hegel at the gakhn: between idealism and marxism—on the aesthetic debates in russia in the 1920s
TRANSCRIPT
Hegel at the GAKhN: between idealism and Marxism—on the aesthetic debates in Russia in the 1920s
Nikolaj Plotnikov
Published online: 23 April 2014
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract This contribution analyses the importance of the State Academy of the
Study of Arts (GAKhN) in the appropriation of Hegel’s aesthetics in Russia. In
immediate connection to this discussion at the GAKhN is Gustav Spet’s conception
of the ontology of art. This concept represents an attempt of a non-metaphysical
interpretation of Hegel’s aesthetics. There, art is interpreted as an autonomous mode
of the cultural existence as ‘‘aesthetic reality.’’ In this interpretation of art Spet
refers to two of Hegel’s theses in which (1) art is determined as ‘‘appearance’’ which
stands as a ‘‘quasi-reality’’ and (2) the aesthetic object gets its ontological status
because of ‘‘recognition’’ by humans. These theses help Spet to develop an alter-
native to Marxist aesthetics.
Keywords Hegel’s aesthetics � Phaenomenology in Russia � Art studies
(Kunstwissenschaft) � Aesthetic appearance (Schein) � Aesthetical object �Recognition
Hegel’s aesthetics in Russia
The discussion of Hegel’s aesthetics plays a paradoxical role in the multifaceted and
eventful history of the reception of his philosophy in Russia. On the one hand,
aesthetic issues and literary criticism form the leitmotif of Hegel’s thought in Russia
during the 1830s–1840s, above all in the so-called Stankevic Circle. The members
of this Circle—Stankevic himself, M. Katkov and M. Bakunin—not only were in
Translated from the Russian by Thomas Nemeth.
N. Plotnikov (&)
Forschungsstelle ‘‘Russische Philosophie und Ideengeschichte’’/Lotman-Institut fur Russische
Kultur, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Stud East Eur Thought (2013) 65:213–225
DOI 10.1007/s11212-014-9191-4
direct contact with Hegel’s disciples in Berlin, who were absorbed with a theory of
art including the editor of the ‘‘Lectures on aesthetics,’’ Heinrich Gustav Hotho. But
they also used their knowledge of Hegelian philosophy to establish and to
consolidate the entire direction of literary criticism, both philosophical and social,
which, thanks to Belinskij and his journalistic activity, set the course of all Russian
discussions of art for many decades.
On the other hand, philosophy was subordinated to journalistic interests and
taken into account only as an instrument to legitimize a particular ideological
direction. For this reason the elaboration of aesthetic issues and of a theory of art on
a Hegelian foundation happened to be pushed to the periphery of intellectual
interests not only in the 1840s, but also in the decades that followed. To illustrate
the general state of disinterest in Hegel’s aesthetic philosophy, we can point out that
the Russian publication of his ‘‘Lectures on aesthetics’’ that appeared in two editions
in 1847 and 1869 (Gegel’ 1847–1859) were prepared from a French edition.
Moreover, the Russian text was not properly speaking even a translation but an
abridged retelling of the French text, which, in turn, was a rather free exposition of
the German original! No other attempts were undertaken to create an edition to
facilitate the study of Hegel’s philosophy of art during the years of the ancien
regime in Russia.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the intellectual influence of
Hegelianism was replaced throughout Europe by a broad critique of Hegel’s system.
In the field of art theory this criticism called for a rejection of ‘‘speculative
aesthetics.’’ It urged the replacement of an ‘‘aesthetics from above,’’ i.e., a
metaphysical argument about the idea of beauty, by a so-called ‘‘aesthetics from
below,’’ i.e., an empirical and psychological analysis of the creative aesthetic
process and the perceiving of art. This criticism of Hegelianism was developed in
Russia against the background of a poorly developed theory of art. Against the
general hegemony of a utilitarian attitude towards art, even feeble attempts to
improve the situation with respect to aesthetic appreciation turned out to be
fruitless: Most of the positions in the history and theory of the ‘‘fine arts’’ that were
created in Russian universities in the wake of the educational decree of 1863
remained vacant for decades. Even the flowering of the arts connected with
symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century failed to significantly alter this
situation. As late as 1914, a reviewer of new translations in the field of aesthetics
had to admit: ‘‘Of the three categories favored by philosophers of the true, the good
and the beautiful, the last of these is dealt with the least.’’ The reviewer continues
with some bitterness: ‘‘The Russian reader is very suspicious of any kind of
aesthetics.’’ (Il’inskij 1914, 60) However, even the aesthetic theories that had
received attention in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century focused on the
question of the independent value of aesthetic experience and were approached
primarily from either a psychological or a neo-Kantian standpoint. These theories
demonstrated no particular interest in Hegel’s aesthetic position, regarding it as a
sort of ‘‘philosophical fairy tale’’ (Anickov 1915, 95).
