Showing papers in "Philosophy and Literature in 2016"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a collection of essays on philosophy and literature, Volume 40, Issue 1, April 2016, pp 240-264, with a focus on literature.
Abstract: Copyright © 2016. The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Philosophy and Literature, Volume 40, Issue 1, April 2016, pp 240-264
12 citations
TL;DR: Sade, a staunch enemy of the moral didacticism that characterized late eighteenth-century French literature, wrote the sentimental novel Aline et Valcour, which is ostensibly foreign to the rest of his thought.
Abstract: Why would Sade, a staunch enemy of the moral didacticism that characterized late eighteenth-century French literature, write the sentimental novel Aline et Valcour , which is ostensibly foreign to the rest of his thought? A philosophical interpretation of this work allows us to bring to light how, in his novel, Sade skillfully reconstructs the conception of sentimentalist emotion—encapsulated in Rousseau’s thought—and counterposes it with a new analysis of passions that is no longer based on empathy but rather on interpersonal domination. Through peculiar physiological and philosophical premises, Sade succeeds in delineating a paradoxical ethics of emotional restraint.
7 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the implicit context from which it arises, and the one that allows it to speak with the greatest fullness and power, is work that Shakespeare wrote or published between 1606 and 1609.
Abstract: This essay explores a modern American poem-its verse form, imagery, diction, and rhythm, and, in particular, its cultural echoes, resonances, and overtones. I examine the poem's explicit invocation of Apelles and crow mythology, but I also show that the implicit context from which it arises, and the one that allows it to speak with the greatest fullness and power, is work that Shakespeare wrote or published between 1606 and 1609. This context allows us to see that, at the heart of the poem, lies the Shakespearean and Platonic analogy between the creation of children and the creation of intellectual work.
4 citations
TL;DR: Leavis's essay on Anna Karenina as discussed by the authors is distinctive in his work because it is really against his usual critical assumptions to engage with a work in translation and it turns out to be one of his best essays, one in which he is prepared to be critical of his admired D.F. H. Lawrence and deals with his own deepest moral concerns and with the nature of tragedy.
Abstract: F. R. Leavis’s essay on Anna Karenina is distinctive in his work because it is really against his usual critical assumptions to engage with a work in translation. In fact it turns out to be one of his best essays, one in which he is prepared to be critical of his admired D. H. Lawrence and in which he deals with his own deepest moral concerns and with the nature of tragedy. Toward the end I draw a comparison between a narrowing moralism in the later Leavis and the later Tolstoy.
4 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that Wittgenstein's philosophy is anti-Cartesian and anti-Lockean in ways that not only mirror Leavis's distrust of Locke and Descartes but also advance his efforts to argue against them.
Abstract: The literary critic, according to Leavis, “ought to be an anti-philosopher.” Leavis ranked Wittgenstein, in this regard, with other philosophers. This, I argue, was a mistake. Wittgenstein’s philosophy is anti-Cartesian and anti-Lockean in ways that not only mirror Leavis’s distrust of Locke and Descartes but also advance his efforts to argue against them. This essay specifically explores the commitment of both Leavis and Wittgenstein to the idea of “the life of language”: to the idea of language as deeply involved in the constitution of “human worlds,” rather than a mere system of notation for the recording of natural regularities.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the semantic issues that Saul Kripke addressed in Naming and Necessity overlap with those addressed by Michel Foucault in What Is an Author? The present essay examines this area of overlap.
Abstract: The semantic issues that Saul Kripke addressed in Naming and Necessity overlap with those addressed by Michel Foucault in “What Is an Author?” The present essay examines this area of overlap. It shows that Foucault needs to take certain assumptions from Kripke’s theory of naming in order to secure his argument for treating authorial names as a special case. When placed on these Kripkean foundations, Foucault’s theory is a plausible one, and avoids the metaphysically peculiar commitments that are sometimes thought to be essential to it.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the "authentic theodicy" Kant proposes and finds in the Book of Job is an antitheodicy and that we should follow Kant in rejecting theodicies not only for intellectual but also for ethical reasons.
Abstract: Immanuel Kant’s “Uber das Misslingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee” (“On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy”, 1791), inaugurates the modern theodicy versus antitheodicy debate. This chapter offers an exposition of Kant’s essay and sets the tone for the antitheodicism of the book. We argue that the “authentic theodicy” Kant proposes—and finds in the Book of Job—is an antitheodicy and that we should follow Kant in rejecting theodicies not only for intellectual but also for ethical reasons. This argument is developed both philosophically and by drawing attention to Kant’s use of literary figures, particularly those appearing in the Book of Job. According to Kant’s reading, Job’s key virtue in contrast to his “friends” is his sincerity, Aufrichtigkeit. This notion plays a major role in the argument of the subsequent chapters.
