This book offers original research by leading scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Russia, which covers the central areas of Shpet's work on phenomenology, philosophy of language, cultural theory, and aesthetics and takes forward the current state of knowledge and debates on his contribution to these fields of enquiry. The book also contains, for the first time in English translation, the most seminal portions of Shpet's book-length study of hermeneutics, which is his most significant work for contemporary students of cultural theory. The first part of the book maps out Shpet's legacy in the main areas of his multi-faceted work; the second part examines in closer detail particular aspects of Shpet's philosophical affiliations and contributions in the framework of cultural theory, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and in the field of Russian intellectual history; the final part features the publication of extracts from Shpet's 1918 book on hermeneutics.

The great age of Russian philosophy spans the century between 1830 and 1930 - from the famous Slavophile-Westernizer controversy of the 1830s and 1840s, through the 'Silver Age' of Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the formation of a Russian 'philosophical emigration' in the wake of the Russian Revolution. This volume is a major history and interpretation of Russian philosophy in this period. Eighteen chapters (plus a substantial introduction and afterword) discuss Russian philosophy's main figures, schools and controversies, while simultaneously pursuing a common central theme: the development of a distinctive Russian tradition of philosophical humanism focused on the defence of human dignity. As this volume shows, the century-long debate over the meaning and grounds of human dignity, freedom and the just society involved thinkers of all backgrounds and positions, transcending easy classification as 'religious' or 'secular'. The debate still resonates strongly today.

Literary theory flourished in Central and Eastern Europe throughout the twentieth century, but its relation to Western literary scholarship is complex. This book sheds light on the entangled histories of exchange and influence both within the region known as Central and Eastern Europe, and between the region and the West. The exchange of ideas between scholars in the East and West was facilitated by both personal and institutional relations, both official and informal encounters. For the longest time, however, intellectual exchange was thwarted by political tensions that led to large parts of Central and Eastern Europe being isolated from the West. A few literary theories nevertheless made it into Western scholarly discourses via exiled scholars. Some of these scholars, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, become widely known in the West and their thought was transposed onto new, Western cultural contexts; others, such as Ol’ga Freidenberg, were barely noticed outside of Russian and Poland. This volume draws attention to the schools, circles, and concepts that shaped the development of theory in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the histoire croisée – the history of translations, transformations, and migrations – that conditioned its relationship with the West.

This book details a history of the methodology of textual interpretation from Ancient Greece to the 20th century. It presents a complete English translation of Hermeneutics and Its Problems, written by Russian philosopher Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, along with insightful commentary. Written in 1918, Shpet's text remained unpublished in its original Russian until the collapse of the Soviet Union. This engaging translation will be of value to anyone interested in early phenomenology, Russian intellectual history, as well as the divergence of phenomenology and the analytic philosophy of language. The volume also features translations of five key essays written by Shpet. The first presents an extended elaboration of a non-egological conception of consciousness on Husserlian grounds that considerably predates the well-known arguments of early Sartre and Gurwitsch. The second details the rudiments of a phenomenological philosophy of history that traces a central theme back to Parmenides. The next two reveal Shpet’s abiding philosophical interest in combating skepticism and what he took to be the reigning neo-Kantian model by which philosophy is a handmaiden to mathematical physics. The final one features a terse statement of Shpet’s overall philosophical viewpoint, written during the early years of the Stalinist period. Shpet offers an example of one facet of philosophy from a phenomenological viewpoint, demonstrating the progress as well as the deficiencies of successive eras along the historical journey. In doing so, he also gradually reveals the need for a theory of signs, interpretation, and understanding. This collection brings together key documents for assessing Shpet’s hermeneutic phenomenology and his perceived need to develop a phenomenological philosophy of language.

A Rhetorics of the Word is the second volume of a three-part philosophy of Christian life. It approaches Christian life as expressive of a divine calling or vocation. The word Church (ekklesia) and the role of naming in baptism indicate the fundamental place of calling in Christian life. However, ideas of vocation are difficult to access in a world shaped by the experience of disenchantment. The difficulties of articulating vocation are explored with reference to Weber, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard. These are further connected to a general crisis of language, manifesting in the degradation of political discourse (Arendt) and the impact of new communications technology on human discourse. This impact can be seen as reinforcing an occlusion of language in favour of rationality already evidenced in the philosophical tradition and technocratic management. New possibilities for thinking vocation are pursued through the biblical prophets (with emphasis on Buber's and Rosenzweig's reinterpretation of the call of Moses), Saint John, and Russian philosophies of language (Florensky to Bakhtin). Vocation emerges as bound up with the possibility of being name-bearers, enabling a mutuality of call and response. This is then evidenced further in ethics and poetics, where Levinas and Hermann Broch (The Death of Virgil) become major points of reference. In conclusion, the themes of calling and the name are seen to shape the possibility of love-the subject of the final part of the philosophy of Christian life: A Metaphysics of Love.

Reformulating Russia provides a thorough narratological and contextual analysis of Russian émigré historiography as it appears in Georgii Fedotov’s Saints of Ancient Russia, Georgii Florovskii’s The Ways of Russian Theology, Nikolai Berdiaev’s The Russian Idea and Vasilii Zenkovskii’s History of Russian Philosophy.