Against such a background, then, we cannot be surprised by the repeated
declarations from representatives of Soviet aesthetics that the scholarly investiga-
tion and publication of Hegel’s philosophy of art initially began only with Soviet
214 N. Plotnikov
123
Marxism. Two generations of Soviet philosophers contested with each other for the
laurels in mastering Hegel’s philosophy of art. If M. Lifsic dates the beginning of
this enterprise to the mid-1930s (Lifsic 2012, 275–283), i.e., to the period of his own
entry into academia and his collaboration with G. Lukacs in developing Marxist
aesthetics, then an eminent representative of philosophy in the 1960s, Ju.
N. Davydov, on the other hand, claimed that the ‘‘world spirit alighted in
aesthetics’’ only at the beginning of his generation’s activity in the years 1950–1960
(Davydov 2008).
Meanwhile, we should recognize—and the point of the present essay is to
substantiate this thesis—that an intensive and rigorous scholarly exploration of
Hegel’s aesthetics not only began before the advent of Soviet Marxism, but also first
became the focus of attention as an alternative to the Marxist interpretation of art.
This elaboration of the foundations of aesthetic theory was due to a circle of
philosophers and literary critics who came together in Moscow in the 1920s at the
State Academy for the Study of the Arts (GAKhN), under the direction of the
philosopher Gustav Spet. It was thanks to their activity that GAKhN became, in the
short span of its existence from 1921 until its final dissolution in 1929, the central
forum for the discussion of Hegelian aesthetics and for the elaboration of the
fundamental principles of the philosophy of art.1
GAKhN and discussions of Hegel
Founded in autumn 1921 in Moscow with the active participation of painters
(notably V. Kandinskij), philosophers (G. Spet, F. Stepun), art critics and literary
critics (A. Gabricevskij, P. Kogan, M. Gersenzon), the Russian (later State)
Academy for the Study of the Arts was designed to be a research institution that
would establish a new connection between science (nauka) and art. The task of the
Academy, as defined in its charter, was to undertake ‘‘a comprehensive investigation
of every kind of art and artistic culture’’ (§1). To accomplish this meant not only an
expansion of the field of analysis, i.e., expanding the concept of art to range from
the traditional history of art and literature to the study of cinema, theater, decorative
art, etc., but also the integration of various approaches to the study of art, such as
that in experimental psychology, sociology and the specialized sciences and
philosophy. In essence, the Academy’s project required not simply combining all
the artistic disciplines, but creating a new type of humanitarian knowledge capable
of establishing the interrelations between philosophy, historical-cultural studies, and
studies of the human being by the natural and social sciences with the goal being a
‘‘comprehensive investigation of the arts.’’ This project was expected to be realized
in the interaction of the three departments of the Academy: the physico-
psychological (under the direction of V. Kandinskij), a sociological (under the
direction of V. Frice) and philosophical (under the direction of G. Spet).
The common methodological framework that combined these quite different
approaches to the investigation of art in GAKhN was the idea of ‘‘language.’’ The
1 On the perception of German classical aesthetics in GAKhN, see (Dobrokhotov 2014).
Hegel at the GAKhN 215
123
study of art, taken as the language of artistic forms and their interrelations, and the
rigorous elaboration of art as a system of aesthetic concepts were taken to be the
fundamental directions for the work of the Academy. They took concrete form as a
project to create an ‘‘Encyclopedia of Art’’ or, according to another title for this
project, a ‘‘Dictionary of Artistic Terminology.’’2 The preparation of this
‘‘Dictionary’’ in GAKhN came to include an investigation of the history of the
fundamental aesthetic concepts and of their current usage. The researchers
confronted the fact that the history of aesthetic concepts in Russia not only had
not previously been studied, but that most of classic texts on the philosophy of art
did not exist in a Russian edition, and what was available was unsatisfactory owing
to poorly worked out terminology. For this reason the critical and analytical work in
GAKhN was from the very start combined with translation work and the provision
of commentaries on classic texts from the history of aesthetics. A priority in the
Academy’s plan was accorded to Hegel’s Aesthetics (Kondrat’ev 1923, 419).
Within this framework, the members of the philosophy department of GAKhN by
no means treated Hegel’s aesthetic conception simply as a historical source in
connection with their analysis of the history of aesthetic terminology. In its
programmatic formulation by the philosophers in GAKhN, the task of providing a
theoretical definition of art concerned Hegel’s aesthetics in at least two respects.
First, there was the matter of grounding a rigorous examination of art in contrast to
the immediate experience of it and to its interpretation by artists and art critics. That
is, these philosophers saw as their concern the delineation of the general
methodological principles of ‘‘the rigorous study (nauka) of art.’’ Within their
work at GAKhN, this ‘‘rigorous study,’’ or ‘‘science,’’ was to include the individual
empirical fields of aesthetic studies (ranging, for example, from studies of literature,
painting, and music to book design and cultural folklore). At the same time, the
project of the philosophy department was also to show the possibility of rigorously
investigating art as an independent object of analysis, separate from the diverse field
of aesthetic experience. Thus, the problem of treating art as an object of a
‘‘scientific’’ cognition, which was posed by Hegel in his Aesthetics, acquired a new
sense for the philosophers and scholars at GAKhN (Spet 1926). It was now a
problem of the boundaries of the subject-matter of their study, given the explosive
development of new artistic practices, such as cinema, design, free dance, etc.) and
the transformation of earlier ones.3
The turn to Hegel on the part of the scholars at GAKhN was not limited, then,
only to translation work, although it should be noted that a translation of Hegel’s
‘‘Introduction to aesthetics,’’ made by N. Volkov, was edited along with a
commentary by Spet already in the 1920s. It was not published owing to the
dissolution of GAKhN. Nonetheless, all three translators of the Lectures on
aesthetics included in the Soviet edition of Hegel’s collected works (1930s–1950s),
(Gegel’ 1938, 1940, 1958) namely Boris G. Stolpner, Boris S. Cernysev and Pavel
2 See the partial publication: (Slovar’ khudozestvennykh terminov G.A.Kh.N. 2005).3 Cf. in connection with detailing the fundamental directions of the work of the philosophy department,
Spet’s question addressed to his colleagues: ‘‘Do art historians really know what history they are
studying?’’ (Spet 1926, 4).
