Philosophy and Literature

A narrative impulse and a scenic impulse: as Fredric Jameson persuasively argues in The Antinomies of Realism, the history of literary realism has been shaped by the dialectic between these two competing drives, each identified by a specific temporality. Yet realism’s dialectic between a narrative and a scenic impulse omits something crucial if we are to understand European realist narrative, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper reassesses Jameson’s dialectical view of realism in light of the speculative turn in the history of the European novel in 1860’s Russian and 1880’s French narrative. I will query Jameson’s dialectic of realism and subsume it under a larger dialectical framework encompassing a further, temporally neuter impulse. This is the “speculative impulse,” which will help us reconsider some of the most important developments of nineteenth-century European realism.

Of the many forgiveness-related questions that she takes up in her novels, the one with which Iris Murdoch wrestles most often is the question, ‘Is forgiveness possible without God?’ The aim of this paper is to show, in the first instance, why the question Murdoch persistently raises is a question worth asking. Alongside this primary aim stands a secondary one, which is to consider how one might glean moral insights from the Christian tradition even if one does not (any longer) endorse its theological commitments.

In this article, I outline a logic of design of a system as a specific kind of conceptual logic of the design of the model of a system, that is, the blueprint that provides information about the system to be created. In section two, I introduce the method of levels of abstraction as a modelling tool borrowed from computer science. In section three, I use this method to clarify two main conceptual logics of information (i.e., modelling systems) inherited from modernity: Kant's transcen-dental logic of conditions of possibility of a system, and Hegel's dialectical logic of conditions of in/stability of a system. Both conceptual logics of information analyse structural properties of given systems. Strictly speaking, neither is a conceptual logic of information about (or modelling) the conditions of feasibility of a system, that is, neither is a logic of information as a logic of design. So, in section four, I outline this third conceptual logic of information and then interpret the conceptual logic of design as a logic of requirements, by introducing the relation of " suffici-entisation ". In the conclusion, I argue that the logic of requirements is exactly what we need in order to make sense of, and buttress, a constructionist (poietic) approach to knowledge.

J. L. Austin's claim that language ‘used not seriously’ is ‘parasitic’ upon ‘normal use’ has proved a puzzle to literary scholars, who have often taken this to mean that they are not allowed to apply the insights of speech-act theory to their own object of research. This article explores how, when read together, Michel Serres’ definition of the parasite as a ‘thermal exciter’ and Deleuze's concept of ‘minor literature’ bring out the hidden potential inherent in Austin's claim. More specifically, the article argues that Austin's reference to literature as a parasitic entity might become a promising conceptual gift, allowing us to generate a new model for approaching the world-shaping potential of literary texts.

In her readings of the Greek tragedies, Luce Irigaray demonstrates that the power relations between women and men permeate tragedy to its core. According to Irigaray, the source of the ancient tragedy —Antigone’s death is a clear example—lies in these systems of power that are bound to eradicate the heroine. In her reading, tragedy represents the fate of women, whose death and demise attest to the inability to represent themselves as women in the phallocentric culture, which, as Ibsen notes, does not allow women to be themselves.
I develop in this paper a reading of Hedda Gabler which draws on Irigaray’s reading of the Greek tragedies, such as Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Sophocles’ Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus, and Euripides’ Electra. These provide a broad comparative framework for interpreting the play, the only one of Ibsen’s works named, like the ancient tragedies, after its female protagonist. Building on her work, I set out to show how by probing the trope of the riddle and problematizing it, Hedda Gabler also positions women’s destiny at the intersection of gender and genre, engendering the tragedy of femininity. At the same time, the play offers the possibility of envisioning what Irigaray’s calls “…another dramatic play through which we can relate to each other as different.” (2010, 199). Thinking of the relationship between tragedy and gender from an Irigaraian perspective, we can see how Hedda Gabler, which genders tragedy through the story of a specific woman, engenders in the spectators the realization for the need for projecting new images and modes of feminine existence.

