Vladimir Feshchenko (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)
This paper analyzes the transfer trajectories of the concept of ‘concept’ in 20th century arts and humanities.
Russian philosophy of language introduced the term ‘concept’ in the 1920s, differentiating it from the more logical ‘notion’ and the more vague ‘image’. Sergej Askol’dov, the pioneer of concept studies in Russia, on the one hand built further on the critique of German Begriffstudien (mainly E. Husserl and G. Frege) and on the other hand drew largely on Medieval conceptualism represented by D. Scott’s and P. Abelard’s philosophy. However, Askol’dov’s studies were put into oblivion in Russia for almost 70 years (for ideological reasons mainly). It is only in the 1990s that Russian linguistics saw the rebirth of conceptual studies, which is now the most dominant trend in Russian philology.
In the meantime, the ‘concept’ as an analytical instrument and art object emerged in Moscow conceptualism of the 1960-1980s. What were the different ways of intracultural transfer of the concept of ‘concept’ in 20th century Soviet and Russian arts and humanities? How was it transferred culturally across the German-French-English-Russian terminological traditions? Some of the answers to these questions will be presented in this paper.