From Kant to Dostoyevsky: Dmytro Čyževs’kyj’s Literary Anthropology

From Kant to Dostoyevsky: Dmytro Čyževs’kyj’s Literary Anthropology Patrick Flack Université de Fribourg [email protected] SYNOPSIS This paper reconstructs the core argument of Dmytro Čyževs’kyj’s unfinished project on formalism in ethics, developed in the late 1920s during his exile in Prague. Although the planned book never materialized, Čyževs’kyj published three articles and abroader set of related texts which, taken together, articulate adistinctive and coherent theoretical position. At its centre lies acompelling intuition: that literature plays afundamental role in the constitution of moral subjectivity— what may be termed Čyževs’kyj’s literary anthropology. Čyževs’kyj begins with acritique of Kantian formalism, identifying its abstraction from the concrete will of the individual subject as the root of abroader crisis in ethical theory. Rather than abandoning formalism, however, he seeks to reconfigure it, proposing that ethical meaning is not logically subsumed but symbolically embodied. This claim is developed both philosophically— in atypology of the forms of generality— and interpretively, through readings of Dostoyevsky’s motif of the double. Positioned alongside contemporaries such as Bakhtin, Lukács, and Kojève, Čyževs’kyj offers aunique response: not polyphony, but ontological doubling as the site of ethical individuation. KEYWORDS Dmytro Čyževs’kyj; Mikhail Bakhtin; Fyodor Dostoevsky; philosophical anthropology; literary theory; Kant; formalist ethics; double; reception. DOI https://doi.org/10.14712/23366680.2025.1.5 INTRODUCTION In the late 1920s, while in exile in Prague, Dmytro Čyževs’kyj set about writing abook on the question of formalism in ethics, the ‘fundamental theme’, according to him, of a‘contemporary crisis of ethical theory so extraordinarily profound and significant that it calls into question the very possibility of ethical theory in its traditional form’ (Čyževs’kyj 1928a, p.15). While the book never materialized as awhole, Čyževs’kyj published three articles providing ‘asummary of its individual chapters’ (Čyževs’kyj 1931a, p.50): ‘On Formalism in Ethics: Remarks on the Contemporary Crisis of Ethical Theory’ (Čyževs’kyj 1928a), ‘Logic and Ethics: The Question of Overcoming Ethical OPEN ACCESS PATRICK FLACK 87 “Formalism”’ (1928/1931, Čyževs’kyj 1931a)1 and ‘On the Problem of the Double in Dostoyevsky: APhilosophical Interpretation’ (Čyževs’kyj 1929a).2 Additionally, abroader body of related writings from the 1920s and 30s (e.g. ‘Hegel et Nietzsche’, ‘Schiller und die Brüder Karamazov’, ‘Dostoyevsky-psycholog’) also deals with the main themes broached by Čyževs’kyj in the three explicitly reclaimed chapters ‘from the book on formal ethics’ (cf. Janzen 2008, p.132; Plotnikov 2024, p.194). As the titles of Čyževs’kyj’s various articles suggest, their thematic range is strikingly broad— extending from ethics and logic to philosophical anthropology and literary criticism. Given the unfinished state of his book project, moreover, it is not immediately apparent whether these diverse explorations really constitute acoherent whole, or how exactly they were meant to coalesce into asystematic response to the question of formalism in ethics. Nevertheless, several core concerns recur throughout: the notion of ethical personality and its dual or divided nature, the problem of the (logical or literary) ‘form’ of ethical propositions, and the enduring centrality of figures such as Kant and Dostoyevsky, whose presence remains constant despite disciplinary and thematic shifts. It is also clear that Čyževs’kyj did at least have abroad, overarching project, and that these writings amount to an attempt at ‘systematic philosophy’ (cf. Janzen 2008, pp.125–127)— aview affirmed by Zenkov’skij (1950, p.460), and more recently by Nikolaj Plotnikov, who has persuasively proposed reconstructing Čyževs’kyj’s effort as the ‘draft of aphenomenological ethics’ (Plotnikov 2024). Our aim in this study, in this context, is to contribute to sharpening our understanding of the nature and import of Čyževs’kyj’s project on formalism in ethics by examining more precisely how his seemingly scattered and incomplete investigations can indeed be understood as articulating an original and coherent position. We focus on one central intuition that appears to underlie— or rather to constitute the potential theoretical point of crystallization of— the entire project: the crucial— perhaps even necessary— role of literature in the concrete process by which moral, human subjectivity is constituted or individuated. In this