Metaphysics, Aesthetics, or Epistemology? A Conceptual History of "Tvorchestvo" in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought

This article analyzes the history of the Russian concept of tvorchestvo (“creation,” “creativity”) from its emergence and early usages in the early nineteenth century, in particular in the writings of Nikolai Nadezhdin, Nikolai Stankevich and Vissarion Belinskii, and up to and including the philosophy of Vladimir Solov’ev. While the concept later on became a key term and pivotal philosophical issue for thinkers such as Nikolai Berdiaev and Sergei Bulgakov, this article focuses on its early history, and more specifically on how it was coined in the translation of the ideas of Schelling, while subsequently becoming independent of the Schellingian origins. More specifically, while it initially was a metaphysical concept, corresponding to Schilling’s idea of “productivity” (of nature as well as of the human being), thinkers like Nadezhdin and Belinskii used it as an aesthetic concept, referring to the creative genius, while Solov’ev in turn applied it in order to emphasize the active role we play in cognition and perception (epistemology). The article demonstrates the importance of cultural transfer in the creation of a Russian philosophical discourse in the nineteenth century and expolores how processes of transfer and translation generate new philosophical issues

Aesthetics · Art · Conceptual history · Creativity · Epistemology · Literature · Metaphysics · Political science · Politics · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · History · Philosophical and Historical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia

• Universalising idealism

  Open Access•Kåre Johan Mjør•Global Intellectual History•2020

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