Patrick Flack (Charles University Prague)

Between Literature and Philosophy:

Russian Formalism and the Neo-Kantians

Russian Formalism constitutes all at once a very

obvious and a very confusing topic for a discussion of the
interrelations of literature and philosophy in a Russian
context. The Russian formalists’ obvious relevance here
stems of course from their well-known attempt to frame
literature as a specific, autonomous and clearly-defined
object of inquiry, an attempt which entailed a strong
rejection of the conflation of philosophical and literary
discourses that can be seen as typical of 19th century
Russian culture. By providing a decidedly negative answer
to the question of literature’s philosophical or reflexive
functions, Russian Formalism even appears to have
heralded the irruption in Russia of a new, “Western”
viewpoint that considers literature and philosophy as two
separate and clearly distinct types of discourse.
Confusingly, however, Russian formalism also seems to
have failed both in successfully establishing the autonomy
of literature and in clarifying the latter’s new relation to
philosophy. On the one hand, the formalists’ early
definitions of literature as an exclusively aesthetic or
poetic phenomenon were soon challenged and had to be
very thoroughly adapted and expanded in order to take into
account the ideological, social, historical and moral
components they had initially sought to expunge. On the
other hand, the formalists’ explicit refusal to discuss the
epistemological and philosophical implications of their
own theorizing in systematic terms prevented them from

1
articulating a clear explanation of their implicit view of
philosophy as a reflexive, methodological tool. As a result,
instead of providing a new categorisation of literary and
philosophical discourses, Russian Formalism seems to
have led both categories to implode and dissolve.
The most common reaction to this unfortunate state of
affairs has been to dismiss Russian Formalism as a mostly
failed, if insightful and stimulating experiment that did not
quite have the theoretical means of its radical ambitions
(e.g. Erlich 1955, Selden 1995). Although quite a few of
the insights and concepts of Russian Formalism have
remained influential over the years and have been recycled
individually in contemporary narratology, versification or
literary history, its general vision of literature has on the
whole been thoroughly rejected for its lack of conceptual
foundations and clarity. This generally disparaging
judgment has tended to be corroborated moreover by the
nowadays widespread tendency to question both the
possibility of providing a definition of literature as such
and the sustainability of literary theory as a clearly
delimited, independent discipline (Tihanov 2004, Butler et
al. 2000). To be sure, more charitable interpretations of the
formalist legacy are nonetheless to be found, one can think
in particular of Aage Hansen-Löve’s inevitable Der
russische Formalismus (1978), or of Jan Levčenko’s
recent Drugaja nauka (2012). In these cases, the
breakdown of the formalists’ autonomising conception of
literature and their resulting return to a more integral,
philosophical perspective are not seen as implying the
confusion or dissolution of the categories of literature and
philosophy. Rather, both authors point to the originality of
the formalists’ later approach in which, by taking on an
explicitly existential dimension, literature does assume a

2
general philosophical or reflexive function, but on its own
terms, as a mean of aesthetic realisation of the world (cf.
Hansen-Löve 1978:570-586). A lingering problem of this
aesthetico-existential vision of literature, of course, is that
it was never founded systematically by the formalists and
therefore only features as a sort of semi-scientific model,
whose problematic epistemological status is comparable to
other Russian or Soviet “ideological” theories of the time
such as Marrism and Eurasism.
With these couple of very brief observations in mind,
one might be tempted at this point to envisage Russian
Formalism as a naïve, unfounded and bungled attempt to
introduce a Western separation of literature and
philosophy in a Russian context, which was promptly re-
versed into an original but typically Russian “mixed” or
hybrid brand of discourse. In effect, it would seem that
Russian Formalism in its more mature manifestations (i.e.
from the mid 1920s onwards) might be best understood as
a slightly updated manifestation of the specific Russian
way of considering literature and philosophy as closely
interrelated mediums of self-reflexivity. As such, one
might even want to consider Formalism as the vector of a
Russian cultural specificity and a witness of its different
path within Modernity. In such a case, Formalism’s
conceptual significance should of course be evaluated
primarily against its specific Russian background and its
conceptual relevance probably restricted to the Russian
cultural sphere. As has been shown by Patrick Sériot in
relation to the role of eurasist ideas in the work of the so-
called “Russians of Prague” (Jakobson, Trubeckoj,
Savickij), such a specific approach, by treating the
ideological component of a given theory seriously and
contextually, can definitely yield insights that a