light, Iwish specifically to argue that Čyževs’kyj’s writings collectively outline atheory that, while fragmentary, may justifiably be described as his ‘literary anthropology’. Amajor ground for taking the perspective outlined in Čyževs’kyj’s writings on formalism in ethics seriously as acoherent position is that it did not exist in avacuum, but clearly demands to be situated in the discursive space constituted by very similar, if much more extensive and systematic explorations conducted by the likes of Mikhail Bakhtin, György Lukács, and Alexandre Kojève (cf. Tihanov 1999, 2000; Jacobs 2023) or, later, by such thinkers as Jakov Golosovker (Kant iDostoevskij, 1963), Mikhail Livšic (Problema Dostoevskogo, 2013), and Valerij Podoroga (Roždenie dvojnika, 2019). All these authors, indeed, trace abroadly parallel trajectory, from acritique of Kant, through Hegel and German idealism (as well as, more often than not, NeoKantianism and phenomenology), towards philosophical anthropology and finally, through Dostoyevsky, towards aliterary anthropology. The question of the relevance 1 This article is an extended version of the protocol of atalk given to the Dostoyevsky Society (‘Representant, Sign, Concept, Symbol’, 1928) and thus comes both chronologically and conceptually before the paper on the double. 2 We provide the translation of the more explicit title of the later German version of 1931. OPEN ACCESS 88 SLOVO A SMYSL 46 and originality of Čyževs’kyj in this fascinating context has never been properly addressed,3 and the reconstruction proposed here is meant as afirst step towards such acomparative analysis. For want of space and time, the aim of this paper will strictly consist in reconstructing and fleshing out the basic outlines of Čyževs’kyj’s literary anthropology, without either contextualising or assessing its broader significance to his work and thought as awhole. It is quite obvious, however, that this particular facet or episode did play acrucial role in Čyževs’kyj’s intellectual transition from his early interest in philosophy to his life-long focus on literature (cf. Mnich 2021, p.95ff). Much more, the literary anthropology he developed out of his critique of formalism in ethics seems to provide an essential key for understanding the specific orientation he gave towards the question of reception in his mature approach to literature itself (cf. ibid., esp. pp.23–50). 1. ‘ON FORMALISM IN ETHICS’: PARADOXES OF KANTIAN ABSTRACTION The starting point of Čyževs’kyj’s theoretical journey towards aliterary anthropology, broached in ‘On Formalism in Ethics’, is the paradoxical nature of Kantian ethics, which has been widely recognised— well before Čyževs’kyj, by Schiller, Fichte, etc.— both as having decisively contributed to defining the general conditions of possibility of afree moral human subject, but, at the exact same time, as precluding any understanding of the practical dimension of that concrete moral subject’s individual actions. While Čyževs’kyj thus credits Kant with having formulated ‘with maximal sharpness the basic provisions of ethical formalism’ (Čyževs’kyj 1928a, p.197), he also sees his formalism as having created the conditions for the contemporary crisis of ethical theory. In agreement with thinkers such as Max Scheler, Georg Simmel, and Georges Gurwitsch— whose own critiques of formalism he expressly acknowledges without thoroughly discussing them—, Čyževs’kyj sees in Kant’s formalism afoundational moment, which no post-Kantian philosophy has been able to shake off or refute (cf. Scheler 1913, p.405) and whose essential premise, ‘in an unclear and unconscious form, has been acommon property of almost all ethical theories up until the end of the 19th century’ (Čyževs’kyj 1928a, p.196). Although Čyževs’kyj never quite states this in explicit terms, his assumption is clearly that Kant successfully redefined the entire possible theoretical space for any future ethics and that his formalism thus effectively constitutes anecessary basis for any reflection on the conditions of ethical subjectivity. At the same time, Čyževs’kyj also acknowledges afatal flaw at the very core of Kant’s formalist ethics, namely his radical characterization of ‘ethical will as independent of all subjective differences or empirical conditions, as abstract from any matter, and thereby abstract from any object of desire or concrete goal’ (ibid., p.197). By separating in this dualistic way the general principles of moral action from the conditions of their concrete, specific applications, in Čyževs’kyj’s view, Kantian for3 The only traces of such acritical approach are to be found in