216 N. Plotnikov
123
S. Popov, were colleagues in the philosophy department of GAKhN and were
involved with translation issues and questions concerning aesthetic terminology.
Popov, who also translated Schelling’s Philosophy of art, was the director of a
section (commission) at GAKhN concerned with historical terminology.
However, in addition to translation work and their investigations into the history
of ideas those in the philosophy department turned to Hegel in connection with
interpreting key problems in the philosophy of art. Aleksej Losev constructed a
system of aesthetic forms on the basis of the Neoplatonic and Hegelian dialectic
(Losev 1927; Dunaev 1991; Dobrokhotov 2011) Boris Cernysev analyzed how
social factors in the history of art are reflected in Hegel’s aesthetics (Cernysev
1927), and Aleksej Toporkov discussed the possibility of future additional artistic
periods beyond three historical forms in the Hegelian scheme of symbolic, classical
and romantic (Toporkov 1925). To an even greater degree the turn to Hegel applied
to Spet’s closest colleagues and students in the philosophy department, who, in their
work, relied directly on the fundamental principles of Hegelian aesthetics. An
example of this is Spet’s student Apollinarija Solov’eva, who sought the criteria to
distinguish art and aesthetic experience (Solov’eva 1925, 1926), or the philosopher
and psychologist Nikolaj Zinkin, who rehabilitated the Hegelian concept of art form
(Kunstform) in a polemic with the psychologism and formalism of contemporary
aesthetics (Zinkin 1927).
All of this brings us back to the issue of what role the turn to Hegel’s
philosophical principles played in Spet’s own philosophical project. This question
was repeatedly raised earlier, but it did not receive a detailed resolution owing to the
paradoxical character of the turn (Kline 1999; Steiner 2003; Tihanov 2009; Scedrina
2010). On the one hand, Spet has long been known as the translator of Hegel’s
Phenomenology of spirit into Russian, and he himself repeatedly stressed the need
to update Hegel’s conception in light of contemporary philosophical developments.4
On the other hand, Spet left no specific interpretations of Hegel, preferring instead
to refer to Hegel’s arguments in his own analyses of Husserl, Dilthey and von
Humboldt. Focusing on these analyses, Spet scholars have examined them primarily
in the context of phenomenology and the philosophy of language. Seen from this
perspective, however, Spet’s conception seems to be only a formal aesthetic that
extends and enlarges Russian formalism by incorporating a hermeneutic aspect
(taking language from the point of view of interpreting linguistic expression).
However, we can consider Spet’s elaboration of the philosophy of art as an attempt
to identify and ground the ‘‘autonomy’’ of art as a cultural phenomenon within the
scope of GAKhN’s project and activities rather than as an application of his
hermeneutic phenomenology of language and culture to the particular field of art (as
itself a sort of language). By doing so, Spet’s reliance on Hegel’s arguments appears
far more understandable. His criticism of the psychological and normative
grounding of contemporary aesthetics has its common source in Kantian formalism.
And although Spet’s contemporaries and subsequent scholars saw this criticism as a
4 Cf. ‘‘At this point, German idealist philosophy in the person of Hegel attained results acceptable to us
although only formally. For Hegel did not hold back from hypostatizing the ‘‘identical’’ moment that he
found in absolute metaphysical reality’’ (Spet 1992, 50).
Hegel at the GAKhN 217
123
critique of psychologism and a continuation of Husserl’s phenomenological anti-
psychologism, it has more in common with the cultural and historical arguments of
Hegel and Dilthey than with a phenomenological aesthetics. Indeed, the latter was
formed precisely as a formal aesthetics on the basis of the perceptual experience of
things and the grounding of such experience in the subject.
We must recognize, of course, that this philosophical direction in GAKhN
remained to a large extent at the ‘‘non finito’’ stage. The publication of Hegel’s
Aesthetics remained incomplete, many of the planned works by Spet and his closest
associates were still to be finalized, and specialized investigations of Hegel were not
written. Nevertheless, on the basis of the texts that were published and also archival
materials, including accounts of the discussions within GAKhN, we can reconstruct
the sense of the turn to Hegel’s aesthetics by Spet and his colleagues. The ‘‘ontology
of art,’’ which Spet developed on the basis of a philosophy of culture, was a
deliberate attempt to renew Hegelian aesthetics in a post-metaphysical era. This
attempt also intended to elaborate the general criteria for rigorous scholarly
discourse about art that could include the various differentiated artistic disciplines in
addition to a justification of an independent role for art in an era when scientific
reflection is predominant. The guiding thread of Spet’s philosophical project was the
‘‘project of reality’’ and its extension to the sphere of art objects.
