ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book describes the Bakhtin was a philosopher in the Kantian tradition, and restricted his work to the inner circle of cognitive discourse, while maintaining an active appreciation of the wider circle of the religious world. The case for a theological interpretation of Bakhtin's work is made in the English language texts primarily by Mihailovic and Coates. Bakhtin's considerable contribution was his appropriation of ideas derived from philosophy of religion and his incorporation of them into aesthetics. The themes on which Bakhtin focused in his examination of cultural history came together in his extensive discussions of carnival and his appropriation of carnival in his scheme of literary development. Flood presents Bakhtin's work as a solution to the problem. Bakhtin's outsideness can be used to refine the position originally known as methodological agnosticism, following the work of Ninian Smart.