3 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that Leavis was hostile to both the aesthetic and philosophical thought, and that his criticism exercises a sophisticated appreciation of the aesthetic similar to the philosophical aesthetics that passes through Schiller, Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Suzanne Langer.
Abstract: F. R. Leavis’s depreciatory comments on literary critics’ invocation of the aesthetic, and on philosophers’ understanding of language, have reinforced a view of him as hostile to both the aesthetic and philosophical thought. In fact, his criticism exercises a sophisticated appreciation of the aesthetic similar to the philosophical aesthetics that passes through Schiller, Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Suzanne Langer; a tradition in which the aesthetic is fundamental to human culture. Leavis’s conception of creativity in language not only underlies his charismatic impact on students and readers but also remains the most plausible rationale for any publicly funded study of literature.
3 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that certain commonplace, “morally shaped” human emotions, partly constituted by ethical judgments, are indispensable for the appreciation of narrative art and paid closer attention to critics of the early modernist tradition (e.g., Wilde, Eliot, Bell) who tried to describe a discrete class of art-specific emotions that they thought were both ethically significant and intrinsically valuable.
Abstract: When defenders of “art for art’s sake” talk about literary narratives, they usually insist that understanding such works requires a detached, ethically neutral perspective upon one’s own emotional responses. But other aestheticians have argued that certain commonplace, “morally shaped” human emotions, partly constituted by ethical judgments, are indispensable for the appreciation of narrative art. Philosophers on both sides of this debate would benefit from paying closer attention to critics of the early modernist tradition (e.g., Wilde, Eliot, Bell) who tried to describe a discrete class of art-specific emotions that they thought were both ethically significant and intrinsically valuable.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an inductive hermeneutic approach is used to uncover Joseph Conrad's conception of material space, and the resulting subjective space then leads to larger questions of knowledge in general.
Abstract: This essay works from an inductive hermeneutic to uncover Joseph Conrad’s conception of material space. Conrad recognizes a gap between space as it can be measured and space as human beings actually experience it. Throughout his works, Conrad represents the interaction of subject, object, and context in the human experience of space. The resulting subjective space then leads to larger questions of knowledge in general, as Conrad ultimately comes to the conclusion that all knowledge is contingent, dependent upon the context in which it is experienced.
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TL;DR: The authors examines all his existing discussions in detail and sets them in the context of his lifelong study of T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, polar opposites as artists and thinkers.
Abstract: Why did F. R. Leavis write so little about tragedy? Searching for an answer, this paper examines all his existing discussions in detail and sets them in the context of his lifelong study of T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, polar opposites as artists and thinkers. Leavis sees that “impersonality” is a key term for both writers, but with crucial differences of emphasis: for Eliot a denial, for Lawrence a transcendence, of selfhood. Leavis rejected the Christianity that underpinned Eliot’s idea of tragedy, preferring the more positive approach of Lawrence, for whom tragedy never had the last word on human life.
TL;DR: The authors highlight the critical role of affect in the construction of narrative by raising parallels between Tim O'Brien's metafictional renderings of memory, imagination, and storytelling in The Things They Carried and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio's models of human cognition.
Abstract: This paper seeks to highlight the critical role of affect in the construction of narrative by raising parallels between Tim O’Brien’s metafictional renderings of memory, imagination, and storytelling in The Things They Carried and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s models of human cognition. Literary narrative has long been associated with the ability to communicate emotional experiences, and recent developments in neuroscience have shown that emotions and affect are tied not only to basic functions of life management but also higher-order cognitive processes. Taken together, O’Brien and Damasio’s work demonstrates how narrative facilitates cultural learning and is therefore essential to survival and well-being.
TL;DR: The postmodern resistance to metaphysics can never be quite as rigorous as it imagines, since the self, as inextricable from what it can not be, must be an object of faith, its origin and agency rooted in an eclipsed otherness beyond our capacity to witness or understand as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Postmodernism, in spite of its exaggerations and myopias, has left us with many gifts, including two strains of the critical tradition that struggle to reconcile with each other. Those strains grow from two undeniable truths: that the self can never occupy the space of the other, nor can the self extricate the other from its nature. Given the conflict between these truths, the postmodern resistance to metaphysics can never be quite as rigorous as it imagines, since the self, as inextricable from what it can never be, must be an object of faith, its origin and agency rooted in an eclipsed otherness beyond our capacity to witness or understand. A sense of this eclipse, acknowledged or not, haunts the contradictions of recent critical and literary culture, a postmodern approach that, in rejecting metaphysical models of meaning for more politically exigent and skeptical forms of rigor, has adopted a faith in the limits of our language as the limits of our world. In spite of this shift, metaphysical assumptions, embedded in that language, stubbornly persist. We are what we are not, which is to say we embody vast reaches of reverie, memory, and incommunicable nightmare, the mysteries of both free will and all that circumscribes it. In us and before us, an otherness persists, intuited by way of its effects, by the ghosts of missing presences among our most immediate objects of experience: our bodies, our psyches, our silences, and the words we speak. Since to say the word “I” is to invoke both a self and an other, the word has a little of poetry’s penchant for paradox in it. As a yoking of opposites, it is mythic. It does what the poetic imagination does constantly in our daily discourse: it creates a language for something we
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of self-fashioning in Don Quixote, as well as the idea that our own self-fashioned identities might be best understood not as "real" but as bound to the possibilities of a poetry of "who we are".
