The Inner Form of the Word in Russian Humboldtianism and the Antinomical Nature of Argumentative Strategies in Continental Philosophy

The school of A.A. Potebnya originated from W. von Humboldt’s fundamental antinomy of ergon / energeia, though, as G.G. Shpet noted, Humboldt’s followers, including Potebnya himself, reduced his philosophy of language to psychologism, simplifying complex linguistic processes to observable phenomena of mental life. V.V. Bibikhin proposed a fundamentally diff erent interpretation of Potebnya’s doctrine, seeing in it not merely a psychologization of language but a developed energetic theory of refl ection. However, the subsequent development of Potebnya’s school took a diff erent path. Disciples such as D.N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky shifted the focus from the productive antinomy of givenness / assignedness to a rigid opposition between the poetic (imagistic) and the lyrical (aff ective). This led to a signifi cant narrowing of the concept: the poetic was reduced to the work of images, while the lyrical was limited to the aff ective impact of rhythm and mood. Remarkably, this reinterpretation unexpectedly brought the ideas of Potebnya’s followers closer to later poststructuralist concepts, particularly to B. Cassin’s rhetorical turn, where language is viewed as an instrument of social communication and power. While striving to preserve and develop the teacher’s doctrine, the disciples essentially created a new concept that shifted the emphasis from studying linguistic energy to analyzing socially successful forms of creativity. This process demonstrates how loyalty to tradition can turn into its radical reinterpretation, while also revealing unexpected parallels between early 20th century Russian philological thought and Western theory of the second half of the century.