On the Question of Author and Hero in M.M. Bakhtin’s Philosophical Anthropology of the Early Period

Abstract

This article is an ontological and existential interpretation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s early works (Art and Answerability; Toward a Philosophy of the Act; Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity), containing a deep philosophical-anthropological and innovative, in historical and philosophical terms, dialectic of author and hero. The study suggests that during his years in Nevel and Vitebsk Bakhtin strove for an ontological and ethical deepening of the aesthetics of verbal creativity, asserting (in the ontological plane) the being of the hero and, accordingly, the ontological status of the author and the literary work. Unlike with being (an objectively outside position), it is possible to argue with the “author” (a subjectively involved position); the existing (genuine) author is present in the literary work in the form of events that are transgredient (out-of-reach) to the hero’s consciousness. While a hero’s life unfolds as a sequence of actions, the real author is hidden in the hero’s fate (in fact, his own fate) and must be responsible for him. In order to embrace his life in a holistic event, an individual needs to “disappear” as a psychological subject in the practical procedure of ontological conversion of consciousness and relate himself to the moments of his life that are transgredient to his personality. The sum of such moments can be called human destiny. In order to be a full-ledged, real author for the hero, the “subject” must become an author for himself (regardless of whether he is going to become an artist or not). As a result, an objective ontological and existential situation arises, in which the hero and the author undergo an ontological and aesthetic conversion (neutralization of bad subjectivity).