Joyce Interpreter of Vico: Literature as Philosophy

Primary version of post at Barry Stocker's Weblog, with picture of Joyce not just the link!

Picture shows James Joyce

In the 18th Century Giambattista Vico wrote New Science as a new kind of science which deals with human consciousness and the history that arises from human consciousness. He places literature at the centre of his philosophy of history, but mainly with regard to an early mythical history which is decoded through literature, particularly Homer.

In the 20th Century, James Joyce wrote two novels, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, two of the most important cultural products of the century, and both amongst other things reflect an interest in Vico. Ulysses is the Latin name of Homer’s hero Odysseus, from The Odyssey. There are various ways in which the text refers to Vico, and Finnegans Wake does so even more. The title itself refers to the mourning and celebration (a wake is the party after a funeral) of an Irish hero. For Vico, Homer records early history in mythical form through the stories of heroes, From page one, Joyce inserts 100 letter words suggestive of explosive sound, and this is one way in which Joyce engaged with Vico, who thought the earliest humans interpreted thunder in primeval floods as speech of the gods.

Vico consigned the literary to the the time of myth, at least for literature at its most significant for the philosophy of history. Joyce suggests a way in which literature remains constantly philosophically significant. Through his ‘thunder words’ and through the vast mixture of mythical, historical, literary and linguistic references, Joyce suggests that we can read Vico as a guide to all history. Joyce uses the stages of history in Vico, and also the circularity. The last sentence of Finnegans Wake leads back to the first sentence. If history is circular, as Vico suggests than the mythical-literary stage is always coming back. We don’t need to accept the myth of circularity, what Joyce suggests is the constant repetition of the use of words and language to shape experience of the world. Since we live in a world of language, the strong focus in Finnegans Wake on linguistic possibilities is showing us something about how we experience the world. That experience always has myth, literature and repetition even though we not always focused on those aspects. Without those aspects there would not be any other form of language or experience. Vico’s account of the earliest human history becomes an account of all history, and Joyce shows how this is possible.

Gadamer, Nationalism and a Reductive view of Enlightenment and Romanticism

These thoughts come from an MA class from the Methodology course I give for the MA in Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Science where I am employed.

Truth and Method famously rehabilitates the concept of 'prejudice' as a term of legal process rather than as a negative term referring to a bad opinion based on poor reasoning. The use of 'prejudice' as a necessary first stage of a legal process is combined to Germany. Gadamer contrasts German usage with other usages going back to the Latin. What he does not do is consider various contextual issues in history and theory of law: Roman Law and Customary Law (which still existed in Germany in the era of Enlightenment and Romanticism), Roman Law and Common Law (English style law which gives a strong role to judicial precedent and innovation); and all consideration of law not based on a convenient German example. The section on legal hermeneutics has rather more to do with hermeneutics than law, leaving us with Gadamer's privileged example.

The German orientation is also present in his account of Enlightenment. French and 'English' Enlightenment are presented as sceptical in contrast with the historically grounded German Enlightenment. The fşrst point to make her is that the 'English' Enlightenment is better described as 'Anglo-Scottish' since the greatest figures were David Hume and Adam Smith. Other notable Scottish contributors include Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid. Looking at the great philosopher in this context, David Hume, scepticism is a strong theme in Hume but it has an end. The end is in the habit, or custom, of the mind which provides a reliable basis for knowledge and ethics, though they cannot be based on determinate knowledge. Custom and habit also exist in history, in the accumulation of science, culture and morality. Something Gadamer could have taken into account.

The Italian Enlightenment is also pushed out of account. Vico is put in his place, by suggesting that he has failed to adopt the Hermeneutic method of moving between part and whole. Vico apparently leaves an unbridgeable confrontation between the individual and history as a whole. Another way of looking at Vico is that he shows the individual becoming more universal through history. Somehow Gadamer overlooks Vico's work on language, literature and law, which would disturb his extremely schematic contrast between Enlightenment and Romanticism. His presumed sharp separation ignores the way that Enlightenment includes the centrality of sensibility and imagination. These may have been initially conceived in mechanistic terms but that is something that is always breaking down, particularly if we consider the simultaneous development of the novel of sensibility. Gadamer claims that Romanticism is nostalgic, but the Jena Romantic Ironists in some sense invented Modernity as a value. They opposed the sentimental, romantic, modern novel to the naive, classical, antique novel in non-nostalgic terms.