Abstract: “I know who I am” is a commonplace phrase about ordinary identity. It also is a poem of sorts, expressive of something far beyond its few words. When Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote states it, the identity he fashions is clearly imagined but also, somehow, real. In this paper, I will critique and clarify this seeming puzzle. Doing so will help me to consider the role of self-fashioning in Don Quixote , as well as the idea that our own self-fashioned identities might be best understood not as “real” but as bound to the possibilities of a poetry of “who we are.”
TL;DR: The authors discuss some of the unexplored similarities between Melville's ideas and Nietzsche's reflections on and reactions to the death of God and the advent of nihilism in the Western world.
Abstract: Herman Melville was so estranged from the religious beliefs of his time and place that his faith was doubted during his own lifetime. In the middle of the twentieth century some scholars even associated him with nihilism. To date, however, no one has offered a detailed account of Melville in relation to Nietzsche, who first made nihilism a topic of serious concern to the Western philosophical tradition. In this essay, I discuss some of the hitherto unexplored similarities between Melville’s ideas and Nietzsche’s reflections on and reactions to the death of God and the advent of nihilism in the West.
TL;DR: This paper showed that the time of the narrative-historical self is disunified, and the reason lies in the ontological function of the autobiographical narrative, which is determined by the type of selfhood that belongs to the narrative self.
Abstract: In this paper I challenge the view that the unity of a life consists in the life’s narrativity. My argument proceeds through analysis of the time of autobiographical narratives. Using the work of literary theorists Kate Hamburger and Harald Weinrich, I show that the time of the narrative-historical self is disunified. The reason lies in the ontological function of the autobiographical narrative, which is determined by the type of selfhood that belongs to the narrative self. The latter is a self for whom the unity of her life has become a quest/ion, that is, something ontologically doubtful and thus desired rather than given.
TL;DR: Leavis and Wittgenstein shared a common suspicion of theory and their shared belief in the power of imagination and maturity of judgment as discussed by the authors. But the nature of their encounter leaves the impression of what Michael Bell has called "potentially important unfinished business in their intellectual nonrelationship".
Abstract: F. R. Leavis knew Ludwig Wittgenstein from the nineteen
twenties to the time of Wittgenstein’s death in 1951. But the nature of their encounter leaves the impression of what Michael Bell has called “potentially important unfinished business in their intellectual nonrelationship.” Their shared suspicion of theory might be thought to have aligned them in their judgments and in their respective conceptions of philosophy and literature; yet such alignment as there was scarcely prevented misunderstanding. A more important potential connection is to be found, however, in their ideas about language, especially in terms of its relation to imagination and maturity of judgment.
TL;DR: The authors argue for a distinctly later style in the work of the philosopher Stanley Cavell and novelist Don DeLillo, taking as their primary case studies Cavell's In Quest of the Ordinary and DeLillo's Point Omega, and conclude that this inhospitality reflects shared ideas of America.
Abstract: Drawing on the influential work of Theodor Adorno and Edward Said, we argue for a distinctly later style in the work of the philosopher Stanley Cavell and novelist Don DeLillo. Taking as our primary case studies Cavell’s In Quest of the Ordinary and DeLillo’s Point Omega , we assert this mature mode is one of dissonance, difficulty, intransigence, and fragmentation. Such stylistic resistance is related generally to a withdrawal of the desire to convince; in the work of both philosopher and novelist we establish an inhospitality of form and language. We conclude that this inhospitality reflects shared ideas of America.
TL;DR: The authors argue that Leavis was hostile to both the aesthetic and philosophical thought, and that his criticism exercises a sophisticated appreciation of the aesthetic similar to the philosophical aesthetics that passes through Schiller, Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Suzanne Langer.
