The Notion of Aesthetic Imperative in the Early Bakhtin

• Main Author: Alexander A. Yudin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2018-09-01
• Series: Studia Litterarum
• Subjects: author-creator; transcendental philosophy; transcendental author; phenomenological method; aesthetic consummation; surplus of vision; aesthetic love; aesthetic ought; hermeneutical ought
• Online Access: http://studlit.ru/images/2018-3-3/Yudin.pdf
• ISSN: 2500-4247; 2541-8564

The article deals with the aesthetics of the early Bakhtin as manifested in the work Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity. The essay primarily points out a methodological discrepancy between Bakhtin’s early philosophy and his aesthetics as variations of phenomenology. The former implies unmediated description while the latter is always mediated by the text albeit ignoring the difference between the author and the subject of description as two different centers of responsibility. The key notions of Bakhtin’s aesthetics such as “consummation” and “aesthetic love” are borrowed from Hermann Cohen yet reconsidered from a different metaphysical standpoint. Aesthetic activity appears as analogous to religious salvation and as expression of the aesthetic ought. But the notion of the ought, according to Bakhtin’s early philosophy, relates to the event of being which cannot be grasped theoretically but can be achieved only through participative thinking. This means reattribution of the reader’s activity of consummation to the author. Consequently, the notion of the author-creator appears as the undifferentiated combination of the author as transcendental subjectivity and the researcher’s own activity of consummation guided by religious-aesthetic ideal and described in the tones of aesthetic ought. The essay argues that early Bakhtin’s aesthetics (and philosophy) had transitional character as partially successful surpassing of philosophical transcendentalism. It also proposes reconsidering the notion of the aesthetic ought as the hermeneutical ought.