This book details a history of the methodology of textual interpretation from Ancient Greece to the 20th century. It presents a complete English translation of Hermeneutics and Its Problems, written by Russian philosopher Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, along with insightful commentary. Written in 1918, Shpet's text remained unpublished in its original Russian until the collapse of the Soviet Union. This engaging translation will be of value to anyone interested in early phenomenology, Russian intellectual history, as well as the (...) divergence of phenomenology and the analytic philosophy of language. The volume also features translations of five key essays written by Shpet. The first presents an extended elaboration of a non-egological conception of consciousness on Husserlian grounds that considerably predates the well-known arguments of early Sartre and Gurwitsch. The second details the rudiments of a phenomenological philosophy of history that traces a central theme back to Parmenides. The next two reveal Shpet’s abiding philosophical interest in combating skepticism and what he took to be the reigning neo-Kantian model by which philosophy is a handmaiden to mathematical physics. The final one features a terse statement of Shpet’s overall philosophical viewpoint, written during the early years of the Stalinist period. Shpet offers an example of one facet of philosophy from a phenomenological viewpoint, demonstrating the progress as well as the deficiencies of successive eras along the historical journey. In doing so, he also gradually reveals the need for a theory of signs, interpretation, and understanding. This collection brings together key documents for assessing Shpet’s hermeneutic phenomenology and his perceived need to develop a phenomenological philosophy of language. (shrink)

Neopublikovannye raboty G.G. Shpeta -- Opublikovannye statʹi G.G. Shpeta.

Iskusstvo kak vid znanii͡a -- Ėsteticheskie fragmenty -- Vnutrenni͡ai͡a forma slova.

Gustav Gustavovich Shpet (1879--1937) is undoubtedly best known for introducing Husserlian phenomenology to Russia. He applied to aesthetics and the philosophy of language the principles he had discovered in Husserl's Logical Investigations and Ideas I. But, perhaps without knowing it, he modified the phenomenology he had found in Husserl. His modifications show a thinker who is thoroughly grounded in Russian religious thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The result is a philosophy that combines Husserl's analysis (...) of the structure of consciousness with the fundamental Platonism of Orthodoxy, the doctrine of incarnation, and the related notion that matter is to be venerated. (shrink)

Semioticians traditionally honor Russian linguistics of the early 20th century, and study Jakobson, Vinogradov, Vinokur or the early Trubetzkoy. They do, however, seldom consider Russian philosophers of the same period. Gustav Shpet is an important representative of Russian philosophers in discussion with Hegel, Neo-Kantian thinkers and contemporaries in Russia and abroad, among them Edmund Husserl, originator of transcendental phenomenology. Shpet introduced Husserl’s phenomenology in Russia and expanded those ideas in his 1914 Appearance and Sense. A triangle “Hegel—Husserl—semiotics” (...) emerged where Shpet emphasized the concept of discourse in phenomenology: a philosophical challenge to modern semiotics. (shrink)

The issue of whether the phenomenology presented in Ideen I was a metaphysical realism or an idealism came to the fore almost immediately upon its publication. The present essay is an examination of the relation of Gustav Shpet, one of Husserl’s students from the Göttingen years, to this issue via his understanding of phenomenology and, particularly, of the phenomenological reduction, as shown principally in his early published writings. For Shpet, phenomenology employs essential intuition without regard to experiential (...) intuition. If we look on transcendental idealism as the label for this methodology, which disregards but does not deny either the empirical or its correlative species of intuition, then Shpet was such an idealist, all the while adhering to a metaphysical realism. In this way, Shpet could proclaim phenomenology to be the fundamental philosophical discipline without precluding the possibility of other philosophical disciplines insofar as they were conducted in relation to consciousness taken not as the “possession” of a human individual, but eidetically and thus not a “possession.”. (shrink)

