Gustav Gustavovich Shpet (; , Kiev,

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

November 16, 1937,

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Russian SFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

) was a

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

nGustav Shpet (Great Russian Encyclopaedia)
/ref> philosopher,

historian of philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

, psychologist, art theoretician, and interpreter (he knew 17 languages) of

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descent. He was a student of a well-known Russian psychologist and philosopher George Chelpanov, a follower of

Edmund Husserl , thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations) , thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view , thesis1_year = 1883 , thesis2_title ...

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...

, who introduced Husserlian phenomenology to Russia, modifying the phenomenology which he found in Husserl. Shpet was a

Vice president A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...

of the Russian State Academy of Arts in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

(1923—1929). Shpet is an author of many books, including his famous ''A View on the History of Russian philosophy'' (russian: Очерк развития русской философии; in 2 vols.) and ''The Hermeneutics and its problems'' (russian: Герменевтика и её проблемы).

Biography

Shpet was born as the illegitimate son of an Austro-Hungarian officer and a mother of

decent of an aristocratic background. Shpet enrolled in St. Vladimir University of Kiev in 1898, but was expelled for joining a Marxist circle. He never adopted a Marxist philosophical viewpoint, even though he sympathised with the socio-economic aims of Marxism. As a thinker, he was thoroughly grounded in Russian

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His philosophy combined Husserl's analysis of the structure of consciousness with

Platonism Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at l ...

of Orthodoxy, the doctrine of

incarnation Incarnation literally means ''embodied in flesh'' or ''taking on flesh''. It refers to the conception and the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form or the appearance of a god as a human. If capitalized, it is the union of divinit ...

, and veneration of matter. In 1921 he founded the Institute of Scientific Philosophy in

. His espousal of Husserl's phenomenology influenced the literary scholars Mikhail Petrovsky, Grigoriy Vinokur, and Mikhail Stoliarov.

Death

Shpet was a victim of the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...

. He was originally arrested on 14 March 1935, along with several other former colleagues from the State Academy. He was charged with anti-soviet activities, received a sentence of five years internal exile, and was sent to

, the first university city in Siberia. Here Shpet worked on a new Russian translation of Hegel's ''

The Phenomenology of Spirit ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' (german: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most widely-discussed philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; its German title can be translated as either ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' or ''The Phenomen ...

''. However, he was arrested again on 27 October 1937 and charged with belonging to a monarchist organisation. He was executed on 16 November 1937.

References

External links

At the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shpet, Gustav Gustavovich 20th-century Russian philosophers 1879 births 1937 deaths Phenomenologists Interpreters 20th-century translators Great Purge victims from Ukraine Executed philosophers

Biography

Death

References

Further reading

External links