Abstract: F. R. Leavis’s depreciatory comments on literary critics’ invocation of the aesthetic, and on philosophers’ understanding of language, have reinforced a view of him as hostile to both the aesthetic and philosophical thought. In fact, his criticism exercises a sophisticated appreciation of the aesthetic similar to the philosophical aesthetics that passes through Schiller, Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Suzanne Langer; a tradition in which the aesthetic is fundamental to human culture. Leavis’s conception of creativity in language not only underlies his charismatic impact on students and readers but also remains the most plausible rationale for any publicly funded study of literature.
TL;DR: Kant repeatedly reflected on particular verses of Milton's Paradise Lost (8.140-52) as a way of locating the role of aesthetic activity in transcendental philosophy's grasp of a whole of experience as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Kant repeatedly reflected on particular verses of Milton’s Paradise Lost (8.140–52) as a way of locating the role of aesthetic activity in transcendental philosophy’s grasp of a whole of experience. The intent of his last citations of these verses, in the Opus postumum, at first seems highly obscure. (In my Kant and Milton I ignored them completely, as have all other commentators.) I here demonstrate that, in fact, these late deployments of Milton’s verses represent a continuous development from Kant’s earlier citations of them, and that their interaction with his argumentation points concretely toward new dimensions of his aesthetic thought.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe two kinds of narrative tension that are often utilized to evoke such feelings, and investigate what makes the experience of these tensions enjoyable, concluding that we enjoy narrative tension only when we feel a deep trust in the author.
Abstract: Some fictional narratives make use of certain kinds of tension in order to evoke anxiety in audience members. Why do we enjoy feeling anxiety in this context, even as we try to avoid it in others? In this paper I describe two kinds of narrative tension that are often utilized to evoke such feelings and investigate what makes the experience of these tensions enjoyable. I conclude that we enjoy narrative tension only when we feel a deep trust in the author. When this trust is lost, the experience is no longer enjoyable and the tension is judged an aesthetic flaw.
TL;DR: This paper read the ending of Little Did I Know alongside several other key episodes in the text as "scenes of instruction", a term essential to Cavell's account of Wittgenstein.
Abstract: Stanley Cavell’s memoir, Little Did I Know , ends with an enigmatic conversation at his father’s hospital bedside entitled “To put away—perhaps not to discard—childish things.” Published responses to Little Did I Know have left the ending unexamined, which means we are still some distance from understanding the book as a whole. In this essay I read the ending alongside several other key episodes in the text as “scenes of instruction,” a term essential to Cavell’s account of Wittgenstein. Doing so helps make sense not just of the memoir but of its place in Cavell’s work.
TL;DR: The authors argue that to the extent that it satisfies Nozick's and Arthur Danto's conceptions of art, Plato's Phaedo is an example of philosophy-as-art.
Abstract: Abstract:Philosophy has been examining art for millennia. But can philosophy be an art form? An affirmative answer would raise interesting questions about philosophical self-reflexivity. In his Philosophical Explanations Robert Nozick raises this question, not for the above reason, but to suggest that such an answer would enhance both the methodology and the aim of philosophy, which is to show that human beings are valuable. I argue that to the extent that it satisfies Nozick’s and Arthur Danto’s conceptions of art, Plato’s Phaedo is an example of philosophy-as-art. But does philosophy need narrative in order to be art?
TL;DR: The authors examined Hoffmann's presentation of subjectivity in "The Sandman" and found that the subject reached a point of crisis with Kant and thus became the central question for German Romanticism.
Abstract: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s work has been largely unrecognized in philosophy. The aim of this essay is to correct this oversight by an examination of his presentation of subjectivity in “The Sandman.” The presentation of the subject reached a point of crisis with Kant and thus became the central question for German Romanticism. This crisis prompted a “will to system” first taken up in “The Earliest System Program of German Idealism,” in which the spirit of philosophy is captured through literary depiction. I argue that a possible resolution to this crisis is presented in “The Sandman,” therefore establishing Hoffmann’s philosophic interest.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw on Stanley Cavell's reading of Endgame and suggest Confessions book 9 may illuminate Augustine's notion of the interior teacher, and show how the forgotten mothers who haunt Augustine's and Beckett's texts offer resources for a richer account of language than that ostensibly offered by the fathers.
Abstract: Augustine’s The Teacher and Samuel Beckett’s Endgame both depict father-son conversations characterized by similarly strange and self-conscious uses of language. Each father offers his son linguistic guidance of an odd sort. However, the oddity of the offering is not without a point. Drawing on Stanley Cavell’s reading of Endgame , I explain the theological and philosophical motivations for the educations. I suggest Confessions book 9 may illuminate Augustine’s notion of the interior teacher, and I show how the forgotten mothers who haunt Augustine’s and Beckett’s texts offer resources for a richer account of language than that ostensibly offered by the fathers.