The problem of aesthetic reality
The dissolution of the State Academy for the Study of the Arts (GAKhN) in 1929
was accompanied by a campaign of public accusations in which GAKhN was
declared the ‘‘last citadel and refuge of bankrupt idealism’’ (Politika nastuplenija
1929). This ideological label (‘‘citadel of idealism’’) was repeatedly used in the
Bolshevik press at the time for the purpose of prosecuting and persecuting those
who thought differently (in particular in connection with the dissolution of such
other ‘‘formalistic’’ groups as the Society for the Study of Poetic Language and the
State Institute for the History of the Arts, and indeed in the process of a ‘‘cleansing’’
of GAKhN). The absurdity of the accusation against the GAKhN philosophers
becomes even more apparent if we consider that for Spet the problem of ‘‘reality’’
and of its ‘‘justification’’ in reason, in practical life and in art is the fundamental task
and the ultimate goal of every philosophy (Spet 1927, 37). For this reason, he
preferred to characterize his own position as a ‘‘realism’’ or even as ‘‘genuine social
realism’’ (Spet 1927, 195).
The problem of reality is a matter of distinguishing the modes of reality and,
correspondingly, the modes of consciousness directed towards it. This problem lies
at the heart of Spet’s philosophy of art in the form of the question of the specific
status of the being of aesthetic objects. In formulating the problem in this manner,
or, in a broader sense, the problem of ‘‘aesthetic reality,’’ Spet sought to distinguish
his position from two other directions in the interpretation of art that question the
reality of the aesthetic object in general and define the aesthetic sphere as one of
‘‘unreality,’’ i.e., as a consequence or a secondary effect of some other instance. As
such an instance, there is, on the one hand, the inner ‘‘experience’’ of the subject—
218 N. Plotnikov
123
be it the artist or the viewer—on the basis of which a certain physical thing is
transformed into an aesthetic object. As a rule, everything that is connected with the
personal, subjective intention behind the work or that belongs within one’s
perceptual field (the ‘‘de-automatization of perception,’’ ‘‘aesthetic pleasure’’ or the
‘‘structure of the visual experience,’’ etc.) belongs to this sphere. In all of these
approaches, regardless of whether it be from a psychological aesthetic or a formal
one, the aesthetic object is held to have no independent existence of its own, but is
merely a consequence of mental acts (or, in the terminology of the time,
‘‘experiences’’) of the subject.5
On the other hand, Spet opposed—although not so clearly—sociological
objectivism, which believed that all of the fundamental traits of the aesthetic
object, as such, were merely a matter of social and institutional relations and have a
conventional character depending, for example, on the role and function of its social
class. Although there are but few express statements concerning Marxism in Spet’s
works, in aesthetics it still was far from monolithic in the 1920s and presented quite
different approaches.6 However, from Spet’s critical comments regarding the
‘‘copying of reality’’ and the determinism of ‘‘social roles,’’7 we can conclude that
from his point of view the Marxist understanding of art as a ‘‘reflection’’ of social
relations deprives the art work of its reality. This he would have held regardless of
whether it was a matter of the sociological determinism of Plekhanov and
Lunacarskij or the dialectical ‘‘theory of reflection’’ of Lukacs and Lifsic.
According to Marx, ‘‘art’’ as well as all other ideological forms of consciousness
have no independent history and development (Marx and Engels 1969, 27).
Consequently, they cannot be regarded as one variety of reality.
In contrast to both interpretations, Spet faced the issue of the aesthetic object
seeing this object as not just the result of a subjective aesthetic attitude, but also not
just the result of social conventions that would make it merely derivative of its
social (economic, institutional, etc.) status. Rather, the aesthetic object has an
autonomous mode of being, an ‘‘aesthetic reality’’ (Spet 1923, 65). However, how is
this mode determined and how is it differentiated from what is simply experienced
in our everyday practical reality, from our known reality and from the reality of
religious experience and of ethical behavior, etc.? (Spet 1923, 65).
In order to answer this question, however, we need to determine the sense of the
reality that includes the being of the aesthetic object. As a rule, the most elementary
answer is to refer to the things surrounding us, the things that make up our
‘‘original’’ experience of reality. However, the trick in such an appeal to immediate
experience is that physical things are not originally given to us. Correcting the error
5 Cf. Spet’s attacks against the ‘‘idealists’’ and those he called ‘‘experiencers’’ [perezival’scikhi] (Spet
1922, 55).6 Already within the sociology department of GAKhN, which was designated with developing a Marxist
theory of art, quite different conceptions claimed to be ‘‘Marxist’’ including the ‘‘vulgar’’ sociology of V.
Frice, the biologically oriented aesthetics of A. Lunacarskij, the historico-sociological aesthetics of P.
