Toward a Philosophy of the Act

Makhtin, M.M.; Liapunov, Vadim (trans.); Liapunov, Vadim and Michael Holquist (eds.)

ISBN 10: 029270805X / ISBN 13: 9780292708051

Published by Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999, 1993

About this Item

8vo, card covers, 106pp. 3rd printing. VG+: a clean, bright and sound copy with a light storage curl.

Seller Inventory # ATLMMBPotAPB

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Toward a Philosophy of the Act
• Publisher: Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 029270805X
• ISBN 13: 9780292708051
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Rescued in 1972 from a storeroom in which rats and seeping water had severely damaged the fifty-year-old manuscript, this text is the earliest major work (1919-1921) of the great Russian philosopher M. M. Bakhtin. Toward a Philosophy of the Act contains the first occurrences of themes that occupied Bakhtin throughout his long career. The topics of authoring, responsibility, self and other, the moral significance of "outsideness," participatory thinking, the implications for the individual subject of having "no-alibi in existence," the difference between the world as experienced in actions and the world as represented in discourse—all are broached here in the heat of discovery. This is the "heart of the heart" of Bakhtin, the center of the dialogue between being and language, the world and mind, "the given" and "the created" that forms the core of Bakhtin's distinctive dialogism.

A special feature of this work is Bakhtin's struggle with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Put very simply, this text is an attempt to go beyond Kant's formulation of the ethical imperative. mci will be important for scholars across the humanities as they grapple with the increasingly vexed relationship between aesthetics and ethics.

About the Author

Vadim Liapunov is an associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Indiana University. Michael Holquist is a professor of comparative literature and Slavic studies at Yale University.