Alexandre Mikhailov: an Attempt of a Philosophical Identification

Abstract

The paper offers a reconstruction of philosophical views of the outstanding germanist A.V. Mikhailov (1938–1995). Drawing both from his personal experience of conversations he used to entertain with the late scholar and from a study of the latter’s enormous written legacy which came to public knowledge only in recent time, the author seeks to demonstrate the originality of Mikhailov’s thought, of his literary and philosophic style. In its main traits, Mikhailov’s outlook appears as a logocentric synthesis of an “off the beaten track” philosophy close to the later Heidegger, and an hermeneutic programme of “historicising of knowledge” which continues, with a characteristically philological tint, the tradition of Dilthey and Gadamer.