Bitsili (cf. Vasil’eva 2008). OPEN ACCESS PATRICK FLACK 89 malism makes it all but impossible to address the real question of ethics, i.e. the practical dilemmas faced by the individual in the concrete determinations of his will: Ethical action is only possible if one chooses aside: to refuse adecision is to withdraw from the ethical sphere in general, or to refuse generally to be an ethical subject. This means that the focus of ethical action as such lies not in the application of general principles to the will, but in the very fact of the determination of the will in all its concreteness and individuality (ibid., p.201).4 Given the crucial role of Kantian formalism in redefining the foundations of ethical theory in general, its own contradictions thus seem to preclude the very possibility of any ethics whatsoever and therefore to plunge it into the profound crisis diagnosed by Čyževs’kyj. As he points out, ‘our own objections against ethical formalism seem, at first glance, to undermine the very possibility of ethical theory in general’ (ibid., p.202). While he is not alone in attacking the excessive abstraction and dualism of Kant’s ethics, Čyževs’kyj proposes away out of its paradoxes that sets him distinctly apart both from the attempts to ‘reground’ or ‘concretise’ Kant made by Schiller, Fichte, or Hegel, and from the later turn by Scheler to such notions as ‘material values’. Čyževs’kyj, indeed, sees Kant’s weakness not in the self-subsumption of the ethical subject to general, formal laws (through the categorical imperative)— i.e. in the very essence of formalism as acommitment to the universality, rationality, and necessity of moral laws— but much more technically, in his specific conception of the individual subject’s relation to these norms. Čyževs’kyj discretely alludes to the specific nature of his criticism of Kant in atelling footnote on Scheler: We believe that the critique of Kant, given in broad strokes in Max Scheler’s Der Formalismus in der Ethik, is in significant ways unjust and too harsh. The object of our own critique is not the historical Kant, but only distinct elements of his theory (ibid., p.209).5 In this narrow sense, Čyževs’kyj identifies two main problematic points in Kant’s characterization of the individual subject’s relation to ethical law. The first is of alogical nature. For Čyževs’kyj, an essential premise of Kant’s formalism consists in the recognition that ‘ethical theory must interpret reality in the same way and along the same path as any “theory” in general’ (ibid., p.196). If it is to 4 ‘В этическом действовании возможно только стать на одну или другую сторону; отказ же от решения— есть выпадение из этической сферы вообще, есть вообще отказ быть этическим субъектом.— А это значит, что центр тяжести этического действования как такового— не в приложении к воле общих принципов, а в самом факте определения воли во всей её конкретности и индивидуальности.’ Translations by me unless otherwise noted— P.F. 5 ‘Мы считаем критику этики Канта, данную в широких рамках цитированной книги М.Шелера, в значительной части несправедливой и слишком суровой. Объектом же нашей критики был не исторический Кант, а только отдельные элементы его теории.’ OPEN ACCESS 90 SLOVO A SMYSL 46 be atheory at all, ethics must follow the same rules as any theoretical knowledge or formal logic. For Kant, according to Čyževs’kyj, this implies that ethical theory cannot focus on contingent material or empirical facts, but only on their most general form, on the ‘necessary possibility’ of what ‘must happen, even if it has never happened before’ (ibid., p.198). Further, [i]t necessarily follows from this that the structure of ethical ‘principles’, ‘norms’, ‘laws’ is strictly the same as the structure of any other judgment: the relation of an ethical ‘particular case’ to the general rule, the concrete determination of the will with respect to the ethical law is the logical relation of ‘subsumption’ (ibid.).6 The categorical imperative represents exhibit number one of this logical understanding of the individual subject’s will and actions as being subsumed, as neutral or indifferent instantiations, under ahomogenous, universal law. Indeed, Kant posits that the ethical maxims of the will ‘must be chosen in such away that they can be valid as general laws of nature’ (quoted ibid., p.199) and thus display no individual specificity whatsoever. According to Čyževs’kyj, it is precisely this dogmatic decision to privilege the strict subsumption of the individual under the general as the only possible relation between the two that ultimately leads Kant to the ‘strange conclusion