Kierkegaard and Bakhtin's Philosophical Motivation
XIV International Mikhail Bakhtin Conference, University of Bologna, Bertinoro, Italy, July 2011
12 Pages Posted: 20 Jan 2020
Date Written: July 7, 2011
Abstract
We know that in his youth Bakhtin was among the first in Russia to read and admire the works of Kierkegaard, and that he continued to keep Kierkegaard in high esteem in the last years of his life. Still, Bakhtin scholarship has not focused much on the influence Kierkegaard’s though has had on Bakhtin.
Indeed, we will be hard-pressed to find in Bakhtin’s writings more than a few sphoradic references to Kierkegaard’s work, but nevertheless, so I shall argue, Kierkegaard’s influence goes to the very heart of Bakhtin’s thought – his philosophical motivation. Like Kierkegaard, Bakhtin’s philosophy seeks to be relevant to the person, “to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know … to find the idea for which I can live and die”, rather than discover the truth about the world or follow other, more traditional, philosophical pursuits.
In this lecture I shall first try to substantiate my claims about the influence of Kierkegaard on Bakhtin by examining the work in which it is most clearly evident – Towards the Philosophy of the Act. But this influence, I would like to claim, does not end in Bakhtin’s earliest writings, but rather continues throughout his life.
[This paper appears here as read at the conference (without a bibliography, and lacking reference to some relevant information and publications of which I learned after delivering it). It has been since developed into a full journal article, currently under review]
Keywords: Mikhail Bakhtin, Søren Kierkegaard, existentialism, self/other relations, metaphilosophy
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