Contemporary science seems to be caught in a strange predicament. On the one hand, it holds a firm and reasonable commitment to a healthy naturalistic methodology, according to which explanations of natural phenomena should never overstep the limits of the natural itself. On the other hand, contemporary science is also inextricably and now inevitably dependent on ever more complex technologies, especially Information and Communication Technologies, which it exploits as well as fosters. Yet such technologies are increasingly " artificialising " or " denaturalis-ing " the world, human experiences and interactions, as well as what qualifies as real. So the search for the ultimate explanation of the natural seems to rely upon, and promote, the development of the artificial, seen here as an instantiation of the non-natural. In this article, I would like to try and find a way out of this apparently strange predicament. I shall argue that the naturalisation of our knowledge of the world is either philosophically trivial (naturalism as anti-supernaturalism and anti-preternaturalism), or mistaken (naturalism as anti-constructionism). First, I shall distinguish between different kinds of naturalism. Second, I shall remind the reader that the kinds of naturalism that are justified today need to be protected and supported pragmatically, but they are no longer very interesting conceptually. We know how to win the argument. We just have to keep winning it. Whereas the kind of naturalism that is still interesting today is now in need of revision in order to remain acceptable. Such a kind of naturalism may be revised on the basis of a realistic philosophy of information, according to which knowing is a constructive activity, through which we do not merely represent the phenomena we investigate passively, but create more or less correct informational models (semantic artefacts) of them, proactively and interactively. I shall conclude that the natural is in itself artefactual (a semantic construction), and that the information revolution is disclosing a tension not between the natural and the non-natural, but a deeper one between a user's and a producer's interpretation of knowledge. The outcome is a philosophical view of knowledge and science in the information age that may be called constructionist and a revival of philosophy as a classic, foundationalist enterprise.

Keywords Constructionism · Closure · Level of abstraction · Naturalism · Naturalisation · Open question argument · Reasonably reiterable query test

G. W. F. Hegel sees Oedipus as an epitome of the philosophical quest for self-knowledge. In Hegel's readings of Oedipus, the latter becomes a distant reflection of the modern and mature Hegelian self, who consciously takes on this quest. Yet unlike Oedipus, whose search for the truth about his past is characterized by both metaphorical and literal blindness, the modern self knows itself, precisely because it understands its past and can thus appropriate and situate itself in relation to the present. For Hegel, self-understanding entails grasping the proper relationship between past and present, which in turn necessitates acknowledging his own relationship to Oedipus. This essay examines Henrik Ibsen's turn to the Hegelian engagement with the past (Oedipus being one crucial moment in the Hegelian story of the history of self-consciousness), by focusing on one of the most enigmatic scenes in his 1866 drama, Peer Gynt, where the Norwegian protagonist is cast as Oedipus. The scene examines the drama's own past-through an engagement with a dramatic ancestor-and focuses on the influence of the past on fashioning modern European identity. Moreover, it offers a critique of how the past is utilized in the creation and consolidation of that identity. With this, Ibsen offers an implicit critique of Hegel's understanding of Oedipus, and his encounter with the Sphinx in particular. Revisiting Oedipus through its modern reception, Ibsen questions the act by which the past is revealed as such and is put to work in the service of a particular present.

[Full text in Link https://rdcu.be/brKbD or Ask for A Copy] This article examines the representations of the supernatural in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which served as a significant source for later horror literature. It shows that the play’s rhetoric of horror and of the supernatural depends on its shifting discourse of nature. Nature in Macbeth refers to an external, nonhuman nature of cosmic events and elemental figures (air, bubble and fire) as well as to an internal, human nature of “horrid” images and surmises. Supernatural elements derive from the ontological instability in both external and internal nature, and relate particularly to those actions or events, through which nature becomes disturbed and duplicated. As the imaginary dagger scene indicates, the most terrifying source of the supernatural in the play is the human-made image that duplicates nature internally.

Davis, William. "One with Everything: Hölderlin on Acrocorinth." European Romantic Review. 2015. 26:1, 59-73.