3
conceptually stricter and nominally more “universal”,
Western scientific point of view is almost certain to
overlook (Sériot 1999).
My intention here will not be to deny the merits of
such “Russian-centric” interpretations of Russian
Formalism. Unquestionably, there is a certain Russian
specificity to the formalists’ work, which is best explored
and understood in reference to the parameters of the
Russian cultural context and its intellectual history. I do
wish to argue, however, that it is too easy to simply
consider Formalism only as the typical product and
standard-bearer of a distinctly Russian way of treating the
relationship between literary, scientific and philosophical
discourse. Such a view, I believe, is indeed much too quick
in dismissing both Russian Formalism’s attachment to its
initial, apparently “Western” programme and the
conceptual potency of that programme itself. In effect, a
closer look can reveal clear evidence that the collapse of
the formalists’ autonomising definition of literature was
not so much a function of their own shortcomings in
introducing a new categorisation between literary and
philosophical discourses than of a much larger crisis of the
Western template upon which they based this attempt. As
such, it even seems possible to interpret the formalists’
attempt, in the mid 1920s, to resolve the crisis of their
autonomising conception of literature by reverting to a
broader philosophical and existential perspective not as a
clear-cut abandonment of their initial Western framework
and as a return to a Russian tradition they had at first
explicitly rejected, but as a bold new answer to the
paradoxes and crisis of that Western perspective itself.
Obviously, a crucial premise of my argument here is
that Russian Formalism’s attempt to redefine literature as

4
an autonomous object of inquiry was indeed underpinned
by a definite Western epistemological model in the first
place. The question of the presence of such an episte-
mological template behind the formalists’ theories,
however, has been debated before and the general
consensus has been that Formalism simply exhibits too
little conceptual unity and coherence to provide sufficient
credence for such a possibility (Steiner 1984:15-28,
Medvedev 1994:97). In that spirit, the best attempts to pin
down the essence of the formalists’ theoretical project
have been confined to listing their main sources of
philosophical influence: Aristotle, Bergson, Christiansen,
Hegel, Hume, Husserl, Nietzsche and Wundt are the
authors most frequently cited in this context (cf. Hansen-
Löve 1978 for the broadest scope of sources). All these
thinkers are undoubtedly relevant to a philosophical
analysis of Formalism and can in many cases help
elucidate either the origin or the specific function of some
of the formalists’ particular ideas or aesthetic positions.
But, true enough, none of these thinkers provided the
formalists with a general conceptual framework, nor do
they provide us with much help in elucidating or justifying
their conception of literature as a coherent, theoretically
sound model. If in addition to these observations one
recalls that the formalists refused to identify their theories
with any given philosophical system or set of principles
(cf. e.g. Eichenbaum 1922:39-40), my claim that a solid
epistemological model or methodology was underpinning
the formalist’s original venture might appear here to be
rather far-fetched.

Before establishing exactly in what way Russian

formalism might effectively have constituted a bold

5
development of a Western theoretical model - an argument
to which I unfortunately won’t actually have time to come
to in this paper – the first task that requires to be carried
out is thus to demonstrate that there was indeed a solid
epistemological underpinning to Russian Formalism. For
my part, and despite all the above objections, I believe that
there is a rather obvious candidate for that role, namely the
epistemological theories of the Neo-Kantians, Wilhelm
Windelband and Heinrich Rickert in particular.
Obviously, the connection between Russian formalism
and Neo-Kantianism is not especially straightforward as
the formalists never explicitly quoted the neo-Kantians.
Many commentators, among them Erlich (1955), Hansen-
Löve (1978) Pomorska (1968) or Thompson (1971) have
however pointed out convergences between the two.
Although he does not elaborate, Erlich considers it
“inevitable” that the neo-kantian had an impact on the
formalists (Erlich 1955:156). Not uncontroversially, Lev
Trockij even states in Literature and revolution that the
Russian formalists were “essentially neo-Kantians”
(quoted in Erlich 1955:82). In other words, there seems to
be enough evidence of a significant interaction between
Neo-Kantians and Formalists to catch the eye of most of
the prominent specialist of Russian formalism. As such, I
believe that these historical ties warrant at the very least a
detailed analysis. Much more, it seems to me that such an
analysis has the potential to tell us a lot about Russian
formalism’s methodological underpinning.
To begin with, one should point out that there exists a
well-known connection between Neo-Kantianism and
Western formalist aesthetic theories such as those of
Hanslick, Wöllflin or even Fiedler and Worringer. On a
very general level, one can also mention the sheer