Shpet’s interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology has caused puzzlement because of the lack of clarity with which he treats the transcendental turn in Appearance and Sense. I suggest that we find a more comprehensive discussion on the topic in Shpet’s 1917 article, “Wisdom or Reason?” There, Shpet reacts to Husserl’s treatment of a cluster of problems related to the latter’s transition to transcendental idealism. I read “Wisdom or Reason?” not only in relation to Husserl’s Logos article of 1911, (...) but also to his 1907 lecture series “The Idea of Phenomenology.” My analysis of Shpet’s phenomenology reveals that he followed through with the transcendental turn, although his philosophy developed in a direction different from Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Shpet postulates a collective consciousness, in which meaning-constitution takes place, and discovers the “word” as the foundation for any cognition. Shpet’s phenomenology remains ontological, as he considers language or culture as the “form of being” in which human beings live. In “Wisdom or Reason?,” Shpet argues that we can have direct knowledge of this meaningful reality: being is not “represented” but “presented” in a word. A certain compatibility thus exists between Shpet’s phenomenology of cultural reality and Husserl’s search for the absolute validity of knowledge. (shrink)

This article examines the innovations introduced to phenomenological philosophy by the Russian philosopher Gustav Gustavovich Shpet. We identify the motifs and results of Shpet's problematization of the Husserlian concept of constitution, and we develop Shpet's treatment of the source of semantic genesis as a generative experience.

This book offers original research by leading scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Russia, which covers the central areas of ...

With his “discovery” of the phenomenological reduction, Husserl confronted the problem of intersubjectivity: How is the Other constituted? Gustav Shpet, a Russian student of Husserl’s in Göttingen, unlike many others accepted the reduction on some level but, unlike Husserl, did not dwell on the problem. In this essay, we look first at the Russian treatment of intersubjectivity in the immediately preceding years and see that the concern was over the possibility of proving our natural conviction in the Other. (...) We then turn to Husserl’s position circa 1912 with its embryonic conception of empathy as its vehicle into the sphere of the Other’s “ownness.” Finally, we turn to Shpet, who cautiously suggests that Husserl’s division of intuition into two sorts, experiencing and ideal, is insufficient. Affirming Husserl’s claim that each species of being has a correlative cognitive method, Shpet asserts that social being should also have its own method. Shpet recognizes that Husserl does not ascribe originary givenness to what empathy provides, but might Husserl have been wrong about this? Could it be that empathy, properly understood as a third form of intuition, “comprehension,” provides social being originarily and therefore functions in the constitution of the Other analogously to the way experiencing intuition functions in the constitution of physical things? However, comprehension is employed on what the Other presents, namely signs, be they in the form of bodily movements, speech or even writing. In this way, Shpet transforms Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology into a hermeneutic phenomenology. (shrink)

The issue of whether the phenomenology presented in Ideas I was a metaphysical realism or an idealism came to the fore almost immediately upon its publication. The present essay is an examination of the relation of Gustav Shpet, one of Husserl’s students from the Göttingen years to this issue via his understanding of phenomenology and, particularly, of the phenomenological reduction, as shown principally in his early published writings. For Shpet, phenomenology employs essential intuition without regard to experiential (...) intuition. If we look on transcendental idealism as the label for this methodology, which disregards but does not deny either the empirical or its correlative species of intuition, then Shpet was such an idealist, all the while adhering to a metaphysical realism. In this way, Shpet could proclaim phenomenology to be the fundamental philosophical discipline without precluding the possibility of other philosophical disciplines insofar as they were conducted in relation to consciousness taken not as the “possession” of a human individual, but eidetically and thus not a “possession.”. (shrink)

Already in his 1913 Ideen I, Husserl claimed that there are two types of intuition: experiencing, that is, sense, intuition and ideal intuition. The former provides us with contingent facts, whereas the latter provides essences. Commenting on this dichotomy in his own book-length work, Appearance and Sense, published in 1914, Shpet believed Husserl had overlooked an important and distinct type of phenomenon that we call “social” and thereby omitted a corresponding third type of intuition that reveals the social function (...) or purpose of a thing. This oversight on Husserl’s part led him to claim that an “I,” or ego, stood behind or possessed the human individual’s consciousness. Husserl failed to notice that we can and do meaningfully speak of a social consciousness that, as such, belongs to no single individual. Apart from the “evidence” of ordinary language, Husserl’s strict dichotomy leaves unaddressed how we can proceed from external appearances to their understanding, which cognitively is always in terms of concepts, traditionally called “universals.” That is, we frame our experiences and express them verbally, the words employed being meaningful to us and hopefully to “the other.” Realizing the problem of transiting from the intuition of the contingent to that of the ideal, Shpet in early 1917 downplayed the difference, preferring to call them different degrees of seeing with different conscious attitudes. He called the conscious “seeing” associated with an understanding of words “intelligible intuition.” With an interest in historical methodology predating his acquaintance with phenomenology, Shpet recognized that the only tool available to the historian is the words appearing on documents, which serve as signs. How we understand these signs forms the study of hermeneutics, which functions as the epistemology of history. However, the fear remains that if we conceive the understanding of signs and “intelligible intuition” subjectively, we lapse into a psychologism. We must not forget the social origin of language, that language is no more the possession of an individual than is consciousness. The sense of words is established in an intersubjective context. Thus, Shpet turned to a study of language much as he had previously turned to consciousness and saw neither as subjective. (shrink)