that the ethical character of an action is linked to its abstractedness from the concrete, that the founding trait of the moral world is its uniformity and monotony’ (ibid., p.200). Of course, ‘the fundamental dogmatic assumption of Kant’s logic does not appear to be indisputable’ (ibid.), and Čyževs’kyj thus explicitly declares that it needs to be rejected in order to salvage the very possibility of ethical theory (ibid., p.202). In contrast to Kant, he offers to ‘recognize the possibility of knowing an individual-concrete ethical reality, which at the same time does not absolutely have to be empiricosensible’ (ibid.). In other words, Čyževs’kyj postulates the necessity of conceiving another kind of logical relation between individual reality and general norm than the untenable form of logical subsumption, for example in the following way: The application of an ideal is not the subsumption of aparticular case under ageneral rule but rather acertain approximation to the maximum possible realization of the ideal ethical form as it appears to us, in all the inexhaustible complexity of its content and structure (ibid., p.202–203).7 Without elaborating this point any further, Čyževs’kyj then turns to the second fundamental problem he sees in the abstractedness of Kant’s formalism, namely its re6 ‘А отсюда следует с необходимостью, что структура этических «принципов, норм», «законов»— совершенно та же самая, что и структура всяких иных суждений; отношение этического «частного случая» к общему правилу, конкретного этического определения воли к этическому закону— есть отношение логического «подчинения».’ 7 ‘«Приложение» идеала— не есть подведение частного случая под общее правило, но известное приближение к максимальной возможной реализации предстоящего этического «облика» во всей неисчерпаемой сложности его содержания и структуры.’ OPEN ACCESS PATRICK FLACK 91 jection ‘of the ethical character of any determination of the will that is in any way oriented on the subject itself, on his enjoyment, satisfaction, pleasure’ (ibid., p.203). Kant’s own ground for this rejection is, of course, his same initial commitment to deal only with the general conditions of the determinations of the will, in abstraction of its concrete, material situation. Čyževs’kyj’s counter-argument, similarly, is thus again directed not against the main postulation of Kant’s formalism, but against the ‘dogmatic’ exclusion of concrete, individual factors in the very process of being oriented or determined by aformal, general law. As Čyževs’kyj tries to show by contrasting Kant’s dismissive attitude towards the ‘hedonistic’ principles of enjoyment, satisfaction, and pleasure with Plato’s, these principles are not necessarily tied to the concrete, material (i.e. basely biological and libidinal) dimension of the subject, but can also be seen as the fluid, unreliable effects of asubject’s wavering aims. In other words, enjoyment, satisfaction, pleasure are also goal-oriented actions, ‘they grow out of service’ (ibid.), and could thus potentially be integrated into another conception of formalism that seeks to grasp not only asubject’s pure orientation towards general laws, but his entire intentional involvement towards these same ethical principles. For Čyževs’kyj, probably following aphenomenological argument in this case (cf. Plotnikov 2024, p.186), that involvement is not simply accidental or contingent, but happens at an ‘ontological’ level and involves the entire personality of the ethical subject: All the more so, the hedonist who has linked the fate of his pleasure with aliving individuality, who has fallen in love, even if only carnally, for example Fjodor Pavlovič Karamazov, who has fallen in love egoistically with his child, etc., goes beyond the limits of the hedonistic world-view. Every concrete element of existence brings with it the overcoming and disintegration of hedonism. Thus, in his criticism of hedonism, Kant is completely wrong, directing his attacks precisely against the living and ontologically meaningful elements of pleasure (Čyževs’kyj 1928a, p.207).8 2. ETHICS AND LOGIC In the second ‘chapter’ of his planned book, ‘Ethics and Logic’, Čyževs’kyj turns his sights towards addressing the first of the two main weaknesses he identified in Kantian ethics, namely its commitment to the abstract subsumption of the individual under the general (cf. Čyževs’kyj 1931a, p.50). In ‘Formalism in Ethics’ Čyževs’kyj’s main focus had been to criticise the dogmatic and unsustainable use of subsumption and the only alternative to the model of logical subsumption he put forward, as 8 ‘Тем более выходит из пределов гедонистического мироотношения гедоник, связавший судьбу своего наслаждения с живой индивидуальностью, влюбившийся, хотя бы и чисто плотски, Фёдор Павлович Карамазов, эгоистический, но полюбивший своего ребёнка отец и т.