6
importance of neo-Kantianism in German academic
philosophy from the 1870s to the 1920s and its dominant
role in defining the philosophical context from which, in
the early twentieth century, phenomenology, structuralism
and logical positivism all emerged. If one accepts the
premise that the Formalists were extremely well-versed in
German culture and that they borrowed numerous ideas
from contemporary thinkers such as Wundt or Husserl,
there is simply no reason to think that they should have
ignored the neo-Kantians. Such an observation is strongly
corroborated by the fact that, starting from 1905 at the
latest, Neo-kantian ideas penetrated directly into Russia,
thanks to numerous translations of the works of Cohen,
Natorp, Windelband and Rickert on the one hand, and to
the very significant amount of Russian students who went
to Marburg, Heidelberg and Freiburg specifically to study
with the neo-Kantian masters on the other hand (cf.
Dmitrieva 2007:143 sq.). Amongst the most famous of
these students was of course Boris Pasternak, who’s later
implication with the Cubo-futurist avant-garde offers us
the first if still tenuous glimpse of a direct contact between
Neo-Kantianism and Russian Formalism. The more
significant point to be considered here is that by the time
Russian formalism started its development, a real Neo-
Kantian tradition had been firmly established in Russia and
had gained definite traction both in academic and artistic
milieus (cf. Dmitrieva 2007:212).
If one inspects this already promising background
more carefully, the convergences between Neo-Kantianism
and Formalism only become more evident. For one, the
University of St-Petersburg, which almost all the members
of OPOJAZ attended at some point, functioned as the aca-
demic “bastion” of Neo-Kantianism in Russia: leading

7
figures such as the philosopher Ivan Lapšin and, to a lesser
extent, the historian Lappo-Danilevskij taught neo-Kantian
ideas in their seminars. Admittedly, I have no direct
evidence to offer here that any of the OPOJAZ members
attended these seminars. It is well-known, however, that
some of the Acmeists (Mandelstam, Achmatova) enjoyed
for their part frequent contacts and discussions with these
figures, a fact which certainly indicates the existence of
contacts between neo-Kantian academic philosophy and
the St-Petersburg avant-gardes (cf. Depretto 2000). What
is more, Neo-Kantianism was probably the only movement
at that time in Russia to restrict the scope of philosophy to
that of a scientific method and thus to allow for the
autonomisation of other discourses, be they religious,
sociological or literary.
In that context, an even more compelling point of
convergences between Neo-Kantianism and Formalism is
the theoretical work of Andrej Belyj who, before turning to
Steiner’s anthroposophy, was a keen Neo-Kantian. In
Moscow, Belyj attended the discussion circles of the
philosopher Boris Vogt (Focht), a disciple of the Marburg
School and of Herrmann Cohen in particular. From 1904
to 1908, spurred on by Vogt’s criticisms of the
unsystematic nature of his ideas on literature, Belyj ac-
tively studied Neo-Kantian philosophy, producing in the
process a number of reviews of key works by Cohen and
Natorp. Although the question still needs clarification,
there is no doubt that his key theoretical book, Symbolism,
was strongly informed by Neo-Kantian ideas. Symbolism
and Belyj’s new theory of verse were of course of no little
significance to the Russian formalists (cf. Hansen-Löve
1978:43-48).

8
 Furthermore, in his critical review of Aleksandr
Potebnja’s “Mysl’ i jazyk” (1913), Belyj offers one of the
clearest view of the impact of neo-kantian epistemology on
the elaboration of new discourses on poetry and literature
in Russia. Whilst generally praising Potebnja’s neo-
humboldtian conception of language, which thus serves as
a kind of basis for his own theory, Belyj denounces
Potebnja’s psychologism and explicitly suggests that it
should be replaced by the transcendental philosophy of
Heinrich Rickert. In short, neo-kantian ideas are
effectively mobilised by Belyj to rid Potebnja’s conception
of language of its dependency on an adjunct field,
psychology, and to establish an autonomous theory of
language, itself conceived as a specific phenomena. One of
the crucial steps taken by Belyj in this process was to
replace Potebnja’s psychologically oriented notion of
“internal form”, with the Lotzean and Rickertian
transcendental concept of “value”. Interestingly, Belyj
repeats the same line of argument in the first part
Symbolism, although his recourse to neo-Kantianism is
already complexified there by his turn to a more mystical,
anthroposophic worldview.
The filiation between Potebnja, Lotze, Rickert, Belyj
and finally the Russian Formalists or the exact nature of
the conceptual transfer from the idea of inner form to the
idea of value (and then function) would certainly
necessitate a more detailed study than the brief remarks I
have just offered. In the context of this paper, however, I
believe they are sufficient to establish the reality of the
neo-kantian presence in the debates on poetic language.
Much more than that, they already point us in the direction
of the specific use the Russian formalists had for neo-
kantian epistemology. That use is broadly the same one

