G. Chpet, la religion et le problème du signe

Gustav Shpet, Hesychast Religion and the Problem of Sign

The article discusses the alternative order of 'language criticism' as developed by the main representatives of Russian 'religious' hesychast philosophy on the one hand and phenomenological 'Neo-Humboldtianism' of Gustav Shpet on the other. The article briefly draws on the works written in the early and late twenties by Aleksei Losev, Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel Florenskii and Gustav Shpet and demonstrates their substantial alterity with regard to their philosophical ideology applied to language studies and general humanities. The main object of our study constitutes an attempt to differentiate Russian 'imiaslavie' from the linguistic phenomenology debated through the perspective of European semiotics (Ferdinand de Saussure). The article strives to demonstrate the distinctiveness of these Russian intellectual traditions and their possible idiosyncrasy within the semiotic scientific paradigm.