Sakulin, etc. It is noteworthy here that in none of these conceptions did a mastering of Hegel’s aesthetics
play a significant role.7 ‘‘Artist as such refers to any cultured person as such, neither to the highest species of monkey nor also
to a ‘citizen’ or ‘comrade’’’ (Spet 1923, 77).
Hegel at the GAKhN 219
123
in this theory of knowledge, which up to Husserl rests on a conception of a thing as
an isolated physical object, Spet holds that what we first encounter in the reality
around us are ‘‘social things’’ that we can use in practice. The things found in our
experience appear as instruments, as the material of our actions, as everyday
objects, i.e., as elements and bearers of social relations. In Spet, this claim about the
social character of reality has the significance of a universal ontological postulate:
‘‘In fact, the reality surrounding us is, prima facie, not a ‘natural’ reality, but a
‘social,’ ‘historical,’ ‘cultural’ reality’’ (Spet 1923, 74). And in an even earlier text,
‘‘the state of things is such that we do not even know another reality than social
reality: Sirius, Vega and the most remote stars and nebuli are also social objects’’
(Spet 1994, 90). A physical thing is not an originary givenness, but the result of a
subsequent abstraction of a social thing from among our interrelations in accordance
with definite pragmatic criteria. Spet can easily agree in this regard with Marx’s
definition of ‘‘commodity’’ in Das Kapital as ‘‘a thing which transcends
sensuousness’’ (Spet 1927, 179), if we bear in mind that this definition characterizes
our understanding of reality as a whole. The things given to us in everyday
experience always refer to the social relations in which they are used. That is, they
are not only natural objects, but also signs of the relations in which they take part.8
Therefore, when the question is posed of the difference between aesthetic reality
and the reality ‘‘surrounding us,’’ we should bear in mind that the latter constitutes
pragmatic interrelations between things as signs, means, instruments and so forth.
While recognizing the essentially ‘‘pragmatic’’ character of reality, we can find
within our experiential field objects that are best described as lying outside any
pragmatic relations. Like other things, they surely can also be included within the
relationship of means to ends, but what forms the differentia specifica of their being
lies outside any instrumental usage as a social means. Spet uses the term
‘‘detachment’’ to designate this distinctive feature of aesthetic objects. Accordingly,
the fundamental characteristic of aesthetic reality is its being detached. ‘‘Aesthetic
reality is a detached reality and not a ‘natural’ or a pragmatic one’’ (Spet 2007c, 35).
To explain this characteristic, Spet found it essential also to turn to Hegel and his
concept of ‘‘appearance’’ (Schein) in the ‘‘Lectures on aesthetics,’’ stressing that
most contemporary concepts used to describe the fictional character of the aesthetic,
such as ‘‘isolation,’’ ‘‘illusion,’’ etc. (we can also add that of ‘‘alienation’’), are
unsuitable for characterizing its mode of reality owing to their dependence on
psychologism. Along with Hegel, Spet insists that in speaking of ‘‘detachment,’’ it is
a matter of the mode of being, i.e., of the ontological character, of the aesthetic
object. We can say that this mode of detachment lies ‘‘between’’ sensuous givenness
and ideality. (In Hegel’s formulation of the ‘‘work of art,’’ it is ‘‘the middle between
immediate sensuousness and ideal thought’’ [Hegel 1975, 38]. However, since
according to Spet every object in our surrounding reality appears not only as a
physical object, but also as interpreted in a pragmatic context, this mode of
‘‘detachment’’ needs additional clarification. That an object is detached means that it
8 This is the source of the metaphor ‘‘the language of things,’’ which in the philosophical investations at
GAKhN was understood not as a metaphor, but as an ontological characteristic of social things (Cf.
Gabricevskij 2002).
220 N. Plotnikov
123
appears ‘‘as if real’’ (as ‘‘quasi-real’’) [Spet 1923, 69, 1927, 177 and others]). That
is, it is excluded from the pragmatic relationship of means and ends. Therefore, the
criterion used for factual reality is inapplicable to it. The object, however, also does
not belong to the sphere of pure ideas, which, like mathematical objects, must
adhere to the principle of logical consistency.
Moreover, Spet uses Hegel’s arguments not only in his general definition of
aesthetic activity as ‘‘detached’’ or as ‘‘an appearance.’’ He interprets such reality
itself, based on the phenomenon of art, in order to single out its specific features
within aesthetic experience. One defining characteristic of the aesthetic phenom-
enon, according to Spet, is its expression of sense. It is not a matter here of some
subjective conception of the artist nor of the interpretation of the beholder, but of the
fact that the artwork’s objective structure itself essentially ‘‘signifies’’ (Spet 1923,
76).9 If everything in social reality implicitly includes a correlation between its
empirical existence and a pragmatic interpretation (in Hegel’s terminology ‘‘an
sich’’), then the art object is one that explicitly embodies a connection between its
sensuous form and a sense (again in Hegel’s nomenclature ‘‘an und fur sich’’). Art
objects are not only ‘‘social,’’ but also ‘‘cultural’’ things, since they are signs, or
indications, not only of pragmatic relations, but also serve as reflection signs of the
relations embodied in the object. Therefore, as Spet notes, art is a ‘‘signifying’’
mode of reality where the connection between fact and sense is the explicitly
expressed theme. In other words, an art object is always ‘‘about something,’’ in
contrast to a social thing, which stands only as a means in pragmatic relationships.
