Boris Gasparov is Bakhmeteff  Professor of Russian and East European Studies, founder of Columbia University Seminar on Romanticism, a member of the Seminars on Linguistics and Slavic History and Culture at Columbia University, and the author of numerous books, including Five Operas and a Symphony: Word and Music in Russian Culture (the 2005 Best Book of Slavic Literary/Cultural Criticism by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages and winner of the 2006 Deems Taylor Award sponsored by the American Society of Composers, Authors, & Publishers) and Beyond Pure Reason: Ferdinand de Saussure’s Philosophy of Language and Its Early Romantic Antecedents.

 

In the present lecture Professor Gasparov argues that Kant’s epistolary exchange with Marcus Herz, his favorite student whom Kant chose to be his respondent at the defense of his inaugural dissertation, and later the addressee of some of his intensely personal, at times truly soul-searching letters, meant for Kant more than merely an external outlet for his ideas in the process of their development; rather, it served as an instrument for Kant’s thought that contributed to their development and left its imprint on their formation.

 

Co-sponsored with the Department of History, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Penn Jewish Studies Program, Penn Program in Comparative Literature, and the Department of Philosophy.