Bakhtin at the crossroads of the European Human Sciences “in crisis”. Review of a debate

Abstract

In this article, we evaluate the contribution of the Bakthin Circle to human sciences. After sketching out the writing context, we consider the implicit dialogue that is established between these authors and some German theoreticians. Bakhtin’s texts of the twenties (Toward a Philosophy of the Act, Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity, The Problem of Content, Material, and Form in Verbal Art) constitute a consistent set, true basis of the “aesthetics of verbal creation”. Bakhtin plays a part in the debate between Husserl and Dilthey. Voloshinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language and Freudianism as well as P. Medvedev’s The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship made the philosophical ideas of the young Bakhtin understandable for a larger public. It is, therefore, necessary not to establish a hermeneutic break between texts which make one another clearer.