NIETZSCHE AND RUSSIAN FORMALISM: THE QUESTION OF EPISTEMOLOGY

This paper examines the similarities and divergences between Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of language and the Russian Formalist conception of aesthetic activity. By comparing Nietzsche's writings of 1870s and the early works of the Formalists, the author makes the case for a great deal of correspondence in the use of some critical concepts designating the status of language. However, a closer examination of Nietzsche's and the Formalist respective theories reveals that, despite the initial proximity, the epistemological premises of Nietzsche's theory of demetaphorization and the Formalists' utilization of the process of automatization of artistic perception, bear substantial differences.