Публикуемые архивные и мемуарные материалы позволяют восстановить интеллектуальный вклад Шпета в развитие философской и научной мысли. Для философов, ученых-гуманитариев, а также всех интересующихся историей русской философии.

The author traces the early evolution of Rubinstein and Shpet from neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, respectively, and shows how their ideas partly converged.

This article assesses the role of Immanuel Kant’s ideas in the historical philosophy of Gustav Shpet (1879—1937). This theme has been largely ignored by Shpet scholars who have concentrated on comparing his logical-methodological theories with the ideas of representatives of phenomenology (E. Husserl, R. Ingarden and others) and hermeneutics (F. Schleiermacher, W. Dilthey, H. Lipps, H.-G. Gadamer and others). Accordingly, the authors consistently reconstruct “the sphere of conversation” within which Shpet’s concept of “historical philosophy” was formed (...) and reveal the place and role of Kant’s ideas in Shpet’s theories (with particular focus on the Plato-Kant antithesis). Among Shpet’s “interlocutors” with whom he discusses Kant and thus “ploughs” the field of historical philosophy are G. I. Chelpanov and E. Husserl, B. Bolzano and A. Trendelenburg, F. Heman and M. Frischeisen-Kohler. We have attached Shpet’s notes on Kant in the archive of his family. Shpet’s attitude to Kant was controversial (while of course largely critical) and yet he was aware that Kant was the foundation of European philosophy and that his efforts to resolve the epistemological problem merit a second, thorough examination and a retracing of the path followed by Kant. The authors show that Shpet’s notes on Kant have more than historical-philosophical relevance. They enable us to take a new look at many theoretical and cognitive problems and, even more importantly, make us rethink the fundamental tenets of philosophy and the methodology of scientific cognition. (shrink)

The authors discuss two interpretations of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology: by Lev Shestov and by Gustav Shpet. While each of these thinkers followed his own path, they shared an idea of historicism typical of Russian philosophy, a historicism related to the existential dimension of the human being. This article suggests that the interpretation of historicism in the tradition of “positive philosophy on Russian soil” was fruitful for the development of phenomenological topics in Shpet’s and Shestov’s hermeneutics.

When we discuss skepticism, we generally mean a certain philosophical movement with a fundamental basis in doubt. At the same time, the history of philosophy gives us another highly productive, met...

This article examines the main aspects of Husserl's phenomenology, which are analyzed in "Appearance and Sense" by Gustav Shpet: the relation between sense and comprehension and between noesis and noema. Shpet emphasizes the hermeneutical theme of "comprehension" as a resolutive dimension to solve aspects not clarified by Husserl. Shpet's critical enquiry, in the course of his subsequent observation, converge into an hermeneutical logic. Shpet identifies the centrality of language as a form of thinking, through the (...) recovery of Humbodt's meaning of the "inner form". (shrink)

Among the many names violently consigned to oblivion, one cannot omit mentioning the name of Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, a scholar who made a substantial contribution to our country's philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, and linguistics. His rehabilitation in 1956 was not enough to restore his memory in public consciousness, paralyzed by the inertia and fears of the Stalinist years, and the freeze that began soon after, of the sprouts that had just been summoned to life, had its impact in an (...) abrogation of agreements, cessation of publications, and in a number of cases removal of references to the philosopher. And the further thirty years of oblivion that followed were one more period of unjust punishment and a new ordeal in the terrible fate of the scholar and his ideas. His writings, which should have been a new word in science, should have given direction to further investigations, became effectively inaccessible to subsequent generations. References to Shpet in the works of Viach. Vs. Ivanov, Iu. M. Lotman, D. S. Likhachev, A. P. Chudakov, and others, and the article in Philosophical Encyclopedia [Filosofskaia entsiklopediia] written by V. S. Asmus aroused interest in Shpet's writings in Hungary and Germany. In the summer of 1986, an international conference on Shpet was held in Bochum, and his books are being translated. Unfortunately, in his own country the level of research on the philosopher's writings and thoughts is still almost at point zero, but we may hope that interest in Shpet's ideas will grow considerably in connection with the publication of the series From the History of Russian Philosophical Thought [Iz istorii otechestvennoi filosofskoi mysli] and a number of other publications. (shrink)

