“Eternal problems” in the study of M. Bakhtin’s works

Abstract

The article presents a polemical analysis of some statements from the monograph of the well-known Italian re­sear­cher of the history of Russian philosophy Ro­ber­to Salizzoni, devoted to the analysis of Mikhail Bakh­tin’s works. The author objects to the opinion, which is rather wide­spread in the European and Russian re­search literature, according to which Bakhtin should be not considered as an original or even interesting philosopher because he obviously is a plagiarist who skillfully used in his works the philo­sophical ideas belonging to other (prima­rily European) authors and did not refer to them at all. The reader is invited to reflect on the “eternal problems” of Bakhtinistics: whether Ba­khtin’s work was independent or he bor­rowed his ideas from other foreign and Russian authors, whether Bakhtin was a theorist of literature or a philosopher, and if so, which philosophical trend his conception should be referred to, what makes his creativity speci­fically philosophical. The author asserts that Bakhtin’s views should not be described as resulting from any particular philosophical school. However, if it is necessary to discover the premises of Bakhtin’s thought, they can be found in neo-Kantianism. At the same time, the philosophical position of the Russian thinker was an independent one because it was based on the creatively interpreted key ideas of the Marburg school. This fact made it possible for Bakhtin to carry on a productive dialogue with constructive ideas of other philosophical trends, including phenomenology and hermeneutics. The author believes that his polemic with Roberto Salizzoni will stimulate the study of the philosophical teaching of Bakhtin in its dialogical version.