Sergeiy V. Sandler, PhD in Philosophy, Independent Researcher, Beer-Sheva, Israel. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7258-6184 E-mail: sergeiys@gmail.com
This paper examines the turn in Mikhail Bakhtin’s aesthetics, from the aesthetics of completion (“consummation”) in “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity” (1923/4) to the aesthetics of the impossible to complete (“unfinalizability”) in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art (1929). This turn is ana-lyzed in terms of its underlying philosophical ideas and is grounded in a revised understanding of the aims of aesthetics. An assumption is made that this turn in Bakhtin’s thought was partly motivated by his acquaintance with Martin Buber’s work I and Thou (1923). While the hero’s relation to the author in Bakhtin had always been very similar to what Buber described as an I – Thou relation, the author’s relation to the hero was initially much more akin to Buber’s I – it relation. The possibility of an author’s dialogic (I – Thou) relation to the hero becomes the center of Bakhtin’s attention from the late 1920s on.
Mikhail Bakhtin; Martin Buber; aesthetics; I – Thou relation; dialogic philosophy.
15.11.2025
10.12.2025
Sandler, S.V. “Martin Buber and the Turn in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Aesthetics”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 1(71), 2026, pp. 9–21. (In Russ.)
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