This ‘‘something,’’ however, is not part of empirical reality, but is the sense of a
detached reality. Detaching the object from its pragmatic context, art exposes the
‘‘meaningfulness’’ or ‘‘interpretedness’’ of reality as that which is a condition of the
object being a social thing. Spet’s polemic with the Futurists and his critique of the
idea of a pure formal language devoid of any sense (Spet 1922) is due, undoubtedly,
to this conviction that assessing the sense of any art object is unavoidable just as it
ultimately is of the ‘‘rationality’’ of all of reality.10
In his analysis of art as a paradigm of aesthetic reality, Spet introduces along with
‘‘detachment’’ and ‘‘significativeness’’ one more element of description based on the
principles of Hegel’s aesthetics. According to this description, art is not only the
expression of a certain sense, not only an expression of cultural existence, but also
itself a manifestation of cultural existence, i.e., a manifestation of a community of
people who are creating and who are perceiving art objects.11 Art is understood here
not as a sign of something else, but as an expression and affirmation of the existence
of participants in a single cultural community. In other words, art can even be said
to be the ‘‘self-consciousness’’ of an association of people as a cultural unit (and
thereby potentially all of humanity), or in Hegelian terminology the being ‘‘for
itself’’ (fur sich) of a cultural community (Spet 2007b, 130).
9 Concerning the ‘‘hermeneutic’’ character of Spet’s aesthetics, see Bird (2009).10 On the peripetias of the thesis ‘‘all that is real is rational’’ in Russian intellectual history, see Plotnikov
(2010).11 In his drafts of the article ‘‘Iskusstvo kak vid znanija,’’ Spet uses the term ‘‘actionality’’ [aktual’nost’]
(as opposed to ‘‘actuality’’ [dejstvitel’nost’] and ‘‘reality’’ [real’nost’]) to designate the mode of this being
(Spet 2007b, 141).
Hegel at the GAKhN 221
123
‘‘Culture’’ designates here just the community of subjects who, as opposed to the
social communication between separate individuals, show themselves or reveal their
‘‘presence’’ through their involvement in a common self-consciousness. Art
preserves and cultivates this commonality of self-consciousness, ‘‘i.e., the
consciousness of oneself in communication, in a general unity with others,’’12 by
the fact that each time it embodies this commonality anew. Thus, Spet notes in one
of his later texts that literature is a manifestation of a cultural self-consciousness. It
is not a reflection of that self-consciousness, but its active embodiment and
formulation in words. Participating in this ‘‘world of art,’’ a person acquires an
experience of subjectivity—of one’s own as well as that of others’—not as natural
individuals, but as the subjects of some cultural community.13
Art as a defense against the ‘‘tyranny of sense’’
The impression may arise that this model of cultural community that art realizes
bears a striking similarity to the Hegelian-Marxist ideal of non-alienated existence
that Soviet aesthetics cultivated since the 1930s. Indeed, the official communist line
presented aesthetic education as an integral element in the formation of the
communist personality.14 A discussion of these parallels would require a separate
investigation, the goal of which would be to show how, in spite of all the criticism
of it by post-revolutionary Russian avant-garde movements, classical German neo-
humanist aesthetics could have served as a precursor of the ‘‘proletarian’’ humanism
of the Soviet regime.
In fact, Soviet aestheticians since the 1930s actively appropriated the ideas of
Hegel in an effort to develop their own systematically.15 In order to demarcate the
point of greatest divergence between Spet and Marxist aesthetics, we must take note
of one more aspect of this ‘‘problem of reality.’’ For Marxist objectivism, the sense
embodied in art turns out to be simply an unoriginal reflection of a sense formed
externally in reality and apart from the piece of art (as a form of consciousness).
Paraphrasing Marx’s formula, we can say: The world has already long ago been
understood; the point now is simply to change it. Indeed, the world was understood
already from the start; its sense is objective. The only important thing is to take the
correct standpoint with respect to it. Along with this, two standpoints are to be taken
into account. Lifsic, in his early article ‘‘Hegel’s aesthetics and dialectical
materialism,’’ clearly formulated them. Appealing again to Hegelian terminology,
there is either a ‘‘reconciliation’’ with reality or its revolutionary ‘‘negation’’ (Lifsic
2012, 94–95).
12 (Spet 1926/27, 39verso). This does not appear in the published text.13 Cf. ‘‘Consciousness of oneself as a socio-cultural community is not the same thing as an abstract
individual’’ (Spet 1927, 217).14 See, for example, (Lifsic 1984) and also the article ‘‘Esteticeskoe vospitanie’’ in the dictionary
Naucnyj kommunizm (Rumjancev 1983, 346).15 Particularly in the publications of the journal Literaturnyj kritik.