9
Belyj had for it, namely as a tool for rejecting psychology
and psychologism and for legitimising the institution of a
specific but nonetheless rigorous type of scientific inquiry
into language and literature.
Yet another piece of historical evidence witnessing to
the connections between neo-Kantians and formalists
comes from the Danish philosopher Broder Christiansen,
who was both one of the major sources of inspiration for
the Russian formalists’ aesthetics and a student of Rickert,
whose ideas he sought to adapt into a philosophy of life.
Because of the pervasiveness of Neo-Kantianism in the
late 19th and early 20th century, such examples of historical
convergences with Russian Formalism could in fact
probably be multiplied. For instance, there is a case for
considering Saussure himself as being indebted to Neo-
Kantian epistemology and it is interesting that Russian
Neo-Kantians such as B. Jakovenko, S. Gessen and N.
Alekseev were present in Prague in the 1920s and had
frequent contacts with Jakobson and Trubeckoj (cf.
Dennes 1997). But I will now end this brief overview of
the historical context in order to make of few remarks as to
the conceptual links between Neo-Kantianism and Russian
Formalism.
The first thing about Neo-Kantianism which seems to
have made it particularly suitable for the Russian
Formalists on a theoretical basis is its conceptual diversity
and flexibility. As is well-known, there were a number of
very different Neo-Kantian “schools”, those of Marburg
and of Baden being the most famous. Each of these
schools, moreover, was led by a number of “masters”,
Cohen, Natorp and Cassirer in Marburg, Windelband and
Rickert in Baden. Herrmann Cohen may well have enjoyed
the status of an overall “leader”, but that role was that of a

10
historical point of reference rather than the author of a
doctrine that all his disciples had to follow strictly. In
Natorp’s words, anyone who counted themselves as a
student of Cohen, be that in the broader or narrower sense
of the term, had to, I quote, “appropriate and propagate not
a definite philosophy, but only a method of
philosophising.” (Natorp 1912:195 [my translation]) At the
most obvious level, this relaxed approach to the conceptual
unity of Neo-Kantianism seems of course to echo the
organisation of Russian Formalism itself, what with its two
distinct centres in Petersburg and Moscow and its
abundance of methodological perspectives, some more
literary, some more linguistic. But it seems to me that this
approach also allows for a much bolder hypothesis,
namely that the formalists shared and adopted the Neo-
Kantian “method of philosophising” and thus became, in
an implicit, indirect way, “students of Cohen”. Because
Neo-Kantianism as such did not present itself as a closed
system or doctrinal metaphysics, the formalists could
appropriate it and make it their own without having to
explicitly and consciously submit to a set of fixed
principles. Interpreting the relation of Russian Formalism
to Neo-Kantianism in this way conveniently resolves the
paradox of having to justify attributing an epistemological
framework to the formalists in the face of their rejection of
all philosophical systems. Even better, this interpretation
details how the formalists made use of that framework,
namely not as a rigid metaphysics, but as a methodological
set towards resolving given problems.
If one defines the relationship between Russian
Formalism and Neo-Kantianism as one of methodology,
the convergences between them become even clearer.
Even a very simplified and superficial comparison of the

11
main tenets of the Neo-Kantian’s “method of
philosophising” and the “formal method” reveals striking
similarities between the two. In effect, despite all their
differences the Russian Formalists shared a small set of
convictions that did not vary much either amongst them or
over time. To put it very briefly, all the formalists
forcefully opposed naively empirical, psychological or
eclectic approaches to literature, seeking instead to in-
stitute it as a unified, transcendental object of inquiry
whilst specifying the conditions for an appropriate,
scientific study of its particular contents. This is how
Eichenbaum famously formulated the general aims of
Formalism in 1924:
“What is at stake are not the methods of literary
study but the principles upon which literary
science should be constructed – its content, the
basic object of study, and the problems that
organise it as a specific science.” (Eichenbaum
1924:2-3 [translation Peter Steiner])
This key formalist requirement, calling for a specific
discipline which, on the one hand would meet objective
criteria of scientificity whilst being freed from the
distorting shackles of positivist and naturalist categories,
and which, on the other hand would be specifically
adapted to the particular content of its basic object, this
double requirement is clearly to be found in Neo-Kantian
epistemology. Indeed, to a large extent the two criteria just
mentioned were first explicitly formulated by the Neo-
Kantians themselves and are precisely what characterises
and defines Neo-Kantian epistemology as a reaction all at
once to materialism, positivism, psychologism and
subjective idealism (all of which were the exact same foes