Friedrich Hölderlin’s epistolary novel, Hyperion, opens with contradictory
fantasies of the protagonist’s unification with, and alienation from, nature. These
visions of oneness and division find a corollary in the novel’s setting within an
idealized version of Greece and the landscape of the Corinthian Isthmus. The
essay argues that we can best understand the significance of Hyperion’s desire to
be “one with everything” if we take into account the context of Ho¨lderlin’s and
Friedrich Schelling’s attempt in the 1790s to find a way to incorporate a
dynamic view of nature into German Idealist philosophy. Taking up the
philosophical concept of “intellectual intuition” (used in distinctive ways by both
Kant and Fichte before them) the young poet/philosophers attempted to grant a
new range of meaning to the term. For them an intellectual form of intuition
opens possibilities of non-material connections with a world of things that must
themselves be viewed as dynamically alive. Reading the novel Hyperion as an
attempt to poeticize this version of Idealism also allows us to see how the novel
functions as a move from intellectual to aesthetic intuition, as an attempt to
represent the human capacity for aesthetic creativity as our means of becoming one.

This essay takes the last pages of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time at its word: at the moment the narrator achieves a definitive conception of the work he intends to write, he sees society composed, not of people of flesh and blood, but of monsters fit for a museum of natural history. As the novel culminates in images and concepts that are essentially nonhuman, inhuman, or posthuman in character, it demonstrates an exacting knowledge of what the present is only now beginning to realize: after two world wars and humanity’s recent entry into what is called the age of the Anthropocene, certain fundamental relations (between subject and object, between nature and history, between past, present, and future) must be rethought to account for both the eclipse of the human as well as nature’s ultimate survival. This essay seeks to develop a philosophical form that would approximate the novel’s discovery of this posthuman natural history.

Language Lost and Found takes as its starting-point Iris Murdoch's claim that "we have suffered a general loss of concepts." By means of a thorough reading of Iris Murdoch's philosophy in the light of this difficulty, it offers a detailed examination of the problem of linguistic community and the roots of the thought that some philosophical problems arise due to our having lost the sense of our own language. But it is also a call for a radical reconsideration of how philosophy and literature relate to each other on a general level and in Murdoch's authorship in particular.

REVIEWS
“This fascinating book offers a valuable explication of Murdoch's relentless attempts to reveal what is missing in contemporary moral philosophy and culture. Greatly influenced by Kierkgaard, Wittgenstein, and Simone Weil, the complexity and messiness of ordinary life, and with one's deepest commitments-many of which cannot be accessed, or altered by means of arguments intended to defend philosophical "positions." Forsberg (Univ. of Uppsala, Sweden) makes excellent use of the work of Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, and Stephen Mulhall, who show how one might avoid the tendency of philosophers toward "deflection" from the "difficulties of reality." These are difficulties that people have when language fails in the face of experiences that refuse reduction to the abstraction of the clearly defined concepts sought after in philosophy--what Murdoch called its "dryness." Novelists like what it is like to struggle with the deeply confusing, distressing issues of the present without stepping aside from the emotional intensity of the encounters. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--”
(S.A. Mason, Concordia University, Choice)

“A fair bang in the philosophy of literature ... Forsberg's addition to this scene is brilliant and necessary ... This [book] will reverberate.” 
(British Journal of Aesthetics)

“This is one of the most philosophically sophisticated contributions to these interlinked issues that I have come across in the last decade; the care, charity and ease with which Forsberg contests and dismantles one of the most influential current readings of Murdoch (that advanced by Nussbaum) is enough on its own to make it clear that standards in this area have just been raised.” 
(Stephen Mulhall, Professor of Philosophy, New College, University of Oxford, UK)

“Can we lose our moral concepts? Can our culture and our understanding of the human occlude the background that alone makes sense of the ideals we want to live by? Niklas Forsberg argues that this is a basic insight of Iris Murdoch's philosophy. Moreover, this gives us the key to understanding the relation of Murdoch's philosophical writings to her novels. The latter hold a mirror to our lives, in which we could potentially become aware of this loss. This book is full of philosophical insight, not only about contemporary moral thinking but also about the relation of literature to philosophical thought.” 
(Charles Taylor, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, McGill University, Canada)

