Bakhtin’s philosophy of act in the context of anti-metaphysical projects in late-modern European philosophy

Abstract

Mikhail Bakhtin’s philosophy of act is considered as an anti-metaphysical project, which arises in the course of self-refuting development of his original metaphysics. Bakhtin’s version of self-refuting transformation of initial metaphysics into further anti-metaphysics is explored in a wider context of similar projects in European philosophy of late 18 – late 19 centuries (Reid, Engels, Marx, Nietzsche). Bakhtin appears to be close to Marx in his gradual shift from “direct” metaphysics to “transformed forms” of philosophizing that grasp the original subject of their initial “first philosophy” at a more concrete level via tools of some “particular” science (political economy for Marx, “aesthetics of verbal creation” for Bakhtin). At the same time, Bakhtin’s “aesthetics of verbal creation” proves to be actually a kind of “meta-philology” somewhat close to the “philosophical philology” of early Nietzsche.