Current issue

Why Did Shpet and Husserl Talk about Kant? (Based on Archive Materials)

DOI

10.5922/0207-6918-2025-3-4

Pages

110-129

Abstract

While working on the archive materials of Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, one of the authors of this article came across notebooks in black covers in which, over the years, he had made entries (ranging from self-observations to tentative formulations of his thoughts which became part in one form or another of works that were later published or prepared for publication. One such notebook was the “1913 Diary”, which contains hurried jottings belonging to the period when Shpet was in direct communication with Edmund Husserl, Lev Shestov, Natalia Guchkova and others. Understanding the meaning of these hasty notes requires hermeneutic reconstruction, including chronological comparison of the “1913 Diary” with other archive materials (dating from Shpet and his interlocutors) as well as the works of Shpet and Husserl published at that time. The article presents the results of the hermeneutic reconstruction of one entry which deals with the theme of the conversation about Kant and phenomenology that took place between Shpet and Husserl on 30 (7) June 1913. The authors sequentially uncover the possible thematic layers of their intellectual conversation, dwelling on such topics as “the Kantian dilemma”, “the reflection theory”, “psychologism”, “pure ego”, “reality” and “experience”. Each problem involves, in one way or another, their assessment of Kant’s philosophical journey (especially in the theory of cognition). The modern context is provided by the philosophy and methodology of science, since the “conversation” between Shpet and Husserl throws new light on such key problems in the theory of knowledge as “human-sizedness”, “historicity” and continuity.

Reference

Heidegger, M., 2001. Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research. Translated by R. Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Husserl, E., 1913. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Ers­tes Buch. Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 1(1), pp. 1-323.

Husserl, E., 1965. Philosophy as Rigorous Science. In: Q. Lauer, ed. 1965. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 71-147.

Husserl, E., 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by F. Kersten. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl, E., 2001a. Logical Investigations. Volume 1. Edi­ted by D. Moran, translated by J. N. Findlay. London: Routledge.

Husserl, E., 2001b. Logical Investigations. Volumes 2. Edited by D. Moran, translated by J. N. Findlay. London: Routledge.

Ingarden, R., 2012. Einführung in die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls: Osloer Vorlesungen (1967). In: R. Ingarden, 2012. Gesammelte Werke. Volume 4. Edited by G. Haefliger. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Kant, I., 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by P. Guyer and A. W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mikhailov, I. A., 2024. Kantian and Anti-Kantian Philosophy of Language. Kantian Journal, 43(3), pp. 47-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.5922/0207-6918-2024-3-4

Motroshilova, N. V., 2006. Gustav Shpet’s Work “Appearance and Sense” as a Milestone in the Development of Russian Phenomenology. History of Philosophy Yearbook 2006, pp. 294-305. Moscow: Nauka. (In Rus.)

Nieraad, J., 1970. Abbildtheorie. In: J. Ritter, ed. 1970. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Volume 1: A -C. Basel: Schwabe & Co. Sp. 1-3.

Pruzhinin, B. I., Artemenko, N. A., Belousov, M. A., Vasiliev, V. V., Kurilovich, I. S., Mikhailov, I. A., Molchanov, V. I., Patkul, A. B., Reznichenko, A. I., Savin, A. E., Chernavin, G. I., Shestova, E. A. and Shchedrina, T. G., 2024. Phenomenology Today: Historical Problems and Contemporary Trends. Returning to the 1988 Discussion (Round Table Materials). Voprosy filosofii, 10, pp. 5-39. (In Rus.)

Pruzhinin, B. I., Artemenko, N. A., Belousov, M. A., Vasyu­kov, V. L., Konacheva, S. A., Kurilo­vich, I. S., Mikhailov, I. A., Molchanov, V. I., Patkul, A. B., Savin, A. E., Shestova, E. A. and Shchedrina, T. G., 2025. Edmund Husserl’s “Logical Investigations”. On the Occasion of the First Complete Translation into Russian (Round Table Materials). Voprosy filosofii, 7, pp. 5-36. (In Rus.)

Pruzhinin, B. I. and Shchedrina, T. G., 2025. Human-Sizedness in Modern Science. Voprosy filosofii, 11, pp. 33-43. (In Rus.)

Shchedrina, T. G., ed. 2005. Gustav Shpet: zhizn’ v pis’makh. Epistoljarnoe nasledie [Gustav Shpet: Life in Letters. Epistolary Heritage]. Мoscow: ROSSPEN. (In Rus.)

Shchedrina, T. G. and Shchedrina, I. O., 2022. Immanuel Kant in the Historical Philosophy of Gustav Shpet. Kantian Journal, 41(3), pp. 124-151. http://dx.doi.org/10.5922/0207-6918-2022-3-5

Shpet, G., 1991. Appearance and Sense. Phenomenology as the Fundamental Science and Its Problems. Translated by T. Nemeth. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Shpet, G., 2019. Consciousness and Its Owner. In: G. Shpet, 2019. Hermeneutics and Its Problems. With Selected Essays in Phenomenology. Edited and translated by T. Nemeth. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland AG, pp. 153-205.

Shpet, G. G, 2005. Appearance and Sense. In: G. G. Shpet, 2005. Mysl’ i Slovo. Izbrannye trudy [Thought and Word. Selected Works]. Edited and commented by T. G. Shchedrina. Moscow: ROSSPEN, pp. 35-188. (In Rus.)

Shpet, G. G., 2016. Istorija kak problema logiki: Kriticheskie i metodologicheskie issledovanija. Chast’ vtoraja. Arkhivnye materialy [History as a Problem of Logic: Critical and Methodological Studies. Part two. Archival Materials]. Edited and commented by T. G. Shchedrina; archival work by T. G. Shchedrina and I. O. Shchedrina. Moscow & St. Petersburg: Universitetskaja kniga. (In Rus.)