Vasily Sesemann: Experience, Formalism, and the Question of Being (On the Boundary of Two Worlds. Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics, Vol. 7) (On the Boundary of Two Worlds)

Born in Vyborg in 1884 by parents of German descent, Vasily (Wilhelm) Sesemann grew up and studied in St. Petersburg. A close friend of Viktor Zhirmunsky and Lev P. Karsavin, Sesemann taught from the early 1920 until his death in 1963 at the universities of Kaunas and Vilnius in Lithuania (interrupted only by his internment in a Siberian labour camp from 1950 to 1956). Botz-Bornstein's study takes up Sesemann's idea of "experience" as a dynamic, constantly self-reflective, "ungraspable" phenomenon that cannot be objectified. Through various studies, the author shows how Sesemann develops an outstanding idea of experience by reflecting it against empathy, Erkenntnistheorie (theory of knowledge), Formalism, Neo-Kantianism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Bergson's philosophy. Sesemann's thought establishes a link between Formalist thoughts about "dynamics" and a concept of Being reminiscent of Heidegger. The book contains also translations of two essays by Sesemann as well as of an essay by Karsavin Born in Vyborg in 1884 by parents of German descent, Vasily (Wilhelm) Sesemann grew up and studied in St. Petersburg. A close friend of Viktor Zhirmunsky and Lev P. Karsavin, Sesemann taught from the early 1920s until his death in 1963 at the universities of Kaunas and Vilnius in Lithuania (interrupted only by his internment in a Siberian labor camp from 1950 to 1956). Botz-Bornstein's study takes up Sesemann's idea of experience as a dynamic, constantly self-reflective, ungraspable phenomenon that cannot be objectified. Through various studies, the author shows how Sesemann develops an outstanding idea of experience by reflecting it against empathy, Erkenntnistheorie (theory of knowledge), Formalism, Neo-Kantianism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Bergson's philosophy. Sesemann's thought establishes a link between Formalist thoughts about dynamics and a concept of Being reminiscent of Heidegger. The book contains also translations of two essays by Sesemann as well as of an essay by Karsavin. VASILY SESEMANN 4 Contents 6 Preface 8 Introduction 16 Chapter 1 Sesemann’s Life and Work 22 Chapter 2 Neo-Kantianism, Formalism, and the Question of Being 38 Chapter 3 New Approaches to the Psychic Subject: Sesemann, Bakhtin and Lacan 68 Chapter 4 Intuition and Ontology in Sesemann and Bergson: Zeno’s Paradox and the Being of Dream 96 Appendix I Socrates and the Problem of Self-Knowledge (1925) 110 Appendix II On the Nature of the Poetic Image (1925) 118 Appendix III The Foundations of Politics (1927) 126 Appendix IV A Letter by Henri Parland from Kaunas 132 Appendix V Bibliography of Vasily Sesemann’s Works 134 Bibliography 138 Index of Names 144 Index of Subjects 146 "Botz-Bornstein's study takes up Sesemann's idea of "experience" as a dynamic, constantly self-reflective, "ungraspable" phenomenon that cannot be objectified. Through various studies, the author shows how Sesemann develops an outstanding idea of experience by reflecting it against empathy, Erkenntnistheorie (theory of knowledge), Formalism, Neo-Kantianism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Bergson's philosophy. Sesemann's thought establishes a link between Formalist thoughts about "dynamics" and a concept of Being reminiscent of Heidegger." "The book contains also translations of two essays by Sesemann as well as of an essay by Karsavin."--BOOK JACKET