Hermeneutics and Its Problems: With Selected Essays in Phenomenology

322 Pages·2019·2.587 MB·English

by  Gustav Shpet, Thomas Nemeth

Contributions To Phenomenology 98
Gustav Shpet
Thomas Nemeth Editor/Translator
Hermeneutics
and Its
Problems
With Selected Essays in Phenomenology
Contributions To Phenomenology
In Cooperation with The Center
for Advanced Research in Phenomenology
Volume 98
Series Editors
Nicolas de Warren, KU Leuven, Belgium
Ted Toadvine, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA
Editorial Board
Lilian Alweiss, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Elizabeth Behnke, Ferndale, WA, USA
Rudolf Bernet, Husserl Archive, KU Leuven, Belgium
David Carr, Emory University, GA, USA
Chan-Fai Cheung, Chinese University Hong Kong, China
James Dodd, New School University, NY, USA
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University, FL, USA
Alfredo Ferrarin, Università di Pisa, Italy
Burt Hopkins, University of Lille, France
José Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Kwok-Ying Lau, Chinese University Hong Kong, China
Nam-In Lee, Seoul National University, Korea
Rosemary R.P. Lerner, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru
Dieter Lohmar, University of Cologne, Germany
William R. McKenna, Miami University, OH, USA
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University, OH, USA
J.N. Mohanty, Temple University, PA, USA
Junichi Murata, University of Tokyo, Japan
Thomas Nenon, The University of Memphis, TN, USA
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Germany
Gail Soffer, Rome, Italy
Anthony Steinbock, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, IL, USA
Shigeru Taguchi, Hokkaido University, Japan
Dan Zahavi, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University, TN, USA
Scope
The purpose of the series is to serve as a vehicle for the pursuit of phenomenological
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welcoming monographs and collections of papers in established areas of scholarship,
the series encourages original work in phenomenology. The breadth and depth of
the Series reflects the rich and varied significance of phenomenological thinking for
seminal questions of human inquiry as well as the increasingly international reach
of phenomenological research.
The series is published in cooperation with The Center for Advanced Research in
Phenomenology.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5811
Gustav Shpet
Thomas Nemeth
Editor/Translator
Hermeneutics and Its
Problems
With Selected Essays in Phenomenology
Gustav Shpet (deceased)
Thomas Nemeth
Manchester, NJ, USA
Translated by Thomas Nemeth
ISSN 0923-9545 ISSN 2215-1915 (electronic)
Contributions To Phenomenology
ISBN 978-3-319-98940-2 ISBN 978-3-319-98941-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98941-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959850
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Editor’s Introduction to Hermeneutics and Its
Problems
Shpet’s Early Years
Gustav Shpet (1879–1937), a name once little known in either the West or the Soviet
Union, has now become increasingly recognized among scholars of various disci-
plines both in the West and in Russia. His contributions to phenomenological phi-
losophy include a non-egological conception of consciousness that in nuce predates
those of Sartre and Aron Gurwitsch by decades,1 and his rigorous studies of the
history of Russian philosophy, though less known in the West, also predate the bet-
ter known works of V. V. Zenkovsky and N. O. Lossky by many years. Shpet, to his
demise, chose to stay in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s even though two dis-
tinct opportunities to emigrate appear to have presented themselves, one of which,
according to family testimony, was officially encouraged!2 During those years of
ever-increasing repression, he persevered after the loss of his professorship as best
he could, working in philosophical aesthetics and then writing a pioneering study of
Wilhelm von Humboldt’s philosophy of language under the auspices of the State
Academy for the Study of the Arts (GAKhN). Finally, during the following decade
of the 1930s, deprived of all academic avenues to earn a living for himself and his
1 For Shpet’s non-egological conception of consciousness, see Appendix 1.
2 Soon after being appointed the Lithuanian ambassador to Russia in 1920, Jurgis Baltrušaitis, an
old friend, offered Shpet Lithuanian citizenship and a passport to his entire family. The second
opportunity, allegedly, was to board the “philosophers’ steamship” in 1922 bound for a one-way
trip to Germany upon Lenin’s express “invitation.” Shpet successfully appealed presumably to the
Soviet Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, whom he knew from his student days in
Kiev. In her amazing work on the “philosophers’ steamship,” Chamberlain lists Shpet among those
“reprieved.” Chamberlain 2006: 312. Although Shpet’s name does not appear on any of the surviv-
ing lists of those to be deported, those lists may not be complete. The editorial in the 31 August
1922 issue of Pravda announced the impending expulsion of “dissident intellectuals,” but no
names were given. We still today do not have an accurate list or even the number of those to be
expelled. Glavackij 2002: 3–4, 6. Galin Tihanov has voiced cautious support for the claim that
Shpet was among those to be expelled based on an unsubstantiated report in a Berlin émigré paper
that Shpet had been arrested on the night of 16 August 1922. See Tihanov 2009a: 46, 58.
