Abstract

Philosophy has for a long time assumed the role of adjudicator of the methodological pretensions of other intellectual activities. Its own pretentions have of late come under challenge from an unexpected quarter. That philosophy’s claims to epistemological purity should come under challenge from literary theory may well seem to philosophers ludicrous rather than threatening. In its origins, after all, philosophy prided itself on having left behind the mystifications of mere literature. Philosophers have traditionally claimed authority in matters of theory. It is not surprising that they should think of themselves as having more to teach, than to learn from, the theory of literature. But the challenges that are now coming from literary theory to philosophy are of course very different in spirit from philosophy’s own strictures against what Kant called “speculative transgression.” In their most cogent versions, they do not spring from any assumed superiority in representational adequacy; in fact they are directed at philosophy’s preoccupation with representation.