Philosophy of Language of Abram Deborin

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the little-known episodes of the scientific life of the famous Soviet philosopher Academician Abram Deborin. The author will analyze his works on linguistics. In the mid 1930s. Abram Deborin enthusiastically set about creating his own linguistic and philosophical concept of the origin of language and thinking on the basis of Nikolai Marr’s “New theory of language”. He developed and supplemented this doctrine, building a complete philosophy of language. Marr’s doctrine correlated with the Marxist-Leninist worldview of Abram Deborin, and also corresponded to his adherence to the doctrine of Hegel. The focus of the article is the book The New Doctrine of Language and Dialectical Materialism (1935), as well as his other works that deal with questions of linguistics. Developing the ideas of Marr, the Soviet philosopher strengthened his Marxist argument and resolved some of the contradictions of Marrism. He left aside the insignificant linguistic aspects of Marrism, which had nothing to do with philosophical problems. Abram Deborin became the first author of works on linguistics written from the standpoint of the “New theory of language”, and he was the only one to remain so. After the famous discussion on linguistics in 1950, when Joseph Stalin came out with the work Marxism and Problems of Linguistics, in which Marrism was crushed, Abram Deborin was forced to repent of his mistakes, demonstrating his rejection of the “New theory of language”. However, the scientist did not abandon the important idea of Nikolai Marr about the transition from synthetic thinking in primitive society to analytical thinking in class society. This idea was developed in his works at the junction of philosophy and linguistics, written after 1950. In this period particularly developed in his philosophy of language was the idea of the coincidence of opposite meanings in one word expressing some concept of the human protolanguage.