UDC

101.1:930.1

DOI

10.17238/issn2227-6564.2019.2.103

Authors

Il’ya V. Demin
Samara National Research University;
Moskovskoe shosse 34, Samara, 443086, Russian Federation;
e-mail: ilyadem83@yandex.ru

Abstract

This article analyses the interpretation of historical knowledge in the hermeneutic phenomenology of Gustav Shpet, emphasizing the distinction between two types of reflection: positive and negative philosophy. This distinction is essential for self-identification of the philosophy of history among other disciplines in the modern post-metaphysical context. According to Shpet, the essence of negative philosophy is in reducing the diversity of philosophical problems to the theory and methodology of scientific knowledge, while identifying philosophy as such with the philosophy of science. The most vivid example of this trend is neo-Kantianism. As a meaningful alternative to the methodology of neo- Kantianism, Shpet proposes a project for renewing the “first philosophy”, in which the philosophy of history is reinterpreted in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology. Further, the article reveals the main disadvantages of Heinrich Rickert’s philosophy of history as presented by Shpet. Guided by the principle of logical unity of science, Shpet rejects methodological dualism that is inherent to Rickert’s views. Rickert’s interpretation of the philosophy of history reduces it to the logic of historical cognition and methodology of historical science, while the latter becomes dependent on axiology. Shpet insists on a fundamentally different interpretation: he sees the mission of philosophy in preliminary disclosure of history as a specific reality and in explication of the “idea of history” that is constitutive of the field of historical existence. Shpet’s criticism of Rickert’s views does not mean a return to naively speculative “pre-critical” historiosophical reflections typical of the representatives of the French Enlightenment. The key pattern that sets Shpet’s philosophy of history aside from the classical theories is the treatment of historical reality as semiotic and hermeneutic, i.e. subject to understanding and interpretation. Shpet’s interpretation of historical knowledge and correlation between philosophy and the logic of history fits naturally into the ideological context of the ontological turn and can be placed on a par with the theories of Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer.

Keywords

philosophy of history, historical cognition, Shpet’s hermeneutic phenomenology, ontological turn, philosophical hermeneutics, semiotics of history

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