The conception on which the affirmative philosophy of G.G. Shpet rests can be called hermeneutic phenomenology. The choice of this term demands explanation. Shpet's basic hermeneutic work, Hermeneutics and Its Problems [Germenevtika i ee problemy], was completed in 1918. At the time hermeneutics was understood usually as the art of grasping the meaning of a text. It is worth noting that this art was quite specific. It consisted mostly of a set of psychological techniques for "penetrating" into the (...) internal world of the text's author. The techniques were empathy, sympathy, immersion in a historico-cultural world, and imaginative penetration into the author's creative "workshop." Understood in this way, hermeneutics was a psychologically loaded research method. And if it is treated only in that way, the recently coined term "hermeneutic phenomenology" is in respect to content internally contradictory. As I see it, Shpet fully realized what conclusions could follow from this. Nevertheless his fundamental aspirations are connected precisely with the idea of unifying hermeneutics and phenomenology. This is possible because words have a complex structure . The sense of a word is objective and can be known by nonpsychological methods. The art of comprehending the sense of a text must inevitably include semiotic methods as well as logical and phenomenological techniques. They are aimed at comprehending (studying, researching, but not "grasping" or "sympathizing with" the objective, internal sense of the text. All the other elements of the sensible structure of the text are overlaid with the psychological peculiarities of the author and historical and social conditions. They are external factors that influence the sense of the text in a distinctive way and, without question, must be taken into account and included in the investigation of texts under the general heading "conditions of understanding," which are comprehended by the historical method. The psychological and historical methods in hermeneutics were historically conditioned research techniques, scientific means of comprehending sense under conditions when semiotic means were not yet developed, contemporary logico-semantic techniques were not available, and the phenomenological method was not yet invented. For this reason hermeneutics is reducible conceptually to a mere psychological art: it was only forced into being this by the lack of technical instrumentation. Moreover, the psychological hermeneutics of the nineteenth century may be called without any exaggeration the historical variant of hermeneutics in general. (shrink)

The recently published story by D. Granin entitled Aurochs [Zubr] presents the recollections of N. V. Timofeev-Resovskii on Moscow University in the first years after the revolution. In his account, an interesting philosophical circle was active there at the time: "The logical and philosophical circle was headed by Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, who unsettled minds with unprecedented paradoxes and shook the most unshakeable foundations of this world, and Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin, a great mathematician who was able to find a (...) philosophical meaning in mathematics." V. Kaverin also tells about the tremendous impression made on him by a lecture Shpet gave in 1919 at the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. (shrink)

Les canevas de conférences sont à l'œuvre de Gustave Thibon ce que les esquisses sont aux toiles ou aux sculptures des artistes : souvent conçues comme simples outils de travail, elles survivent, par leur valeur intrinsèque, à leur emploi. Ainsi des textes que nous proposons ici aux lecteurs : Gustave Thibon ne les a écrits que pour lui-même, à seule fin d'affermir son discours lorsqu'il parlait en public. Précaution utile, car il improvisait beaucoup... Mais de même que la nudité du (...) trait, s'il est juste, fait ressortir le pouvoir miraculeux de la main, le dépouillement de la phrase accusera ici celui de l'intelligence. Et Gustave Thibon a l'intelligence contagieuse! Il nous donne de comprendre tout ce qu'il nous donne à comprendre. On remarquera qu'ici, où il n'est guère question que de sujets "terre à terre", sociaux ou politiques, Gustave Thibon emploie, certes, son légendaire bon sens à la juste exposition des problèmes, à la claire formulation des questions (ce qui relève d'une sorte de bon sens inspiré qui n'a vraiment rien de commun avec le gros bon sens ordinaire) mais qu'en revanche, il n'entrevoit jamais l'ombre d'une solution qui n'exige de la part des hommes un minimum d'ouverture à une autre dimension - une dimension spirituelle, religieuse, hors de laquelle tout se complique à l'infini, rien ne peut être dénoué."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)