п. Всякий конкретный элемент бытия несёт с собою преодоление и разложение гедонизма.— Итак, в критике гедонизма сугубо неправ Кант, направляющий удары как раз против живых и онтологически-содержательных элементов наслаждения.’ OPEN ACCESS 92 SLOVO A SMYSL 46 we saw, was the (itself rather Kantian) idea of ‘acertain approximation to the maximum possible realization’. In ‘Ethics and Logic’, he sets out on adifferent track, leaving altogether the framework of Kantian philosophy aside to question whether ‘the “application” of general principles to specific cases, considered from apurely logical point of view, is exhausted by the types and forms, which are traditionally accepted in (school!) logic’ (ibid., p.50). His answer, unsurprisingly, is negative, leading him to develop acompletely different conception of the logical relations between the general and the particular. Čyževs’kyj’s reflection on the topic, it has to be said, is idiosyncratic. Except for acouple of quick references to Gessen, Losskij, Weber, Marburg Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, and his own work on logic (ibid., p.53), he chooses not to situate his argument explicitly in acertain school or movement. He begins instead with avery succinct review of the importance of the theme of the ‘general’ (obščee) in the history of Western philosophy, which ‘in acertain sense is even more fundamental, more original than, for example, the notorious “gnoseological” problem of the knowledge of the “external world”’ (ibid., p.51). Having established the ‘original’ importance of the problem of the general, Čyževs’kyj moves on to the crux of his article, namely ‘the forms of givenness of the general’ (formy dannosti obščego), which he sees not as astrictly abstract or conceptual problem, but rather as pertaining more largely and fundamentally to the meaningful structures of experience itself. As Čyževs’kyj points out: the problem of the multiplicity of forms of givenness of the general is not exhausted by the problem of the multiplicity of aspects of concepts. The general encompasses amuch wider sphere than that of abstract thinking, and has deeper roots than only in the concept (ibid., p.53).9 Instead, Even the most naive approach to being itself can convince us that being is immediately given to us as permeated, intertwined, and interlinked with elements of the general. We do not even have to look for them, we do not need to ‘question’ being, for it reveals itself as general (ibid.).10 On the basis of this assertion, Čyževs’kyj proceeds to distinguish four different modes of immediate givenness of the general: repetition, concentration, conjugation, movement (ibid., p.56). As he points out: 9 ‘Но ведь проблема многообразия форм данности общего не исчерпывается проблемой множественности видов понятия. Общее охватывает более широкую сферу, чем только абстрактное мышление, и коренится глубже, чем только в понятии.’ 10 ‘Уже самый непосредственный, непредвзятый, наивный подход к бытию убеждает нас, что бытие непосредственно предстоит нам пронизанное, оплетённое и связанное элементами общего. Их даже не приходится искать, не нужно «вопрошать» бытие, ибо оно само раскрывается как общее.’ OPEN ACCESS PATRICK FLACK 93 These categories do not take us beyond the bounds of immediacy. They all provide us in immediate, i.e. in undifferentiated and unformed being, various forms and ‘styles’ of the general in the individual (ibid.).11 Having defined these four general modes of givenness of the general, Čyževs’kyj can then explain what form they take on concretely, articulating thereby atypology that is not dissimilar to that of Charles Sanders Peirce, both in its general conception of ‘logic’ as essentially aformal semiotic and in the specific articulation it establishes between the types of semiotic functions or units: The general can be given either as asingle link of the repeating chain, as apoint of concentration or ‘collection’, as the centre of agroup, or as the form embracing that group, or, finally, as amovement, aconstituting commonality. As aresult, we achieve asystem of four fundamental aspects of the givenness of the general, which we shall call, in adequation with their essence: representative, sign, concept, symbol (ibid., p.58).12 The rest of the article is dedicated to the details of this semiotic typology, which constitutes asort of progression: while the representative constitutes the most