The Phantom of the Ego is the first comparative study that shows how the modernist account of the unconscious anticipates contemporary discoveries about the importance of mimesis in the formation of subjectivity. Rather than beginning with Sigmund Freud as the father of modernism, Nidesh Lawtoo starts with Friedrich Nietzsche’s antimetaphysical diagnostic of the ego, his realization that mimetic reflexes—from sympathy to hypnosis, to contagion, to crowd behavior—move the soul, and his insistence that psychology informs philosophical reflection. Through a transdisciplinary, comparative reading of landmark modernist authors like Nietzsche, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, and Georges Bataille, Lawtoo shows that, before being a timely empirical discovery, the “mimetic unconscious” emerged from an untimely current in literary and philosophical modernism. This book traces the psychological, ethical, political, and cultural implications of the realization that the modern ego is born out of the spirit of imitation; it is thus, strictly speaking, not an ego, but what Nietzsche calls, “a phantom of the ego.” The Phantom of the Ego opens up a Nietzschean back door to the unconscious that has mimesis rather than dreams as its via regia, and argues that the modernist account of the “mimetic unconscious” makes our understanding of the psyche new.

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This paper's aim is threefold. First, I wish to show that there is an analogy in section nine that arises out of the interaction of the interlocutors; this analogy is, or has, a certain comic adequatic to the traditional (e.g. Aquinas's) arguments about proofs for the existence of God. Second, Philo's seemingly inconsequential example of the strange necessity of products of 9 in section nine is a perfected analogy of the broken arguments actually given in that section, destroying Philo's earlier arguments. Finally, I raise the question of the…

With its innovative narrative structure and its controversial explorations of race, gender and empire, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a landmark of 20th century literature that continues to resonate to this day. This book brings together leading scholars to explore the full range of contemporary philosophical and critical responses to the text. Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Contemporary Thought includes the first publication in English of philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's essay, 'The Horror of the West', described by J. Hillis Miller as 'a major essay on Conrad's novel, one of the best ever written'. In the company of Lacoue-Labarthe, leading scholars explore new readings of Conrad's text from a full range of theoretical perspectives, including deconstructive, psychoanalytic, narratological and postcolonial approaches. Drawing on the very latest insights of contemporary thought, this is an essential study of one of the most important literary texts of the 20th century.

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This paper uses a Wittgensteinian framework to analyze the ethical representation of otherness in Rudyard Kipling’s short story, “Her Majesty’s Servants.” These texts address a central dilemma in representing difference, that the mere fact of viable, verifiable otherness problematizes the universal validity of one’s representational practices. By analyzing the tension between comprehension and incomprehension in narrating talking animals, this paper critiques the colonial tendency to domesticate otherness by describing it, arguing instead that one can productively respond to difference only by recognizing but not transgressing the limits of representation.

Having worked on this project for a few years, I have amassed a vast debt of gratitude: first of all to Profs. Anna Patubicka who has provided the impetus for this book and carefully read and supervised its draft, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska who has read all of this manuscript and offered insightful comments, as well as Marek J. Siemek, my teacher of Plato and Hegel. I would like to acknowledge two other readers of the entire manuscript, Profs. Tadeusz Buksihski and Lech Witkowski, whose generous gift of time and whose thoughtful suggestions have helped me a lot. My thanks go to people who have read parts of the manuscript, especially to

What is the proper role for literature in political thought and analysis? Can reading novels make us better citizens of a liberal democratic society? What is the status of argument and reason in an academy dominated by readings and redescriptions? Simon Stow identifies a potentially detrimental literary turn in the contemporary academy, arguing that the study of literature and the study of politics have become somewhat indistinguishable enterprises. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, Terry Eagleton, Martha Nussbaum, and Richard Rorty, he examines the problematic claims, circular reasoning, and misplaced assumptions that underpin this disciplinary merging, and seeks to defend political philosophy and social science against the rival claims of literature and literary criticism as sources of political insight and construction.

