toward a Philosophy of Act and Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity (Poole 2001); see also Brandist (2002, 27–52).

  2. Besides “answerability,” the Russian word otvetstvennost’ can also be translated with a far more common word “responsibility”; cf. Brandist (2002), 34.

  3. In Germany, the “German connection” was studied by Freise (1993).

  4. “Das Kunstwerk muß durchaus erstlich als Gegenstand der Natur, und als solcher ein Gegenstand der Naturerkenntnis sein. Und das Kunstwerk muß ferner, und zwar neben der ersten Bedingung und im innerlichen Zusammenhange mit ihr, ein Gegenstand der Sittlichkeit sein, und als ein reiner Gegenstand der sittlichen Erkenntnis erzeugbar werden. Diese beiden Bedingungen bleiben unverbrüchliche Grundbedingungen der Kunstwerks und des Kunstschaffens.” Cf. also Cohen (1912b), 264.

  5. Cf. Cohen (1912b, 416): “Thus, the feeling has dismissed its relativity and become characterized as a separate branch of pure consciousness. […] This purity of creation, the feeling’s becoming free of the stages of relativity and the annexed feelings […]”. (“Das Gefühl hat sonach seine Relativität abgetan, und ist sonach zu einer eigenen Richtung des reinen Bewußtseins ausgezeichnet worden. […] Diese Reinheit der Erzeugung, diese Befreiung des Gefühls von den Relativitätsstufen und den Gefühlsannexen […]“; Cohen (1912a, 416); emphasis in the original).

  6. “die Liebe zur Natur des Menschen in ihrer Einheit von Seele und Leib”. Cf. also Cohen (1912a 186, 199; 1912b, 31, 96, 241, 267, 355, 416).

  7. “Das Mannigfaltige, welches sonst als gegeben gedacht wird, wird hier schroff und scharf als Stoff gestempelt, der geformt werden muß, was nur die Einheit leisten kann. Diese Einheit ist die Seele im Leibe.” (Emphasis in the original.).

  8. Die Gestaltung ist Seelengebung” (emphasis in the original).

  9. Die Gestalt ist die Einheit von Seele und Leib” (emphasis in the original). Cf. also (1912a 193–194); Cohen (1912a, 70, 267).

  10. “Denn Erzeugung ist immer Erhöhung. So fordert es die Reinheit. Indem aber die reine Erzeugung, als Erhöhung des Menschenbegriffs, durch die Erhöhung seiner Menschennatur als die Aufgabe der Kunst immer deutlicher wird, so wird das reine Gefühl einleuchtend als reine Erzeugung.” (Emphasis in the original.)

  11. „“Die Subjektivität wird in aller Kunst zum berechtigten Prinzip.” Cohen (1912b, 23). Cf. also Cohen (1912a, 194, 209, 222, 381).

  12. “Die Seele der Gestalt ist aber vorab die Seele des Gefühls. Die Seele des Künstlers wird lebendig in der Seele der Gestalt. Auch sie ist nicht vorher fertig vorhanden, so daß sie sich nur in das Kunstwerk zu ergießen brauchte, sondern sie erzeugt sich erst, sie entfaltet sich erst in der Gestalt, in deren Erzeugung.” (Emphasis in the original).

  13. Cf. also (1990c, 317): “Above all, it is necessary to understand the aesthetic object synthetically, in its wholeness, to understand form and content in their essential and necessary interrelationship: form as the form of content, and content as the content of form […]”.

  14. It has been suggested that “The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Art” draws heavily on Broder Kristiansen’s Philosophie der Kunst (1909), which was popular at that time in Russia (Matejka 1996). However, the mere fact that both authors discuss the aesthetic object in terms of material, content and form does not make Bakhtin a follower of Kristiansen or a plagiarist (ibid., 258–259) because these concepts had existed since Romanticism and were commonly used, especially after Hegel, in aesthetic discussion. (cf., e.g., Städke 2001, 473–481). Moreover, the result of Kristiansen’s analysis of the aesthetic object of art differs essentially from Bakhtin’s, as he concludes that an aesthetic object consists of “mood impressions” (Stimmungsimpressionen) which successively merge (in sukzessiver Verschmelzung; Kristiansen 1909, 127).

  15. Freise (1993, 147) puts it as follows: “Wir realisieren die Architektonik des ästhetischen Objekts, indem wir die Form des Kunstwerks durchlaufen, d.h. jede Bewegung und Wendung, jede Haltung, jeden Blick, jede Wertung und jeden Glauben, den das Kunstwerk in seinem Sujet anbietet, virtuell vollziehen.” [We produce the architectonics of the aesthetic object by following the formation of the work of art, i.e., by executing virtually every movement and turn, every attitude and glance, every evaluation and every belief that the work of art bestows on its content.]

  16. Bakhtin, of course, analyses the dialogue in a polyphonic novel further by examining the internalization of the voices (the ‘words’) of others in one’s own word (cf. Bakhtin 1989, chapter 5).

  17. Cf. Hegel (1986, 244–250).

  18. “Wo aber Du gesprochen wird, ist kein Etwas. Du grenzt nicht. Wer Du spricht, hat kein Etwas, hat nichts. Aber er steht in der Beziehung.”

  19. “[D]ie Liebe haftet dem Ich nicht an, so daß sie das Du nur zum „Inhalt“, zum Gegenstand hätte, sie ist zwischen Ich und Du. […] Liebe ist ein welthaftes wirken. […] Liebe ist Verantwortung eines Ich für ein Du […].” (Emphasis in the original.)

  20. “Der Mensch wird am Du zum Ich” [Man becomes an ‘I’ in encountering a ‘thou’], Buber (2006, 32).

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Steinby, L. Hermann Cohen and Bakhtin’s early aesthetics. Stud East Eur Thought 63, 227–249 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-011-9144-0

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