Verene - The philosophy of literature: four studies

Four Studies

Donald Phillip Verene

W ords are the natural bodies of thought. The languages and literatures in which the words live are the tongue and heart of the humanities. Since the eighteenth century, philosophy has progressively attached itself to various fields of human knowledge and forms of culture. This conception of philosophy has resulted in a series of philosophies of. Modern philosophy contains formulations such as the philosophy of science, philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion, and broader designations, such as philosophy of nature, philosophy of human nature, and philosophy of culture. These philosophies of assume a transcendental standpoint, as found in the Kantian conception of critique; their aim is to make explicit the presuppositions, principles, and methods that account for the possibility of their subject matters.

Thought of as one of these fields of philosophies of, the philosophy of literature considers the question of what literature is and the place it occupies in the imagination. In addition to this transcendental inquiry into literature as a subject matter, philosophy realizes that it itself is a kind of literature. Philosophy exists only in and through its use of words. Philosophy is a linguistic art. Through its words, philosophy attempts to take thought to what is ultimateto the really real, to ontos on , and to the greatest good, summum bonum . This linguistic journey is the center of speculative philosophy, as distinct from critical philosophy. The self-satisfaction of critical philosophy is disturbed by the speculative use of the minds eye to apprehend the divine, the transcendent realm of ideas. The Socratic question, unlike the transcendental method, seeks the unseen in the seen.

The speculative imagination and the poetic imagination have a common origin in the mythic imagination, in the narratives from which all human culture arises. From the archetypal images in the primal myths come the words, customs, deeds, and laws of all the nations at war and in peace. The images are the original orientations from which the divine, civil, and natural orders emerge. Without a comprehension of the myth, humanity has no basis from which to apprehend its own autobiography.

Put in James Joyces terms, from litter comes letter comes literature. From literature comes philosophy, when the idea is extracted from the image. When putting ideas into words, philosophy pursues a speech of pure thought. The speech of pure thought remains an ideal. Philosophical speech still requires the image as a means to access the idea. In philosophical literature we find an abiding dialectic between image as the medium of the imagination and idea as the medium of reason. When the philosophers reason forms itself in words, it finds itself among the etymologies and images that words bring with them. In using language the philosopher goes to school with the poet. Even when philosophical language is employed for the pure expression of arguments and conceptual analysis, metaphors and the images that accompany them are required to make the points asserted comprehensible. The reader may pass over the presence of the metaphors, but they are there, embedded in the text.

How are we to understand the relation of philosophy to literature? There are, I think, four ways in which we may answer this question. I intend these to be not a rigid classification but a general scheme. Philosophy may be brought into connection with literature in more than one of these ways at once. In the four chapters that follow, I wish primarily to align a single work of literature with each of these ways, without fully excluding the others.

First, we may think of a work of literature as a kind of philosophy. In such a work, philosophical thought is merged fully into its forms of literary expression such that the reader thinks both philosophically and poetically at the same time. In such a work the author has deliberately put the literary imagination in the service of philosophical thought. We find this union in many of Jorge Luis Borgess Ficciones . It is especially evident in El inmortal ( The Immortal ), which is the subject of chapter of the present work.

Second, we may connect philosophy to literature in the specific sense of philosophy of literature. In such a connection, philosophy maintains its separate stance from the work of literature and becomes the means for comprehending it. Philosophy in this way brings its own interests to the literary work being interpreted, and in so doing we see the literary work in philosophical terms. Chapter takes this approach to interpreting the intricate text of James Joyces Finnegans Wake .

Third, we may connect philosophy to a work of literature by searching out philosophical ideas that happen to reside in it. The purpose in this connection of philosophy to literature is neither to approach a work of literature as a type of philosophizing nor to develop a comprehensive interpretation of it in philosophical terms. A work of literature is regarded as a source of ideas of philosophical interest: the divine, the self, and the world. The work is regarded not as particularly philosophical in form but as a repository of philosophical insights. Carl Sandburgs epic poem, The People, Yes is discussed from this perspective in chapter .

Fourth, we may place a work of philosophy in a dialectical relation to a work of literature such that we may speak of philosophy and literature. This approach places two particular works side by side, one philosophical and one literary. Each may illuminate the other. They are both concerned with the same theme but each takes it up differently. The reader is not on one side more than another, and can consider the theme from each direction. The two works form a pair, one enriching the other. Chapter takes this approach by joining G. W. F. Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit ( Phnomenologie des Geistes ) with Sebastian Brants Ship of Fools ( Das Narrenschiff ). Such a pairing suggests a way of doing philosophy in which philosophy and literature function as companions in the larger project of humanistic thought.