222 N. Plotnikov
123
On the one hand, Spet, in agreement with Marx, characterizes the social
objectivity of sense as a ‘‘thing that transcends sensuousness.’’ On the other hand,
Spet, from his point of view, demands one additional factor that is absent in the
Marxist scheme, namely that in order for sense to become a reality consciousness
must recognize it. There must be an unbroken act of interpretation that can be
renewed every time. Thanks to this, social being is affirmed as a reality, i.e., as
factually given and at the same time as a result of an action of the spirit. ‘‘The spirit
is neither some metaphysical Sesame nor some vital elixir. It is not real ‘in itself,’
but in its recognition’’ (Spet 1922, 40).
The concept of recognition as a confirmation and validation by consciousness of
the reality of a certain being plays a key role in Spet’s philosophy. He himself
stressed quite clearly in one letter from exile in 1936 to the translator and philologist
Natalja Ignatova: ‘‘You forgot one of my brilliant ideas. In order for something to be
socially real, socially valuable … the relevant society must recognize it.
Recognition (come on, old man: Anerkennung) is a determinative [sic!] category
of the social!’’ (Spet 2005, 389).
Although Spet does not explicitly name the source of this, as he put it ironically,
‘‘brilliant idea,’’ it is not difficult to establish that it harks back to the Hegelian
dialectic of ‘‘recognition’’ (Anerkennung) from the Phenomenology of spirit, the
translation of which occupied Spet at this very time. As with Hegel, the problem of
recognition for Spet lies in the fact that a confirmation of reality as objective
requires the independent consciousness as a necessary condition, the act of carrying
out a confirmation. In other words, in the dialectic of recognition it is found that
reality is not simply a matter of being factually present, but that it is ‘‘fulfilled’’ by
consciousness, just as a musical work is performed in order to become a cultural
reality. ‘‘Recognition’’ is the free fulfillment of reality by consciousness, both of
social things and of other subjects who exist for each other thanks to an act of
‘‘recognition.’’16
Only by admitting such an act of recognition can we avoid an automatism of
objective sense, that ‘‘tyranny of sense’’17 in a totally intelligible world which
becomes the Marxist proclaimed fatalism of objective historical necessity. In Spet’s
conception of recognition, consciousness retains a measure of freedom that allows it
to reject reality’s right to exist. Reason, as Spet notes, certainly does not create
reality, but it has in this regard a right to an ‘‘ontic veto’’ (Spet 2007b, 132).
By the fact that it refers to an unreal, detached reality—to an ‘‘appearance’’
(Schein)—art at the same time reveals an act of recognition and also together with it
the freedom that is necessary to affirm reality as a whole. Even before scientific
reason recognizes reality on logical grounds, art confirms the being that shows it.
Spet writes, ‘‘The artist affirms reality before the philosopher, because before any
cognition there is intuition’’ (Spet 1922, 53). Here, we have in the form of a
16 Cf. ‘‘The concrete social subject exists and remains so only if it is recognized as a social subject by
others who are recognized by it and as long as this recognition lasts’’ (Spet 1927, 188).17 The allusion here is to the exhibition ‘‘The Tyranny of Beauty. The Architecture of Stalin-Time’’
(1994) at the Museum fur angewandte Kunst of Vienna, co-organized by Boris Groys.
Hegel at the GAKhN 223
123
cooperation between artists, art critics and philosophers one more Hegelian point
embodied in GAKhN’s institutional structure.
References
Anickov, E. V. (1915) Ocerk razvitija _esteticeskich ucenij. Cast’ 1. In Voprosy teorii i psikhologii
tvorcestva, vol. 6, pp. 1–242.
Bird, R. (2009). The hermeneutic triangle: Gustav Spet’s aesthetics in context. In G. Tihanov (2009),
pp. 28–44.
Cernysev, B. S. (1927). Sociologiceskie motivy v estetike Gegelja. In Iskusstvo, no. 4, pp. 5–54.
Davydov, Ju. N. (2008). Dukh mirovoj togda osel v _estetike, [Inter’vju s Ju. N. Davydovym]. In: Id. Trud
i iskusstvo. Moskva, pp. 5–22.
Dobrokhotov, A. (2011). GAKhN: An aesthetics of ruins, or Aleksej Losev’s failed project. In Studies in
East European thought, vol. 63, pp. 31–42.
Dobrokhotov, A. L. (2014). Recepcija nemeckoj klassiceskoj _estetiki v trudakh i diskussijach GAKhN. In
N. S. Plotnikov (Ed.), Iskusstvo kak jazyk. Gosudarstvennaja akademija khudozestvennykh nauk
(1921–1931) kak forum teorii iskusstva. Tom 1. Moskva: Territorija buduscego (in Print).
Dunaev, A. G. (1991). Losev i GAKhN (issledovanie arkhivnykh materialov i publikacija dokladov 20-kh
godov). In A. F. Losev i kul’tura XX veka. Moskva, pp. 197–220.
Gabricevskij, A. G. (2002). Jazyk vescej. In Id. Morfologija iskusstva (pp. 31–39). Moskva: Agraf.
Gegel’, G. V. F. (1938, 1940, 1958). Lekcii po _estetike. In Id. Socinenija, t. XII, XIII, XIV, Moskva, 1938,
1940, 1958.
