Philosophical Beginnings of Early Modern Literature

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog.

If we look at the emergence of modern literature in France and Britain, we could just as much talk about its origins in works of philosophy, and moral commentary, as in the historical development of literary genres.

Does any ‘purely’ literary figure contribute more to the emergence of French literature than Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère? A case could be put for Rabelais, but in any case we cannot talk about French literature without talking about these philosophers and moralists. In the case of la Rochefoucauld, we could even see the relations between moral reflections and literature through his private relationship with Madame de La Fayette and his friendship with Madame de Sévigné. The most significant thing is that we can see a big contribution in La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims towards literary style and towards an informal theory of the passions which establishes the themes of French literature.

Literature and philosophy seem less obviously entwined in Britain, if critics put Shakespeare in a philosophical context, they tend to bring in Montaigne. But let us consider the following.

The contribution made to English style by Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke.

The sense in Bacon and Hobbes the existence of the arts depends on the existence of sovereignty, law and the state.

Bacon’s use of utopian fiction in New Atlantis. Bacon’s emphasis on an orientation of the self towards the truth in nature and away from distracting idols. That seems to lead in the direction of an anti-rhetorical abstract philosophical language, but it is also the story of a dramatic struggle of the self with distraction. There is a historical and personal account of the orientation necessary for nature to reveal itself. That account includes the supremacy of law, instituted by a state.

For Hobbes, the existence of the arts depends on the existence of the covenant and the artificial man of the state. He believes in the truth of pure reasoning, but finds it necessary to resort to rhetoric to communicate his truths (as Quentin Skinner has pointed out at considerable length). The covenant and the artificial man is explain in the picture of the giant man made up of smaller people, and discussion of personation in drama and law.

In Hume, Smith and Burke we get theories of taste which incorporate permanent physiological sensation and changeable sociable agreement. Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, has a rhythm governed by the moves from sensation to sociability and back again. Hume offers a theory of the mind as passions, and a theory of taste in which passions are understood as physiological and as formed by the evolution of social agreement. These ambiguities about sensation and sociability enter into Smith’s discussion of taste, of moral sentiments and his discussion of natural and non-natural order in the development of different forms of wealth (as I discussed in a post of 16th August 2009). These are ambiguities about the sentiments, how they affect each other and how they are affected by the external social and natural worlds. Al very germane to the literature of the time.

We might look at early modern British philosophy, as more than the establishment of an epistemological tradition, theories about how ideas of things relate to sensations of things and those things themselves, in which Locke on knowledge of physical is the defining discussion. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, but there is a lot to be said for considering other frames, and placing Locke himself in that frame.

Link: Philosophy and Literature Podcast

Primary version of this post, with visual content, at Barry Stocker's Weblog

‘Philosophy and Literature’ with Lanier Anderson on Philosophy Talk presented by Ken Taylor and John Perry. Ken Taylor and John Perry of Stanford University are regular presenters of podcasts on Philosophy Talk which are also broadcast on Sunday mornings by the San Francisco Unified School District radio station KALW.

In this podcast from 9th August 2009, they take a very user friendly approach to discussing links between philosophy and literature. The podcast starts with the Monty Python sketch in which someone comments on Thomas Hardy writing a novel like a sporting event. Amongst a lot of informality and jokes, Taylor and Perry have a conversation with Anderson about philosophy as literature and literature as philosophy. The user friendly emphasis does break down the topic in to some clear points, which I find very helpful even after many years of thinking about philosophy and literature. The topics that come up are literature as mental simulation, literature as pretense, how we can have emotional reactions to pretense, imagining ourselves as characters, the psychology of morality including the psychology of evil, philosophical communication through genres like dialogue and aphorism, humans as narrating creatures, how philosophy now is less literary than a lot of the philosophical classics.

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.