The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought is an authoritative new reference and interpretive volume detailing the origins, development, and influence of one of the richest aspects of Russian cultural and intellectual life - its religious ideas. After setting the historical background and context, the Handbook follows the leading figures and movements in modern Russian religious thought through a period of immense historical upheavals, including seventy years of officially atheist communist rule and the growth of an exiled diaspora with, e.g., its journal The Way. Therefore the shape of Russian religious thought cannot be separated from long-running debates with nihilism and atheism. Important thinkers such as Losev and Bakhtin had to guard their words in an environment of religious persecution, whilst some views were shaped by prison experiences. Before the Soviet period, Russian national identity was closely linked with religion - linkages which again are being forged in the new Russia. Relevant in this connection are complex relationships with Judaism. In addition to religious thinkers such as Philaret, Chaadaev, Khomiakov, Kireevsky, Soloviev, Florensky, Bulgakov, Berdyaev, Shestov, Frank, Karsavin, and Alexander Men, the Handbook also looks at the role of religion in aesthetics, music, poetry, art, film, and the novelists Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Ideas, institutions, and movements discussed include the Church academies, Slavophilism and Westernism, theosis, the name-glorifying (imiaslavie) controversy, the God-seekers and God-builders, Russian religious idealism and liberalism, and the Neopatristic school. Occultism is considered, as is the role of tradition and the influence of Russian religious thought in the West.

This volume is a comprehensive Handbook of Russian thought that provides an in-depth survey of major figures, currents, and developments in Russian intellectual history, spanning the period from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century. Written by a group of distinguished scholars as well as some younger ones from Russia, Europe, the United States, and Canada, this Handbook reconstructs a vibrant picture of the intellectual and cultural life in Russia and the Soviet Union during the most buoyant period in the country's history. Contrary to the widespread view of Russian modernity as a product of intellectual borrowing and imitation, the essays collected in this volume reveal the creative spirit of Russian thought, which produced a range of original philosophical and social ideas, as well as great literature, art, and criticism. While rejecting reductive interpretations, the Handbook employs a unifying approach to its subject matter, presenting Russian thought in the context of the country's changing historical landscape. This Handbook will open up a new intellectual world to many readers and provide a secure base for its further exploration.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction to Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies -- Part One: History, Theory, and Methodology for Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies -- The Study of Hungarian Culture as Comparative Central European Cultural Studies -- Literacy, Culture, and History in the Work of Thienemann and Hajnal -- Vámbéry, Victorian Culture, and Stoker's Dracula -- Memory and Modernity in Fodor's Geographical Work on Hungary -- The Fragmented (Cultural) Body in Polcz's Asszony a fronton (A Woman on the Front) -- Part Two: Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Literature and Culture -- Contemporary Hungarian Literary Criticism and the Memory of the Socialist Past -- The Absurd as a Form of Realism in Hungarian Literature -- On the German and English Versions of Márai's A gyertyák csonkig égnek (Die Glut and Embers) -- Exile, Homeland, and Milieu in the Oral Lore of Carpatho-Rusyn Jews -- Part Three: Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and the Other Arts -- Nation, Gender, and Race in the Ragtime Culture of Millennial Budapest -- Jewish (Over)tones in Viennese and Budapest Operetta -- Curtiz, Hungarian Cinema, and Hollywood -- Lost Dreams and Sacred Visions in the Art of Ámos -- Art Nouveau and Hungarian Cultural Nationalism -- Part Four: Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies and Gender Studies -- Hungarian Political Posters, Clinton, and the (Im)possibility of Political Drag -- The Cold War, Fashion, and Resistance in 1950s Hungary -- Sándor/Sarolta Vay, a Gender Bender in Fin-de-Siècle Hungary -- Women Managers Communicating Gender in Hungary -- Part Five: Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies of Contemporary Hungary -- Commemoration and Contestation of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary -- About the Jewish Renaissance in Post-1989 Hungary -- Aspects of Contemporary Hungarian Literature and Cinema.

This exploration of class, feminism, and cultural identity (including issues of race, nation, colonialism, and economic imperialism) focuses on the work of four writers: the Mozambican Mia Couto, the Portuguese José Saramago, the Brazilian Clarice Lispector, and the South African J. M. Coetzee. In the first section, the author discusses the political aspects of Couto's collection of short stories Contos do nascer da terra (Stories of the Birth of the Land) and Saramago's novel O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis). The second section explores similar themes in Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K and Lispector's A hora da estrela (The Hour of the Star). Marques argues that these four writers are political in the sense that they bring to the forefront issues pertaining to the power of literature to represent, misrepresent, and debate matter related to different subaltern subjects: the postcolonial subject, the poor subject (the "poor other"), and the female subject. She also discusses the "ahuman other" in the context of the subjectivity of the natural world, the dead, and the unborn, and shows how these aspects are present in all the different societies addressed and point to the mystical dimension that permeates most societies. With regard to Couto's work, this "ahuman other" is approached mostly through a discussion of the holistic, animist values and epistemologies that inform and guide Mozambican traditional societies, while in further analyses the notion is approached via discussions on phenomenology, elementality, and divinity following the philosophies of Lévinas and Irigaray and mystical consciousness in Zen Buddhism and the psychology of Jung.