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21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 8. The Arts / b. Literature

[philosophical aspects of literature]

11 ideas
Without the surface decoration, poetry shows only appearances and nothing of what is real [Plato]
     Full Idea: If you strip a poet's works of their musical colorings and take them by themselves, I think you know what they look like. …We say that a maker of an image - an imitator - knows nothing about that which is but only about its appearance.
     From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 601a)
     A reaction: Knowing the appearances well is more than most people can manage, and aspirations to know the true reality may be an idle dream. Poets are, I presume, welcome in the Cave.
Poetry is more philosophic than history, as it concerns universals, not particulars [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
     From: Aristotle (The Poetics [c.347 BCE], 1451b05)
     A reaction: Hm. Characters in great novels achieve universality by being representated very particularly. Great depth of mind seems required to be a poet, but less so for a historian (though there is, I presume, no upward limit on the possible level of thought).
Tragedies are versified sufferings of people impressed by externals [Epictetus]
     Full Idea: Tragedies are nothing but the sufferings of people who are impressed by externals, performed in the right sort of meter.
     From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 1.04.26)
     A reaction: The externals are things like honour, position and wealth. Wonderfully dismissive!
Homer wrote to show that the most blessed men can be ruined by poor judgement [Epictetus]
     Full Idea: Did not Homer write to show us that the noblest, the strongest, the richest, the handsomest of men may nevertheless be the most unfortunate and wretched, if they do not hold the judgements that they ought to hold?
     From: Epictetus (The Discourses [c.56], 4.10.36)
     A reaction: This seems to be right. He clearly wrote about the greatest and most memorable events of recent times, but not just to record triumphs, because almost every hero (in the Iliad, at least) ends in disaster.
For poets free choice is supreme [Schlegel,F]
     Full Idea: Romantic poetry recognises as its first commandment that the free choice [Wilkür] of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.
     From: Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Frag 116 p.32), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06
     A reaction: This leads to Shelley's 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the race'. We should also take it as a response to Kant's categorical imperative, which leads to the Gauguin Problem (wickedness justified by the art it leads to).
Literature is the most important aspect of culture, because it teaches understanding of living [Murdoch]
     Full Idea: The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.
     From: Iris Murdoch (The Sovereignty of Good [1970], i)
     A reaction: It is significant that literature belongs more clearly to a nation or community than does most music or painting. You learn about Russians from their literature, but not much from their music.
The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting]
     Full Idea: Foucault maintains that for any 'authored' text a plurality of selves fulfils the author function.
     From: report of Michel Foucault (works [1978]) by Gary Gutting - Foucault: a very short introduction 2
     A reaction: This is a completely different concept of a 'self' from the one normally found in this database. I would call it the sociological concept of self, as something changing with context. So how many selves is 'Jane Austen'?
All great poetry is engaged in rivalry with mathematics [Badiou]
     Full Idea: Like every great poet, Mallarmé was engaged in a tacit rivalry with mathematics.
     From: Alain Badiou (Mathematics and Philosophy: grand and little [2004], p.20)
     A reaction: I love these French pronouncements! Would Mallarmé have agreed? If poetry and mathematics are the poles, where is philosophy to be found?
Storytelling is never neutral; some features of the world must be emphasised [Nussbaum]
     Full Idea: Storytelling is never neutral; the narrator always directs attention to some features of the world rather than others.
     From: Martha Nussbaum (Creating Capabilities [2011], 1)
     A reaction: The audience would be a bit stupid if it insisted on neutrality.
Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley]
     Full Idea: Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in the English language - full stop - in my humble opinion.
     From: Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 6)
     A reaction: I include this because I tend to agree, and love Stevens. Hear recordings of him reading. I once mentioned Stevens in a conversation with Ted Hughes, and he just shrugged and said Stevens 'wasn't much of a poet'. Wrong.
The hermeneutic circle is between the reader's self-understanding, and the world of the text [Zimmermann,J]
     Full Idea: The 'hermeneutic circle' of understanding is not between the author and the reader, but between my understanding myself in my own world, and the world projected by the text, with its possibilities for life.
     From: Jens Zimmermann (Hermeneutics: a very short introduction [2015], 4 'How texts')
     A reaction: I'm not much of a fan of hermeneutics, but this idea seems quite important. Readings of Dickens in1860, 1930 and 2020 are very different events. For example, which parts catch the reader's interest, or jar with their sensibilities?