v
vi Editor’s Introduction to Hermeneutics and Its Problems
family, Shpet produced a veritable torrent of translations including works by
Berkeley, Dickens, and Hegel, among others. Sadly, Stalin’s consolidation of power
had as one consequence the starkest suppression not only of all but the most simplis-
tic Marxist thought, but of virtually all individuals perceived in any way as opposed
to the Soviet regime. Shpet, remaining true to his convictions to the end, was first
exiled to Siberia in 1935 and relatively soon afterward summarily shot.3
Among Shpet’s interests, in addition to those mentioned above, was the theoreti-
cal grounding of the “human sciences,” or, to use the German terminology,
Geisteswissenschaften. In fact, it was arguably his earliest philosophical concern.
Shpet had selected a historical survey of philosophies of the human sciences as the
topic for his magister’s thesis while already studying at the University of Moscow.4
It was in pursuit of original source material that Shpet undertook an extended jour-
ney to Western Europe that included Berlin, Paris, and Edinburgh, but, most impor-
tantly, Göttingen, where he stayed from September 1912 to July 1913 writing that
thesis and where he met Husserl, who was then teaching there.5
Returning to Moscow, Shpet went on to defend what had become an enormous
thesis in 1916, his Istorija kak problema logiki [History as a Problem of Logic].
Regrettably but understandably given its topic, his thesis reveals little of the deep
influence Husserl had on Shpet’s formulations and positions by the time the work
was published. He did, however, provide in it a brief sketch of his disengagement
with his youthful Marxism and, more specifically, his disillusion with the philoso-
phy of history it offered.
Already in my student days, I was fascinated by the topic that I am only now beginning to
carry out. We entered the university enchanted by the radicalism and the simple solution to
the problem that historical materialism temptingly promised us at the time. A deeper study
of history – an acquaintance with the original historical sources and with the methods of
handling those sources – destroyed many schemas. But most importantly it clearly demon-
strated the poverty and the limitations that this apparent “simplicity” had introduced into
the discipline.6
3 Shpet’s increasing intellectual isolation after the loss of his university position surely affected his
mental health. Tihanov, gathering an impressive amount of material, concludes that Shpet’s “health
was distinctly fragile throughout the 1920s.” Tihanov 2008: 280.
4 The expression “magister’s thesis” is purposely used here to avert any possible association in the
reader’s mind with the “master’s thesis” of today either in scope or length. Shpet’s thesis, as pub-
lished was approximately 500 pages!
5 Judging from surviving letters, Shpet quite possibly first met Husserl between October and
November 1912. In a letter to his future wife from 8 October of that year, Shpet made no mention
of Husserl, but in a letter from 15 November to a friend, Elena Metner, he specifically mentions
having met Husserl. See Shchedrina 2005a: 323. Still the question remains what led Shpet to seek
out Husserl. Shpet, after all, had come to Göttingen already in late April. Could Lev Shestov, an
“existential philosopher” have been an instigator? In a brief letter dated 5 August 1912 Shestov
wrote to Shpet that he would be interested in reading his work – presumably Shpet’s future thesis.
Shestov then adds, “More interesting would be your impression from a personal acquaintance with
Husserl. Judging from the card you sent me, he is a very important person.” Shchedrina 2005a:
324. Unfortunately, we do not know what Shpet wrote to Shestov.
6 Shpet 2002: 35.
Editor’s Introduction to Hermeneutics and Its Problems vii
Thus, taking Shpet at his word in 1916, he entered his university studies infatuated
with Marxism taken primarily as a philosophy of history.7
The “spell” of Marxism, however, could not have lasted long. Based on his pub-
lications, he switched his allegiance to Heinrich Rickert of the so-called Baden
School of neo-Kantianism, at least with regard to the philosophy of the human sci-
ences.8 Importantly for all his future studies and his future orientation, this early
neo-Kantianism did not entail an uncritical acceptance of Kant’s “Critical
Philosophy” even at this early date. Through Rickert’s eyes, Shpet believed that
Kant had understood science too narrowly. In a 1904 review of an anthology of
essays commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of Kant’s death, Shpet wrote
that Kant’s limited vision of science was understandable and forgivable given the
state of, for example, chemistry and psychology at the time. However, since then
both have been acknowledged as sciences just as much as physics was a century
earlier. Indeed, Shpet writes, “we are now proceeding further, opening up a new
sphere of scientific knowledge, viz., the historical sciences. The elaboration of their
methodology is today’s task.”9 Whereas in Kant’s day the writing of history was
tantamount to the writing of belle-lettres, the change in attitude toward the former
was largely the result of an infusion of the spirit of Critical Philosophy into scholar-
ship. Nevertheless, natural science, as Shpet saw it at this time, was interested in
viewing phenomena in terms of constant and general concepts leading to laws as
forms of reason. History, on the other hand, while concerned unlike natural science
with separate and individual phenomena, selected the phenomena for study based
on their value for us.10
7 The difficulty in assigning a year to Shpet’s commencing his university studies arises from the
fact that he first enrolled in the department of physics and mathematics at Kiev University in 1898
and then was expelled for political activities. He was unable to resume work at the University until
1901, at which time he switched enrollment to the historico-philological department. That his
interest in Marxism during this interregnum was not limited to its philosophy of history appears
clear from his intention addressed to Petr Struve to translate Engels’ Anti-Dühring. In a letter from
November 1900, Struve replied to Shpet that although the intention was excellent, Engels’ book
had already been adequately translated. See Shchedrina 2012: 101. Actually, Anti-Dühring in its
entirety had not yet been translated into Russian and would not be until 1907. A censored transla-
tion of the work appeared in 1904 in St. Petersburg, but at the time of Struve’s letter to Shpet, only
selected sections and pages had yet appeared in print.
8 Haardt, albeit with less specificity, writes that Shpet during his university studies from 1898 to
1905 began as an adherent of historical materialism followed by an indefinite phase bearing a
“Rickertian stamp.” Haardt 1993: 72. Tihanov, perhaps with a different interest, sees Shpet’s intel-
lectual career as falling into four periods, the first of which begins only in 1903 and ends in
1912/13 with his “turn” to phenomenology. See Tihanov 2009a: 44. During his “Rickertian” phase,
Shpet published a translation in 1904 of Rickert’s Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis. See Rickert
1904.
9 Shpet 2010: 53.
10 Shpet’s dissatisfaction with Rickert came about shortly after setting out to write his thesis. In its
“Preface,” explicitly dated February 1916, he wrote about this earlier period. “I was still under the
hypnosis of the Kantian delusion. I still ‘believed’ in Rickert’s assurance that ‘in the pre-Kantian
philosophy of the past and the present, nothing has been done decisively to clarify the problems of
the logic of historical science’.” Shpet 2002: 36–37. More than a decade later, Shpet in reflection
viii Editor’s Introduction to Hermeneutics and Its Problems
Such basically, at least, was Shpet’s attitude when he commenced his study of
historical methodologies. Only with imprecision can we determine when Shpet
actually initiated writing his thesis. The number of surviving letters from these years
is comparatively meager, and they are of little assistance. However, in one from
Berlin dated June 1910, he wrote that he was working in a library there, presumably
gathering material and writing. A month later, he proceeded to Bonn, Würzburg, and
Leipzig. Shpet returned to Berlin in the summer of 1911, again to continue research-
ing and writing. During the following academic year, he returned to Moscow, where
he taught psychology, but in April 1912 he was in Göttingen, already embarking on
what became the second part of his massive work. In the absence of documentation
to the contrary, then, we can conclude Shpet had virtually completed the first part of
his thesis, which he would defend and publish in 1916, by the time of his extended
stay in Göttingen. The mentioned second part would remain unpublished and largely
unknown for almost nine decades. That the body of the first part would show no
evidence of a Husserlian influence is understandable, given the probable period of
its composition minus its final accompanying “Preface” and “Introduction,” both of
which reveal a distinctly Husserlian imprint.11 Husserl’s name, however, is men-
tioned but once in the “Introduction,” and in a footnote at that in connection with his
1914 book Appearance and Sense.