12
against which Russian Formalism itself was reacting).
Obviously, the Neo-Kantians objectives were much more
general than those of the formalists. Whereas the former
sought to found a whole theory of knowledge and
legitimise what Rickert called the cultural sciences or
“Kulturwissenschaften”, the latter were only interested in a
theory of literature. It seems fair enough to say, though,
that in their particular ambition to establish and legitimise
a specific science of literature the Formalists were
following a typically Neo-Kantian impulse and were
effectively dedicating themselves to one given part of Neo-
Kantianism’s more general programme.
Clearly, these are only a few preliminary observations
as to the historical and conceptual links between Russian
Formalism and Neo-Kantianism. To all intents and
purposes, one cannot say much more on their significance
and repercussions without a far more extensive and
detailed analysis of these ties and their evolution. In
conclusion, I do wish however to offer two final remarks.
The first of these concerns the fact that around the time of
Natorp’s death in 1924, the domination of Neo-Kantianism
in Europe and in Russia ended quite suddenly. This means,
quite strikingly, that the significance of Neo-Kantianism
receded in effect precisely at the moment when the
Russian formalists had to confront major problems and
paradoxes within their own theories. The Neo-Kantians, in
other words, were thus in no position to provide new
answers and the formalists had to turn to new inspirations.
To a certain extent, the formalists found those answers in
the Russian context, both in their sociological disputes
with Marxism and in the traditions of the 19 th century. One
needs to point out, however, and this is my second remark,
that the later work of the formalists did not constitute a

13
wholesale abandonment of their preceding work, but
amounted far more to a correction or an adaptation. This is
especially true of Tynjanov’s work and his theory of
literary evolution, but also holds for Šklovskij’s work on
Tolstoj or even for Eichenbaum’s idea of literary life
(literaturnyj byt). It is in view of this continuity that it is
worth considering the formalists’ work of the later period
not as a wholesale rejection of their earlier Neo-Kantian
methodology, but as an attempt to address the latter’s own
crisis as a much too abstract and an-historical theory. Such
a perspective, I would like to add, is all the more
warranted because one can find clear traces of similar
attempts in the West to go beyond the transcendental
idealism of the Neo-Kantians and to afford more attention
to the empirical and historical dimensions of experience.
Husserl’s phenomenology itself constitutes such an
attempt, but one should also mention here the work of
Hendrik Pos, a Dutch philosopher of language and student
of Rickert whose thoughts on linguistics later made a
strong impression on Roman Jakobson among others (cf.
Flack 2013).
In conclusion, I would simply like to come back to my
introductory remark concerning Russian Formalism’s
relevance with regard to the problem of the categorisation
of literary and philosophical discourses in a Russian
context. The few arguments offered here, it seems to me,
show clearly that one cannot be content to dismiss the
novelty of the formalists’ approach out of hand and that it
needs to be analysed more carefully. Indeed, without a
much more detailed assessment of Russian Formalism’s
complex, often mostly implicit or latent ties with Neo-
Kantianism and the later repercussions in the formalists’
theories of Neo-Kantian epistemology, many questions as

14
to the status of the categories of “philosophy” and
“literature” in the formalists’ vision of literary theory must
remain unanswered. Because that analysis has not been
provided yet, it remains very difficult to draw clear
conclusions as to what exactly Russian Formalism has to
tell us on the ruptures and continuities in the relationship
of literary and philosophical discourses in Russia. The fact
that it was tied up so closely with the intellectual tradition
that did most to redefine the role of philosophy as an
epistemological tool at the service of other discourses and
disciplines seems to indicate however that the formalists’
attempts at a methodological and categorical refoundation
of literary discourse and theory were by far not as
confused, ad hoc and condemned to failure as one would
often have them to be.

15
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