The article offers an attempt to understand the present state of Kant’s legacy in Russia on the threshold of the Tercentenary. An explanans is found in the metaphors of “ tabula rasa ” and “unplowed virgin soil,” first used by Leibniz in relation to Russia in his letters and memoranda addressed to tsar Peter I and other members of the Russian elite, which became the country’s “absolute metaphors to live by” up to present time. Several known and unknown episodes from (...) the history of the reception of Kantian ideas, his followers in Russia, and the transformation of the urban environment of Kant’s life in Königsberg, as it was becoming Kaliningrad, are presented through the prism of this metaphor. Without hoping to make specific recommendations of any use from such metaphorical grounds, this study aims to emphasize the depth, interconnectedness, and basic, metaphysical tension of the relationship between Europe and Russia, which cannot be terminated at will by either side, or by a third party. In a situation where the sides are doomed to dialog, Kant, appropriated by Russia as its “subject,” occupies the unique position of mediator of philosophical understanding and peaceful action. (shrink)

This paper is a reconstruction of Walter Benjamin's philosophy of language, especially as it expressed in 1916's “On Language as Such and the Language of Man”. I read Benjamin's theory as a contribution to what Charles Taylor has called the “expressivist” tradition that includes eighteenth century thinkers like J.G. Herder and J.G. Hamann. Hamann's work and his interpretation of the theological concept of condescension are of particular importance. Although Benjamin's views are often regarded as impenetrable or mystical, they are relevant (...) to and, in part, motivated by concerns of more mainstream twentieth century philosophy of language, in particular Russell's paradox. His “metaphysics of language” understands reference or designation, central to analytic theories of meaning, as derived from a more fundamental, aesthetic meaning. (shrink)