Bakhtin and Cassirer: The Event and the Machine

Abstract

The influence of Cassirer’s work on Bakhtin’s writings from the 1930s has been studied in some detail but scholars have not examined Bakhtin’s early work, Toward a Philosophy of the Act (K filosofii postupka), in connection with Cassirer’s philosophy. The article first reveals how attuned Bakhtin was with the intellectual Zeitgeist not only of his own times, but also that of the 20^th century. The uncanny intellectual harmony between the ideas of Bakhtin and Cassirer can be seen at the very beginning of Bakhtin’s career. The two thinkers are united in their reception, transformation, and attempt to reconcile two antithetical philosophical positions dominant at the beginning of the 20th century: the transcendental philosophy of Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and the Lebensphilosophie of Simmel, Bergson, and Heidegger. Bakhtin and Cassirer were alarmed by the cultural pessimism and potential nihilism inherent in the position of Lebensphilosophie. Next, the author shows ways in which Bakhtin’s and Cassirer’s ideas resonate with those of the later 20^th century Jacques Derrida.