16 - Adventures in dialectic and intuition: Shpet, Il′in, Losev

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Three of the most remarkable, and remarkably independent, Russian philosophers of the early twentieth century each developed an approach to philosophy that apparently combined significant elements of Hegelian dialectic and Husserlian intuitionism. That aim is perhaps most clearly manifested in the self-proclaimed “dialectical phenomenology” of Losev. However, Shpet's development of a Husserlian phenomenology was explicitly set within an Hegelian framework, and Il′in's interpretation of Hegel was notable for its insistence that Hegel's dialectical method should be understood as an earlier version of the very same intuitionist intellectual procedure that Husserl came to call “phenomenology.”

Since Hegel and Husserl do not at first glance appear to have been engaged in parallel modes of inquiry, why did their philosophical projects loom so large in the thinking of these three very different Russian philosophers? In all three cases the Russians' interest in Hegel and Husserl went directly to the question of method – a focus that places us immediately at the heart of each of their visions of the philosophical project, illuminating crucial contrasts and comparisons among them. Moreover, in stipulating their attitudes toward Hegel and Husserl, each of these philosophers inevitably revealed something of his understanding of the relation of Russian philosophical thought to the western tradition as a whole.