Introduction: the literary function -- Being constructivist -- Rethinking the performative in pragmatics -- The literary function and the cartographic turn: performative philosophy -- The literary function and society, I: affirmation of immanent aesthetics -- The literary function and society, II: community and subjectification -- The reader and the event of fiction -- Conclusion: degrees of freedom.

The Philosophy of Literature offers an opportunity to consider the gap between the analytic and the continental traditions of aesthetics. In particular, Lamarque's survey fails to take account of the possibility that literature is an institution and a practice that challenges the conventions of instrumental rationality, a position held by a number of continental philosophers who have written on art. It also pays little attention to the reader's experience of the inventiveness of the literary work, preferring to represent the reading (...) of literature as a matter of conventions confirmed. An alternative understanding of the literary work as an event that opens up new possibilities for the reader, put forward in the author's recent book, The Singularity of Literature, is sketched. (shrink)

On one standard view, paraphrasing Kierkegaard requires no special literary talent. It demands no particular flair for the poetic. However, Kierkegaard himself rejects this view. He says we cannot paraphrase in a straightforward fashion some of the ideas he expresses in a literary format. To use the words of Johannes Climacus, these ideas defy direct communication. In this paper, I piece together and defend the justification Kierkegaard offers for this position. I trace its origins to concerns raised by Lessing and (...) Mendelssohn about the relationship between form and content in works of art. I maintain that Kierkegaard follows early German Romantic thinkers in applying these aesthetic concerns to philosophical writing. By way of conclusion, I discuss the implications of Kierkegaard’s position for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

Following the pattern set by the early German Romantics, Kierkegaard conveys many of his insights through literature rather than academic prose. What makes him a valuable member of this tradition is the theory he develops to support it, his so-called “theory of indirect communication.” The most exciting aspect of this theory concerns the alleged importance of indirect communication: Kierkegaard claims that there are some projects only it can accomplish. This paper provides a critical account of two arguments Kierkegaard offers in (...) defense of this claim. The first argument is that he needs to use indirect communication in order to discourage people from losing themselves in the “crowd”. The second argument is that he needs to use it in order to help people out of a “monstrous illusion”. It is shown that while both arguments justify Kierkegaard’s decision to use indirect communication, neither one supports the original claim about its indispensability. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns Kierkegaard’s theory of indirect communication. A central aspect of this theory is what I call the “indispensability thesis”: there are some projects only indirect communication can accomplish. The purpose of the dissertation is to disclose and assess the rationale behind the indispensability thesis. -/- A pair of questions guides the project. First, to what does ‘indirect communication’ refer? Two acceptable responses exist: (1) Kierkegaard’s version of Socrates’ midwifery method and (2) Kierkegaard’s use of artful literary devices. Second, (...) for what end does Kierkegaard use indirect communication? There are two acceptable responses here as well: (1) helping others become religious and (2) making others aware of the nature of existence. -/- These responses are interrelated. First, Kierkegaard’s notion of religion places restrictions on the means he can use to get readers to become religious. These restrictions ultimately entail that the only viable form of religious pedagogy is the midwifery method. Second, Kierkegaard engages in the midwifery method in part by making readers aware of the nature of existence (especially religious existence). But given the problems plaguing his readers, he thinks a straightforward approach to this project will likely fail. An approach that used artful literary devices such as deception and humor would be more successful. Third, Kierkegaard believes that there is one aspect of religious existence (viz. subjectivity) that people can come to know only first-hand. As such, he cannot directly impart knowledge of subjectivity to his readers. He argues that this means he must use the midwifery method. And he thinks the most productive way to do so is to provide readers with the kind of fictional narratives found in his early pseudonymous writings. Thus artful rhetorical devices play a role here as well. -/- All of Kierkegaard’s arguments for the indispensability thesis turn on debatable assumptions. But the arguments concerning artful rhetorical devices have the additional defect of being merely probabilistic in nature. They lack the strength to support the indispensability thesis even if we grant the relevant background assumptions. Therefore, to the degree that the indispensability thesis has merit, it lies with the arguments concerning the midwifery method. (shrink)

Literatura y filosofía son dos viajes hacia la verdadera dimensión del ser humano. Por eso -de Homero a Borges-, constatamos que todos los grandes de la literatura han abordado las grandes cuestiones sobre la condición humana. Sin ser filósofos, han entrando de lleno en el campo de la filosofía para iluminarla con la belleza de su estilo. En su compañía, este libro es un atractivo paseo por esos temas siempre vivos. Para lograr un texto asequible, hemos seleccionado los referentes más (...) universales: el hombre en Homero, la inteligencia en Robinson Crusoe, la verdad en El Quijote, el amor en El Principito, los sentimientos en Ana Frank, la amistad en Etty Hillesum, la familia en Delibes, la ciencia en Julio Verne, el comunismo en Orwell, el darwinismo en Jack London, el superhombre de Nietzsche en Crimen y castigo, el mal en El señor de las moscas, el bien en El Señor de los anillos, la muerte en Hamlet, Dios en Dostoievski. (shrink)

Numinous spaces in British literature from William Wordsworth to Samuel Beckett -- Jesus figures in American literature from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Edward Albee -- Using Bakhtin's definitions to discover ethical voices in Solzhenitsyn and Tolstoy -- René Girard's categories of scapegoats in literature of the American South -- Hopkins's metaphysics of nature as sacred disclosure -- The book of job as mirrored in Hopkins's metaphysics -- Beckett's mythos of the absence of God.