Hermeneutics as the Epistemology of History
The second part of his huge History as a Problem of Logic included long chapters
on Dilthey and Rickert.12 Quite possibly, it was in conjunction with his work on
Dilthey that Shpet conceived the idea of a separate third part to his work that would
be a history of hermeneutics. Whatever the case, he later decided to try to publish
what he had written on that topic independently, incorporating into it only an insig-
nificant amount of the material he had accumulated for the projected second part of
on the Baden School of neo-Kantianism viewed its “indisputable contribution” to be a return “to a
recognition of the individuality of the historical subject” and that the Baden philosophers “starting
from this characteristic attempted to point out the logical specificity of the historical sciences.
However, I think that in proceeding fundamentally from Kantianism, knowing only the epistemol-
ogy of the ‘mathematical natural sciences,’ let alone the general defects of Kantian subjectivism,
they did not completely overcome naturalism.” Shchedrina 2005a: 450. This assessment is from a
letter of 1928 to the historian D. M. Petrushevskij (1863–1942).
11 Given the explicit date of its completion, a Husserlian influence on the “Preface” should hardly
be surprising. And whereas the “Introduction” bears no date, a primary concern throughout is to
combat any form of reductionism. Additionally, in it, Shpet wrote, “Therefore, philosophy always
studies beginnings; its object is ‘principles’ and sources, foundations. Philosophy is by its essence
always first philosophy.” Shpet 2002: 51. Cf. Husserl 2002: 294: “But by its essence, philosophy
is the science of the true beginnings, of the origins …”
12 In a letter from Göttingen to his wife dated 10 January 1913, Shpet mentions that he had previ-
ously decided to be finished with Dilthey on that date “no matter what” and start writing about
Rickert the next day. See Shchedrina 2005a: 170.
Editor’s Introduction to Hermeneutics and Its Problems ix
the History.13 The text for the separate work on the history of hermeneutics was
already completed in July 1918 and prepared for publication in 1919, but the wide-
spread chaotic conditions in Russia at the time made such an undertaking quite
impossible. Only many decades later in the period 1990–1993 did Hermeneutics
and Its Problems posthumously appear serialized in the Russian journal Kontekst
and then later newly edited by Tat’jana Shchedrina in 2005 as part of her edition of
Shpet’s collected works. It is this edition that served as the basis of the present
translation.
Turning to the impetus behind Shpet’s work on the history of hermeneutics, we
find Shpet already in his quickly composed Appearance and Sense – a commentary
and meditation on Husserl’s recent (1913) Ideen I – troubled, as it were, with,
among other issues, how the understanding or comprehension of an actual object is
possible.14 Is such a comprehension tantamount to an interpretation? The issue
becomes all the more acute when the object of study turns from being a physical
thing actually before us to a historical object, something that we obviously cannot
directly examine. Nevertheless, the general question of the means of “penetrating”
into the real object, into its authentic being to reveal its “inner sense,” is the question
to which the entire development of phenomenology has led. The historian, unlike
the natural scientist, has only documents filled with printed words as the object of
investigation.15
Shpet, in his History, remarked that historical evidence is not an “observation,”
but always a sign that can be interpreted. Unlike in natural science, where the repeti-
tion of events aids to corroborate the veracity of our knowledge-claims, in history
such corroboration can only be by way of an appeal to the testimony of witnesses.
Even a witness to an event can become aware that he or she is “observing” a histori-
cal phenomenon only by means of an appropriate interpretation. Thus, historical
cognition is never simply a matter of either the empirical or the rational cognition of
experience. No, historical cognition always presupposes interpretation or compre-
hension. In this way, such cognition requires its own epistemology.16 Moreover, our
issue is more complicated when dealing with historical concepts than with concepts
in the natural sciences, for the very meaning of the former appears as a sign requir-
ing a special hermeneutics for the disclosure of its meaning. Documents – indeed all
documents – are signs, and, as such, they demand the comprehension of certain
actions that, in turn, are signs that shield the movement of historical factors. These
factors can be grasped only through comprehension. Thus, Shpet reasons that there
13 Shpet 2005: 416.
14 Husserl’s Ideen I appeared in April 1913. By mid-October 1913, Shpet had already finished the
bulk of Appearance and Sense. Shchedrina 2014: 142.
15 We should keep in mind here and throughout Shpet’s account of historical methodology that in
his time historians had to rely on written documents alone. Today, we have access to video record-
ings and audio files as source material for recent historical events.
16 Shpet 2002: 287. Since these statements appear in the third chapter of the first part of the History,
we can conclude, albeit with measured caution, that Shpet set out these thoughts before 1912 and,
therefore, before his acquaintance with Husserl.