MARXISM AND AMOR INTELLECTUALIS: TOWARD A THEORY OF SOCIALIST CULTURE BY VOLODYMYR YURYNETS

Abstract

The paper analyzes the methodological framework of the philosophy of culture and new literary criticism of the Ukrainian philosopher and literary critic Volodymyr Yurynets (1891—1937) within his article “To the Problem of Socialist Culture (Introduction to the book ‘Mykola Bazhan’).” His ideas testify to the powerful methodological searches in the field of Marxist criticism of the 1920s aimed at substantiating the nature of post-revolutionary culture. Balancing between Marxism and Western idealist philosophy, Yurynets brings elements of the latter into his philosophical Marxist criticism.
 While elaborating a model of new criticism, Yurynets substantiates perception based on a “fluxion of intellectual sympathy.” In this process, the recipient becomes an organ of “amor intellectualis, indifferent amazement.” Yurynets considers his philosophical criticism of culture to be a Marxist form of cultural philosophy. He asserts that literature is a form of philosophical thinking and argues that literary criticism armed with philosophy is a phenomenon completely different from academic literary criticism. Justifying philosophical criticism as an active and modeling force of the modern time, Yurynets appeals to the ideas of the literary critic Leonid Grossman, the literary theorist Pavel Medvedev, and the linguist Nikolai Marr. Yurynets’s concept comes down to the search for the meaning of art in relation to the “life world” of a man. At the same time, he interprets the discovery of the “living forces of the epoch” in the context of historical materialism. In an effort to purify aesthetic perception from subjectivity, psychology, and emotion, Yurynets actually adapts E. Husserl’s ‘phenomenological reduction’ and applies it to the aesthetic reception. The scholar also refers to reflexology and Freudian psychoanalysis as sources of artistic inspiration and interpretive ideas for contemporary philosophical criticism.