Philosophical Reception of Immanuel Kant in Yury Lotman's Works

The study focuses on the meaning of the direct and indirect allusions to Immanuel Kant’s writings in the works of Juri Lotman created in 1964–1993. The meaning of these mentions is determined based on the methodological tradition going back to German idealism: the research tradition concerning the impact of Kant’s philosophy on Lotman’s methodology describes it as “Kantianism vs Hegelianism,” whereas for this study the opposition is specified as “statics, synchrony and the domain of teleology vs dynamics, diachrony and the domain of causality.” In order to describe the conditions of Kant’s philosophy reception by the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School, in the first chapter, we address the position of Kantian studies during different periods of the Soviet Union, and the impact of Kant’s philosophy on some members of French structuralism. The second chapter focuses on the mentions of Kant in Lotman’s works per se. Since they appear mostly in the texts written in 1963–1966 and 1987–1993, this study seeks to describe the significant distinction between the meaning of these allusions.