S.L. Frank: Lectures on F.M. Dostoyevsky’s anthropology (To the 200th anniversary of the writer)

Abstract

In this paper, we reconstruct the historical and philosophical context of two German lec­tures by Semyon Ludvigovich Frank dedicated to F.M. Dostoevsky’s anthropology that were delivered by him in 1935 and 1938 in Switzerland. We also designate the general place that the philosophical understanding of Dostoyevsky’s work occupied in Frank’s thought during his émigré period of the 1930s. Building on archive materials the authors es­tablish that the first lecture on Dostoyevsky’s anthropology delivered by Frank in Switzer­land took place in Kreuzlingin on the 13th of July, 1935 and was organized by the Swiss psychiatrist L. Binswanger. The lecture on a similar topic was delivered by the Russian philosopher in Basel on the 25th of January 25, 1938 and was organized by the philologist E.E. Mahler, a friend of Frank from the pre-émigré period, who was a professor of Slavic studies at the University of Basel. In the Annex we publish, with an introduction and com­ments, two German abstracts of Frank’s lectures known as “Dostojewskys Anthropologie”. These abstracts are stored at the Bakhmeteff Archive (Columbia University, New York).