abstract relation between the general and the singular (by simply repeating the general in the singular), the symbol appears as aconcrete being ‘expressing’ another being (which can be general) in the fullness of its concreteness (ibid., p.62). We are not able, unfortunately, to linger further on this model, which, as Čyževs’kyj himself notes, requires further development by adding 4 sub-modes to each main aspect, and with which, at the very time of writing ‘Ethics and Logic’, he was already ‘no longer satisfied’ (ibid., p.58). In any case, what we have seen so far is enough to illustrate what Isee as the two main points of Čyževs’kyj’s answer to the abstraction of Kant’s formalism. Firstly, on ageneral level, we see that Čyževs’kyj chooses the somewhat surprising path of attacking Kant on the technical terrain of logic: it is neither Kant’s conception of reason (and its limits) nor of man, much less his deontology and the formalism of the categorical imperative that are the target of Čyževs’kyj’s critique, but the rather narrow question of the logical subsumption of the individual under the general. Whether one wishes to agree with Čyževs’kyj’s specific typology or not, it is clear that this is avalid and interesting avenue of criticism, one that developed at approximately the same time in anumber of works by other thinkers (we mentioned 11 ‘Эти категории не выводят нас за границы непосредственности. Все они— в непосредственности, т.е. в недифференцированном и неоформленном бытии— дают нам в различном виде и «стиле» общее в единичном.’ 12 ‘Общее может быть дано или в одном звене повторяющегося, или как пункт концентрации, «собирания», как средоточие группы, или как охватывающая группу форма, или, наконец, как движение, конституирующее общность. Таким образом, мы получаем систему четырёх основных видов данности общего, которые мы и назовём— соответственно с их существом: представитель, знак, понятие, символ.’ OPEN ACCESS 94 SLOVO A SMYSL 46 the obvious case of Peirce, but one could add the phenomenologists Husserl and Heidegger, as well as the Neo-Kantians Cohen and Cassirer). Secondly, Čyževs’kyj makes adecisive move by turning away from astatic, homogenous understanding of the subsumption of the individual under the general, privileged in the categories of pure representation, semiotic description or conceptual distillation, towards the dynamic, living form of the symbol. The intimation of Čyževs’kyj’s typology, when understood in connection with his criticism of Kant, is indeed that ethical norms are instantiated and can be correctly understood not as the pure application of ageneral idea or as purely applied concepts, but as concrete, infinitely varying symbols. In other words, the ethical dimension of the individual actions of asubject are not to be abstracted from their concrete determinations, but are to be seen as being realized and expressed symbolically, or in symbolic form, by the entirety of the concrete context of the subject’s life and activity. Here again, it is worth noting, Čyževs’kyj is not alone in this turn to the symbolic as the locus of the possibility and realization of the worlds of ethics and culture in aKantian perspective (the most evident point of reference is of course Cassirer, cf. Mnich 2015). 3. DOSTOYEVSKY’S DOUBLES Having thus ‘rescued’ the very possibility of ethical theory by tracing the outlines of formalism’s escape from the clutches of logical subsumption— by demonstrating how the expression of general ethical laws attains an inexhaustible complexity and variety in concrete, living symbolic forms—, Čyževs’kyj turns, in the third ‘chapter’ of his book, ‘On the Problem of The Double’, to face the second of the two conundrums he has identified in Kant’s formalism, namely the dualism it introduces between inclination (Neigung) and duty (Pflicht), or more generally between the concrete determinations of asubject’s will and its relation to the general ethical norm. As was the case in ‘Ethics and Logic’, Čyževs’kyj’s strategy is not to try to work directly within the framework of Kant’s philosophy (for example by considering his Third Critique or his Anthropology), but rather to articulate atheoretical position that answers the paradox it raises while respecting the general premises of ethical formalism. Instead of developing his own theoretical model, Čyževs’kyj offers this time to use the figure of the double in the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky as the basis of his argument. While this turn to literature and Dostoyevsky might appear quite sudden, it is in fact foreshadowed in several significant ways. In ‘Formalism