This conversation between Peirce, founder of pragmatism, and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty is compiled from their own published words. This wide-ranging conversation, covering almost every field of philosophy, reveals the richness of Peirce's thought, and the poverty of Rorty's.

If this paper is of interest to you, you might  also want to look at "Why I'm a Peirce Person" (2014) and "The Legitimacy of Metaphysics" (2007).

The way that Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals begins may seem perplexing since it does not state in a clear way what the aims and purposes of the book are, nor does it say anything about methodology. This chapter aims to show how this peculiar opening, rightly understood, functions as an entrance to an understanding of the book as a whole, and to make clear why the opening chapter’s focus on the concept of art is the right place to start.
                    Murdoch’s view of metaphysics is that we are always guided by a worldview, i.e. by unified images that are historical and changing. Art functions as a mirror of its time that help to bring the background of our lives and thoughts into view.

Can literary fictions convey significant philosophical views, understood in terms of propositional knowledge? This study addresses the philosophical value of literature by examining how literary works impart philosophy truth and knowledge and to what extent the works should be approached as communications of their authors. Beginning with theories of fiction, it examines the case against the prevailing ‘pretence’ and ‘make-believe’ theories of fiction hostile to propositional theories of literary truth. Tackling further arguments against the cognitive function and value of literature, this study illustrates how literary works can contribute to knowledge by making assertions and suggestions and by providing hypotheses for the reader to assess.

Through clear analysis of the concept of the author, the role of the authorial intention and the different approaches to the ‘meaning’ of a literary work, this study provides an historical survey to the cognitivist—anti-cognitivist dispute, introducing contemporary trends in the discussion before presenting a novel approach to recognizing the cognitive function of literature. An important contribution to philosophical studies of literature and knowledge.

One strand of recent philosophical attention to Marcel Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu, exemplified by Martha Nussbaum and Rae Langton, claims that romantic love is depicted in the text as self-regarding and solipsistic. I aim to challenge this reading. First, I demonstrate that the text contains a different view, overlooked by these recent interpreters, according to which love is directed at the partially knowable reality of another. Second, I argue that a better explanation for Proust’s narrator’s ultimate renunciation of romantic love appeals not to his impossible epistemic standard for knowledge of another person, but to his demanding evaluative standard for the permanence of love. This interpretation takes into account the broader scope of the novel, connecting with its larger themes of lost time and the desire for stability, and is more charitable, connecting to familiar worries about transience and constancy in loving relationships.

The contemporary debate in the philosophy of literature is strongly shaped by the anti-cognitivist challenge, according to which works of literary fiction (that contain propositions that are neither literally true nor affirmed by the author) cannot impart (relevant) knowledge to the readers or enrich their worldly understanding. Anti-cognitivists appreciate works of literary fiction for their aesthetic values and so risk to reduce them to mere ornaments that are entertaining, but eventually useless. Many philosophers have reacted to this challenge by pointing at ways in which works of literary fiction can be informative even though they lack worldly reference: it has been argued, for example, that works of fictions are thought experiments; that they add not to our theoretical knowledge, but to our know-how or to our phenomenal knowledge; or that that they help readers to understand the perspectives of others. A stubborn defense of literary cognitivism, however, risks to collapse into an instrumental understanding of literature. In my paper I suggest that both sides in the debate focus too narrowly on semantic features of the works in question that is tied to what I will call the " referential picture " of language. A shift perspective is needed: for one, we ought to fully appreciate that the term " literature " does not refer to a homogeneous phenomenon, but rather to a very heterogeneous and multifarious set of works that are read by many different readers for many different reasons in many different ways. Second, we need to understand that these works have in common much more than the semantic peculiarity of lacking worldly reference: they are a unique means of communication between authors and readers – and in particular the role of the latter is often neglected in contemporary debate. These two points should help us to get a more comprehensive understanding of the practice of literature and the vast range of values we can find works of literary fiction – and the interplay between them.

