Views from the Other Shore; Essays on Herzen, Chekhov, and Bakhtin

by Aileen M. Kelly

• ISBN13: 9780300074864
• ISBN10: 0300074867
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-08-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

In this brilliant companion volume to her highly praised Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance, Aileen M. Kelly closely examines a humanist strand of Russian thought that has until now received little notice or understanding. She finds in the writings of Aleksandr Herzen, Anton Chekhov, and Mikhail Bakhtin a pioneering emphasis on the role of chance and contingency in nature and history. Their writing on this theme, she argues, establishes the importance of these humanists in the development of European thought.

Herzen, the principal subject of the book, was among the first nineteenth-century thinkers to challenge the assumptions underlying doctrines of universal progress. Kelly links Herzen's outlook to the work of such Western humanists and scientists as Francis Bacon, Schiller, Proudhon, J. S. Mill, and Darwin. She shows how the view of freedom that Herzen shared with Chekhov and Bakhtin provides an antidote both to traditional absolutes and to the boundless relativism of much postmodern theory. As such it offers an answer to

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Two Russian Ideas	1	(16)
Herzen and Francis Bacon	17	(30)
Herzen, Schiller, and the Aesthetic Education of Man	47	(35)
Herzen and Proudhon: Two Radical Ironists	82	(32)
A European Nanny: Herzen and Mill on Liberty	114	(25)
On the Origin of Species and From the Other Shore	139	(32)
``Dealing in Pluses'': The Thought of Anton Chekhov	171	(21)
The Flesh of Time: Mikhail Bakhtin	192	(33)
Conclusion: A New-Style Russian Idea	217	(8)
Notes	225	(30)
Index	255