in Ethics’, for example, Dostoyevsky’s Fedor Karamazov is mentioned as an illustration of the ‘ontological’ (rather than ‘accidental’ and purely ‘empirical’) dimension of the concrete elements determining aperson’s ethical horizon (Čyževs’kyj 1928a, p.207). In ashort autobiographical text from 1945, Čyževs’kyj even suggests that ‘some of my Dostoyevsky-articles should be considered as preliminary studies to my book on formalism in ethics’ (quoted in Janzen 2008, p.125). As for the turn to literature, it must be interpreted as alogical consequence of Čyževs’kyj’s argument in ‘Ethics and Logic’: given that ethical norms manifest themselves in individual human actions in the form not of abstract, conceptual judgements, but of complex, living symbols, it bears to reason OPEN ACCESS PATRICK FLACK 101 happened as aresult […]. At the heart of the plot is therefore Goljadkin’s attempt, following the total rejection of his person by others, to replace others with himself (Bakhtin 1929, p.32). Far from providing acounter to Čyževs’kyj’s insistence on the importance of the double and tendency on the part of Dostoyevsky’s characters to manifest schizophrenic inner dialogue, the obviously Hegelian undertones of this passage, which sees the Double as an aborted attempt at dialogical recognition and constitution of the self, are precisely what distinguishes Bakhtin from Čyževs’kyj. For Čyževs’kyj, indeed, Goljadkin’s schizophrenia and doubling are not interpreted as afailing or symptom of his unsuccessful attempt towards aHegelian constitution of the self through recognition and dialogue, but as aconstitutive moment in the creation of any moral subject. As we have seen, some of the strongest of Dostoyevsky’s characters seem to be constructed almost solely through aschizophrenic de-doubling into other characters, and not through an ‘internalized dialogue’. This is the case most spectacularly with Stavrogin, who seems to inform the construction of all the other characters in Demons, but also with Ivan Karamazov, who engages both in ‘real’ dialogues, for example with his brothers, but who also has apowerful double in the figure of Smerdjakov. Again, there is no horizon here of overcoming the schizophrenic split of the subject through aradical opening to dialogue and polyphony. Schizophrenic doubling for Čyževs’kyj is an unavoidable moment or rite of passage in the constitution of the ethical subject both in Dostoyevsky, and more generally. Asubjectivity that does not go through the confrontation with its semiexteriorized self remains abstract, and can have no claim to be constituted as afull, integral, moral subject. This of course raises with extreme acuity one further problem, which Bakhtin’s polyphony had seemingly addressed: namely that of the status of the work of art itself, and the author’s position vis-à-vis the work.21 If one rejects the Bakhtinian idea that an author can divest himself of his own position, and let the other speak in his work, then the work itself must be considered as aschizophrenic operation or exercise of de-doubling: in this sense, they are only abstract, intellectual products that do not reveal the full personality either of their author or of the characters he has created. This actualization can intervene only through the ‘completion’ of the text in the act of its reading: the productive, moral tension of the double that is awork of literature in relation to its authors must be enlivened and realized in areceptive horizon by areader, who will ultimately decide and resolve (for himself) the tensions between the real and fantastical, abstract and concrete. The main problem of formalism in ethics thus appears to be, and was indeed treated as such by Čyževs’kyj, the question of reader-response and reception. 21 As believes Zenkin, that problem is in fact already present in Bakhtin himself: ‘The problem of the fantastic in literature, as shown by Dostoevsky’s The Double, lies not only in the verbal economy of atext but also, and perhaps primarily, in its receptive structure, where the “architectonic” order imposed by the author is overturned. Bakhtin’s metalinguistic analysis proves valid in its essentials, but it must be taken further—beyond the authorial activity—toward the experience of the reader’ (Zenkin 2021, p.534). OPEN ACCESS 102 SLOVO A SMYSL 46 LITERATURE Bakhtin, Mikhail: Problemy tvorčestva Dostoevskogo. Priboj, Leningrad 1929. Bakhtin, Mikhail: Filosofskaja ėstetika 1920-ch godov. Russkie slovari, Moscow 2003. Cherkasova, Evgenia: Dostoevsky and Kant: Dialogues on Ethics. Rodopi, Amsterdam 2009. 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