Law and the Genres of Discourse: the Bakhtin Circle’s Theory of Language and the Phenomenology of Right

Abstract

Although the Bakhtin Circle have very little to say about law, legal philosophy permeates their work, from the theory of the novel to the Bakhtinian account of discursive interaction. The latter, which has become a key focus for cultural theory, will be our focus here. The reason this influence is not immediately apparent is that it was refracted through a group of neo-Kantian and neo-scholastic philosophies that had already applied the principles of legal reasoning, particularly as developed in German philosophy of law, to some of the main areas later developed by the Bakhtin Circle. The Circle were, however, well aware of the legal background to their thought, as can be seen from the early Bakhtin’s endorsement of the Marburg School doctrine that jurisprudence is the ‘mathematics’ of the human sciences (Pumpianskii 1992: 235). Matvei Kagan had studied under Cohen in Marburg and so the Circle had direct knowledge of current legal—philosophical thinking in Germany, while recent work in the archives shows that Voloshinov was also familiar with Marburg legal philosophy.1 Furthermore, one of the main areas of development for neo-Kantinism in Russia was precisely in the area of the philosophy of law, with Pavel Novgorodtsev, Bogdan Kistiakovskii, and Sergius Hessen being some of the more notable figures involved (Vucinich 1976: 125–52; Walicki 1987; Savalskii 1908).