The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Philosophy

In the literary tradition covering more than two and a half thousand years, philosophy has been frequently mentioned in close proximity to literature, often as different ways of engaging more or less the same activity. We shall look at this matter briefly in the paper. What is not often said, even though many would probably not object to the idea is that literary criticism is a philosophical, rather than a scientific discipline, insofar as it is exercised by the need to understand, lacking the means to explain the phenomenon it is faced with. Three things really are at issue here: literature, literary studies/criticism, and philosophy. There are interrelationships among them, which is why some of the most important works relevant to the study of literary phenomena are by philosophers, normally the very greatest ones among them. We will not be exploring this history in detail, but only the engendering of literary criticism as a result of the philosophical interest in the literary, of which Plato and Aristotle were apparently the first to devote to it sustained attention. But we shall find that evolution and change within the history of criticism have been by following, sometimes without a conscious decision, the methods of reflection inaugurated in Aristotelian metaphysics in which philosophy is established as the knowledge of things through their ultimate causes.

The relationship between literature and philosophy is almost as old as the two academic disciplines themselves. Indeed, for a very long time, philosophy has been interested in literature and vice versa. Some philosophers like Kant, Hegel, or Schopenhauer among many others-have had recourse to epic, lyrical or dramatic poets because they realized, literary works can help them in their philosophical efforts to convey the message of truth, well-being, wisdom in society. The obstacle which prevented them from having recourse to it seemed to be the thread of the metaphysical tradition. But not everything can happen through metaphysics alone to be understood, useful in society. Thus, because of their stakes and their style, philosophies of existence rub shoulders even more closely with literary works. This applies to Heidegger, to Marcel, an admirer of Rilke, to Camus, a novelist before becoming an essayist, to Merleau-Ponty whose appeals to Valéry, Claudel or Proust are never accidental, to Sartre for whom the works of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Genet, and Flaubert counted as much as those of the philosophers. This article takes an analytical look at the relationship that may exist between literature and philosophy through language.

2018

In this introductory chapter, we discuss some recent theoretical approaches to the relations between Western Philosophy and Literary Modernism, and at the same time, we get back to some classic contrasts drawn between the two creative enterprises in the foundational texts of each tradition, which make them seem irreconcilable. Recent rapprochements made by commentators on twentieth-century philosophy and the cultural breakthrough of Modernism in the last decade of the nineteenth-century have insisted on a disenchanted rupture with all kinds of metaphysical worldviews (now seen as myths), which had theretofore played a stabilizing role in human beings’ lives and in Western societies at large. Usually this demystifying gesture is associated with a concentration of theoretical attention on the role played by language itself. In terms of the development of philosophical methods in the twentieth-century, this has been especially associated with the so-called ‘linguistic analysis’. You co...

The Pluralist, 2019

Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media, 2019

I analize the relationship between Philosophy and Literature. First, there is an essencial historical summary, then, I analize the contrasting positions of Derrida and Habermas about this topic. Finally, I use their considerations to give an answer to three fundamental questions regarding the relation between Philosophy and Literature: 1) Is philosophy still able to be a useful tool for describing the truth? 2) Is literature capable to describe contingent realities and not just universal ones? 3) Is it possible to conceive a relationship between Philosophy and Literature without subordinating one to another?

Literature – Literary Studies – Philosophy: Problems of Relation, Languages, and Communication, 2013

The cluster of problems of the relations among literature, philosophy, and literary studies does not belong among issues that have been resolved, methodologically defi ned, or exhaustively described. It is diffi cult to speak in this respect of the existence of some "grammar", of a model that would indicate all possible connections between them.

Tekstualia

The main goal of the article is to present relation between literature, literary studies, and philosophy in the context of their languages, and communication. This issue does not belong among issues that have been resolved, methodologically defined,or exhaustively described. It is difficult to speak in this respect of the existence of some “grammar”, of a model that would indicate all possible connections between them. This is “troublesome challenge”, which the theory of discourses must face up to, is identical, it turns out, to the problems of communication between individual branches of knowledge, problems that, hitherto insufficiently recognized, still wait for some revelatory discussion. It is not impossible that the realization of this task will demand the adoption of the maximum assumption that there exists a level of universal text grammar embracing all refl ection around anthropological topics. The search for this grammar should, however, take place with full respect to availab...