A synthesis of the historical, philosophical, and literary aspects of Existentialism.

Foreword Large parts of Monroe Beardsley's production in the field of aesthetics treat literature, the theory of meaning, and the philosophy of language. ...

Vanguard anti-narrativist Galen Strawson declares personal memory unimportant for self-constitution. But what if lapses of personal memory are sustained by a morally reprehensible amnesia about historical events, as happens in the work of W.G. Sebald? The importance of memory cannot be downplayed in such cases. Nevertheless, contrary to expectations, a concern for memory needn’t ally one with the narrativist position. Recovery of historical and personal memory results in self-dissolution and not self-unity or understanding in Sebald’s characters. In the end, Sebald (...) shows how memory can be significant, even imperative, within a deeply anti-narrativist outlook on the self, memory, and history. (shrink)

From the island of certainty that is the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus to the everyday ethics of the mainland in the Investigations , Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy traces a journey similar to the one etched into Robinson Crusoe's deserted beaches. In this essay I map out points contact between Wittgenstein's philosophy and Defoe's novel, thus providing a fresh glimpse at the philosophical underpinnings of the adventures depicted in Robinson Crusoe , as well as to Wittgenstein's philosophical motivations.

Introduction Someone comes and says something. Without really needing to think, I understand what is said, refer it without difficulty to familiar codes, ...

Merleau-Ponty's essay "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" is not thoroughly political in its content, nor is it solely addressed to Sartre. It is dedicated to Sartre, however, and the ideas it contains pose a definite challenge to Sartre's views in What is Literature? Merleau-Ponty rejected Sartre's view of communication arising from the direct transmission of meaning through prose. Instead, he stressed that real political significance is implicated in artistic expression, even if it is in some ways ambiguous. Although (...) it would be difficult to say that Sartre changed his views in direct response to "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence," his later views do fall in line with Merleau-Ponty's thoughts. One might say that, by taking a Merleau-Pontian view of language, Sartre worked out some of the tensions in his earlier views. Consequently, he ended up with a much richer view of literature, yet one that retained the political significance he wanted in What is Literature? (shrink)

Peter Lamarque's splendid and informative book, The Philosphy of Literature , deserves a much fuller response than I can give in this brief note. It is brimful with insights into the nature of literature, and into the debates between philosophers interested in literature, and I cannot imagine anyone failing to learn from it. The question I propose to take up is by no means the most important that Lamarque raises, nor am I even certain that I can add anything useful (...) to his own discussion of it. Yet I find myself puzzled by it, and hope that it may repay further thought. (shrink)

This book makes a vigorous reassessment of the moral dimension in Chaucer's writings. For the Middle Ages, the study of human behavior generally signified the study of the morality of attitudes, choices, and actions. Moreover, moral analysis was not gender neutral: it presupposed that certain virtues and certain failings were largely gender-specific. Alcuin Blamires, mainly concentrating on The Canterbury Tales, discloses how Chaucer adapts the composite inherited traditions of moral literature to shape the significance and the gender implications of his (...) narratives. Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender is therefore not a theorization of ethical reading but a discussion of Chaucer's engagement with the literature of practical ethical advice. Working with the commonplace primary sources of the period, Blamires demonstrates that Stoic ideals, somewhat uncomfortably absorbed within medieval Christian moral codes as Chaucer realized, penetrate the poet's constructions of how women and men behave in matters (for instance) of friendship and anger, sexuality and chastity, protest and sufferance, generosity and greed, credulity and foresight. The book will be absorbing for all serious readers or teachers of Chaucer because it is packed with commanding new insights. It offers illuminating explanations concerning topics that have often eluded critics in the past: the flood-forecast in The Miller's Tale, for example; or the status of emotion and equanimity in The Franklin's Tale; the "unethical" sexual trading in the Shipman's Tale; the contemporary moral force of a widow's curse in The Friar's Tale; and the quizzical moral link between the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale. There is even a new hypothesis about the conceptual design of The Canterbury Tales as a whole. Deeply informed and historically alert, this is a book that engages its reader in the vital role played by ethical assumptions (with their attendant gender assumptions) in Chaucer's major poetry. (shrink)

This book attempts to bridge the gulf that still exists between 'literary' and 'philosophical' interpreters of Plato by looking at his use of characterization. Characterization is intrinsic to dramatic form, and a concern with human character in an ethical sense pervades the dialogues on the discursive level. Form and content are further reciprocally related through Plato's discursive preoccupation with literary characterization. Two opening chapters examine the methodological issues involved in reading Plato 'as drama' and a set of questions surrounding Greek (...) 'character' words (especially ethos), including ancient Greek views about the influence of dramatic character on an audience. The figure of Sokrates qua Platonic 'hero' also receives preliminary discussion. The remaining chapters offer close readings of select dialogues, chosen to show the wide range of ways in which Plato uses his characters, with special emphasis on the kaleidoscopic figure of Sokrates and on Plato's own relationship to his 'dramatic' hero. (shrink)

Bloom leads readers through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years.

This is the first comprehensive introduction to Deleuze's work on literature. It provides thorough treatments of Deleuze's early book on Proust and his seminal volume on Kafka and minor literature. Deleuze on Literature situates those studies and many other scattered writings within a general project that extends throughout Deleuze's career-that of conceiving of literature as a form of health and the writer as a cultural physician.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION THE GROWTH OF THE ARABIC LINGUISTIC TRADITION: A HISTORICAL SURVEY Early grammatical thinking to the end of the second/eighth century ...