A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion develops and exemplifies an approach that is both methodologically innovative and expansive in its cross-cultural and multireligious scope. Employing his expertise in interdisciplinary and Wittgenstein-influenced methods, Mikel Burley draws upon works of narrative fiction and ethnography, including his own fieldwork, to facilitate thick description and attention to particulars. Breaking away from the standard fixation on a narrow construal of theism, topics discussed include conceptions of compassion in Buddhist ethics, cannibalism in mortuary rituals, divine possession and animal sacrifice in Hindu Goddess worship and animism in indigenous traditions.

Original and engaging, Burley’s synthesis of philosophical, anthropological and literary elements enlarges and deepens the philosophy of religion, providing an essential introduction for anyone interested in studying the radical plurality of forms that religion takes in human life.

Jorge Luis Borgesʹ philosophical fiction and Platoʹs intellectual
dramas are perhaps the most intricate records in
Western history of attempts to artfully interweave mythos
and logos, argumentation and narrative, thought and imagination.
Their juxtaposition, presented in the following
investigation, aims at demonstrating the complex connections
between classical and modern literature and
thought.
The study shows how the Platonic viewpoint sheds new
light on Borgesʹ essayistic and fictional work, providing
what Wittgenstein calls an aspect change in considering
Borgesʹ literary and theoretical work as a whole textual
corpus. The first part of the study deals with three theoretical
themes: the interrelation of myth and logos, the
quest for knowledge, and the theory of the archetypes.
The second part is more aesthetically oriented, attending
to artistic inspiration, literary representation, narrative
identity, the nature of the written word, the act of reading,
and the act of writing. All in all, the study strives to
manifest the extent to which Borgesʹ thought is deeply
rooted in classical doctrines and Platonic themes, and,
based on that, to provide new interpretations to Borgesian
stories and poems.

Reexaminamos la concepción barojiana de Nietzsche. Para suplir un concepto universal que falta en Gonzalo Sobejano, mejor estudioso de Nietzsche en España, adaptamos a España la visión del modernismo de Lawrence Gamache, y en ella situamos a Nietzsche y a Baroja. Después de estudiar la noción barojiana del modernismo presente en el ensayo "Estilo modernista" (1903), examinamos su cambiante percepción de Nietzsche como filósofo-poeta modernista en tres ensayos (1899, 1901, 1904).

This article compares two novels: Moyshe Kulbak’s Montog (“Monday”) and Samuel Beckett’s Murphy. Each novel ends with the death of its protagonist, figured as both a senseless act and the apotheosis of its hero’s self-reflexive, ironic rejection of community, faith, and purpose. Drawing on theories of Hannah Arendt, this comparison proposes to read the two narratives and their preoccupation with incarceration, institutionalization, revolutionary activity, religion, and the family as profound yet oblique parables on the nature of privation, resistance, and commitment in the multiple senses. Indeed, by arguing on behalf of a “politics of failure,” this comparison proposes a methodology for reading Beckett and Kulbak postcolonially that in turn invites further consideration of the postcolonial status of expatriate Irish and early-Soviet Jewish cultures, respectively. This essay creates for the two narratives a community of elective affinity that neither author would have envisioned for himself, and thus demonstrates that their respective critiques of ideological progress—via their shared strategies of parody, linguistic marginality, and exile—fulfill an explicitly political function.

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, providing a fresh glimpse at the philosophical underpinnings of the adventures depicted in Robinson Crusoe, as well as of Wittgenstein's philosophical motivations.

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Resumen. Este trabajo presenta una lectura de lo que Nussbaum llamó su «proyecto filosófico-litera-rio» que permite vislumbrar cuál es su aporte y mirada distintiva a la discusión sobre las relacio-nes entre el derecho y la literatura. En base a esta lectura, se plantean una serie de «usos» que de esta pueden hacerse en el campo jurídico, o una serie de puntos donde el diálogo puede ser productivo. Palabras clave: derecho y literatura, filosofía angloamericana y literatura, Nussbaum.