Gegel’, V. F. (sic!). (1847–1859). Kurs _estetiki, ili nauki izjascnogo, perevel Vasilij Modestov. Sankt
Peterburg, cast’ 1 and 2, 1847; cast’ 3, 1859.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1975). Aesthetics, lectures on fine art, trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford, vol. 1.
Il’inskij I. [Bruk. I.D.] (1914). Review of Rikhard Gaman, _Estetika, Moskva, 1913. In Zavety, no. 2,
pp. 60–64.
Kline, G. L. (1999). Gustav G. Spet as interpreter of Hegel. In Archiwum Historii Filozofii i Mysli
Społecznej, vol. 44, pp. 181–190.
Kondrat’ev, A. I. (1923). Rossijskaja Akademija Khudozestvenykh Nauk. In Iskusstvo, #1, pp. 407–449.
Lifsic, M. A. (1984). Marksizm i esteticeskoe vospitanie. In Id. Sobranie socinenij, vol. 1. Moskva:
Iskusstvo, pp. 388–430.
Lifshic, M. A. (2012). O Gegele. Moskva: Grundrisse.
Losev, A. F. (1927). Dialektika khudozestvennoj formy. Moskva: Izdanie avtora.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1969). Die deutsche Ideologie. In Werke, vol. 3. Berlin: Dietz.
Plotnikov, N. S. (2010). ‘Vsje dejstvitel’noe razumno’: Diskurs personal’nosti v russkoj intellektual’noj
istorii. In Issledovanija po istorii russkoj mysli, 8(2006–2007) (pp. 191–210). Moskva: Modest
Kolerov.
Politika nastuplenija (1929). In Pecat’ i Revoljucija, kn. IV, April, p. 3.
Rumjancev, A. M. (Ed.). (1983). Naucnyj kommunizm. Moskva: Politizdat.
Scedrina, T. G. (2010). K voprosu o gegel’janstve … Gustava Speta. In N. V. Motroshilova (Ed.),
‘‘Fenomenologii dukha’’ Gegelja v kontekstve sovremennogo gegelevedenija (pp. 588–597).
Moskva: Kanon?.
Spet, G. G. (1922). Esteticeskie fragmenty, vyp. 1. Moskva: Kolos.
Spet, G. G. (1923). Problemy sovremennoj estetiki. In Iskusstvo, no, 1, pp. 43–78.
Spet, G. G. (1926) K voprosu o postanovke naucnoj raboty v oblasti iskusstvovedenija. In Bjulleteni
GAKhN, nos. 4–5, pp. 3–20.
Spet, G. G. (1926/27). Iskusstvo kak vid znanija. In NIOR RGB, f. 718, kart. 7, Ed. khr. 3, L. 39verso.
Spet, G. G. (1927). Vnutrennjaja forma slova. Moskva: GAKhN.
Spet, G. G. (1992). Stat’ja dlja _enciklopediceskogo slovarja ‘Granat’. In Nacala, no. 1, pp. 50–51.
Spet, G. G. (1994). Soznanie i ego sobstvennik [1916]. In Id. Filosofskie etjudy (pp. 20–116). Moskva:
Progress.
Spet, G. G. (2005). Zizn’ v pis’makh. Epistoljarnoe nasledie, ed. T. G. Scedrina. Moskva: Rosspen.
Spet, G. G. (2007a). Iskusstvo kak vid znanija. Moskva: Rosspen.
224 N. Plotnikov
123
Spet, G. G. (2007b). Iskusstvo kak vid znanija. In Spet 2007a, pp. 112–149.
Spet, G. G. (2007c). Teatr kak iskusstvo. In Spet 2007a, pp. 19–39.
Slovar’ khudozestvennykh terminov G.A.Kh.N. (2005). Ed. I.M. Cubarov. Moskva: Logos-Al’tera.
Solov’eva, A. K. (1925). Letter to G. G. Spet of 2 December 1925 with a supplementary text ‘‘Zametki k
vozmoznomu razliceniju problem _estetiki i filosofii iskusstva v postroenijakh Gegelja’’. In NIOR
RGB, f. 718, k. 25, Ed. Khr. 43.
Solov’eva, A. K. (1926). ‘‘O vzaimootnosenii problem _estetiki i filosofii iskusstva na osnovanii postroenij
Gegelja’’ [Report in GAKhN of 9 March 1926]. In RGALI. f. 941. Op. 14. Ed chr. 20. L.
30-31verso.
Steiner, P. (2003). Tropos Logikos. Gustav Spet’s philosophy of history. In Slavic review, vol. 62, no. 2
(Summer), pp. 343–358.
Tihanov, G. (Ed.). (2009). Gustav Spet’s contribution to philosophy and cultural theory. West Lafayette,
Ind.
Toporkov, A. K. (1925). Gegel’ i razrusenie _estetiki [Report in GAKhN of 2 April, 1925]. In RGALI, f.
941, Op. 14, Ed. 14. L. 46.
Zinkin, N. I. (1927). Problema esteticeskikh form. In A. G. Cires (Ed.), Khuzestvennaja forma. Moskva:
GAKhN, pp. 7–50.
Hegel at the GAKhN 225
123