AbstRAct. This paper offers a reading of what Nussbaum called her «literary-philosophical project» that aims to show the contribution and the distinctive perspective that the author brings to the field of «law and literature». Based on this reading, it proposes three «uses» of literature in the world of the law, or three points in which the dialogue between law and literature can be productive.

Let us begin with a generalisation: Richard Rorty’s approach to literature is consistently – to use his own opposition – ‘solidarity-related’; what he calls the ‘other side’, literary self-creation, remains programmatically and intentionally undiscussed. One gets the impression that literature, and the novel in particular, is being burdened with an (‘unbearable’) heaviness of responsibility. Does the novel in Rorty’s reflections appear as a source of multifarious metaphors, of whole worlds born out of a writer’s imagination? Is there in it another dimension, where mundane obligations no longer bind the human being and where one can give rein to usually hidden desires and passions? The answer is in the negative. The world of fiction of which Richard Rorty writes is a pragmaticised one, where fiction itself is supposed first to build, and then defend, a democratic, liberal order. At the other extreme, there is philosophy with its right to choose self-creation (encapsulated, perhaps, in fragments of Derrida: telecommunicational fantasies from The Post Card or quasi-polemics from Limited Inc.). The situation as outlined by Rorty might be described in the following manner: while the writer has to be responsible (in a manner similar to Sartre’s conception of littérature engagée), the philosopher may indulge in a certain amount of irresponsibility, or may cease trying always to say something relevant about social problems. It is as if, after more than twenty five centuries, the ‘poets’ are being ordered back into the polis and made to think about the state and laws, which relieves at least some philosophers from the respectful Platonic duty of ‘enlightening the darkness’ of the world.

De hedendaagse literatuur en literatuurbeschouwing zijn teveel losgezongen van de buitenwereld, zo luidt een veelgehoorde klacht. Maatschappelijk betrokken, geëngageerde literatuur lijkt daarmee iets van het verleden. De oorzaak van deze situatie zou liggen in autonomie die schrijvers en critici vanaf de romantiek voor de literatuur hebben opgeëist. Deze studie maakt aannemelijk dat het debat tussen verdedigers van 'autonomie' en die van 'engagement' van meet af aan in een impasse verkeert. Sinds de romantiek ontbreekt het ons namelijk aan een overkoepelend paradigma om literatuur te begrijpen. Hoewel we literatuur nog steeds in romantische termen beschrijven, hebben veranderde opvattingen over het individu, zijn gesitueerdheid en zijn verhouding tot waarheid de grond onder het romantische paradigma weggeslagen - zonder deze te vervangen door een andere. Willen we de maatschappelijke functie van hedendaagse literatuur begrijpen, dan zullen we dus een hedendaags alternatief moeten vinden voor het romantische paradigma. Deze studie biedt daarom niet alleen een historisch-conceptuele analyse van het debat over de maatschappelijke functie van literatuur, maar ook de aanzet tot een paradigmawisseling. De auteur pleit voor een hedendaags 'relationeel' paradigma waarin romantische concepten als individualiteit en ongedeeldheid worden vervangen door die van relationaliteit en deelname.

'Literatuur, autonomie en engagement is een zeer goed geschreven, kernachtig, maar tegelijk een zeer diepgravende bijdrage aan het debat over de autonomie van de literatuur.' - Sander Bax, Universiteit Tilburg, docent Literatuurwetenschap, Cultuurgeschiedenis en Vakdidactiek Nederlands.

This essay queries and extends Stanley Cavell’s reading of
Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale by a close investigation of the character
and language of Hermione. Far from being merely a passive victim
of Leontes’s madness (or, in Cavellian terms, “skepticism”), I argue,
Hermione is an active contributor to the disintegration of their relationship by “sophistically” refusing to distinguish between language
as conversation and language as mere play. The play’s conspicuously
metatheatrical engagement with Hermione’s (as Leontes’s) repudiation
of vulnerability shows that the threat of “theatricalization” or sophism
cannot (as Cavell or Rush Rhees might wish) simply be excised but must
be integrated in ordinary relationships.