Literary Interpretation

I observe that the aim and method of a Victorian text within Shakespeare criticism overlaps significantly with deconstruction.

I distinguish two senses of the word “deconstruction.” Then I quote a passage by a critic from the 1860s which, together with trends of that time, gives rise to the question of whether deconstructive interpretation existed in the nineteenth century.

I present two interpretations of Max Beerbohm’s pastiche “The Feast.” Both interpretations seem as if they cannot survive forceful questioning, which asks, “Why should we think that?” And yet we, or at least I, find them worth attending to. Why? I propose an answer.

There is a puzzle over why some literary works which are less esteemed are subject to more commentary and some literary works which are more esteemed are subject to less. By examining Max Beerbohm’s pastiche of Joseph Conrad, I propose an answer regarding pastiches.

Why was Raymond Tallis’s book Not Saussure largely ignored by literary critics? Here I present one response to this question: he does not offer a novel alternative system for literary interpretation. And I consider whether the situation is any different in other fields, introducing a rival to Simon Baron-Cohen’s empathizing-systematizing theory of gender differences when doing so.

Psychological and social-psychological critique of the characters in a plot is a strand of literary criticism. How a depicted character does actually think even in spite of appearances or not. How a depicted character would act or think under the siege of counterfactual scenarios. Perhaps contra Derrida, one reason there is genre distinction between philosophy and literature is that a philosophical (or even literary-critical) text is not essentially subject to character psychology to which literary texts are contrastingly essentially subject.

The character of Charlie Chaplin in his movies is the personification of forgetfulness but not forgiveness ------ Someone who is not susceptible to bad conscience: (Nietzsche: the sting of conscience teaches one to sting). He carries no guilt, no regret, and is a mechanism of historical forgetfulness (like a happy beast which grazes free from past and future) ------ He undergoes misfortunes and occasional fortunes and comes out the same mechanism of historical forgetfulness he used to be ------ He is (...) virtuoso in terms of accepting the external reality and its misfortunes and is delighted alright as long as a minimally descent condition of life obtains but is vigilant and agile otherwise in the face of danger and unjust irregularities. Agility means he is always on the verge of trusting and mistrusting the external environmental factors. He is suffering from borderline personality disorder. (shrink)

The author of a text originally produced as a literary work has the comprehensive authority, upon its being situated in certain context of evaluation or interpretation or deployment to declare one's text as philosophical. There would have to be extraordinary or even absurd contexts of evaluation in which one's originally-intended philosophical text is so situated for one to declare it as literary.

Aesthetic Attempt to Reconcile the Irreconcilable presents a series of early-2000s philosophical miniatures that combine classical conceptual clarity with the stylistic devices of absurdism and postmodernism. Rather than imitating these traditions, the texts attempt to overcome them from within: absorbing their logic, subverting their fragmentation, and returning toward a renewed, nearly classical transparency. The four pieces—an ontological narrative (“One History”), a metaphysical grotesque (“On the Zoomorphism of Being”), a political parable (“The Question of Democracy”), and a Harms-inspired sociopolitical absurdity—offer distinct, (...) mutually refracting perspectives on the encounter between consciousness and the structures through which being manifests itself. The collection is a stylistic experiment in reconciling incompatible aesthetic modes and a conceptual exploration of narrative, ontology, political order, and symbolic violence. (shrink)

Essentially, the paper is a complaint regarding philosophy in its most current iterations. And although not an attack on specific traditions, its objective is to instead point out a betrayal of the classical philosophical praxis. It is a betrayal of questioning and being that pesky, Socratic gadfly regarding people and institutions of power. The key objective is to not only draw a link between the philosopher and said institutions but also to show that the philosopher does not exist in a (...) vacuum—they are products of their time, even if not merely that. At its end, this short essay will make a call to uphold that precious tradition and preserve philosophy’s braver elements in the face of power and adversity. (shrink)

I argue against the view that titles of artworks are proper names of those works and that all descriptive content in them is relevant only to interpreting the works. In its place, I suggest that the ties between titles and works are much more complex than is allowed by thinking of them solely as names. Their descriptive content is crucial to understanding how they entitle and that it is aesthetically important, not in an interpretive way, but in terms of how (...) a work is staged or bounded in its confrontation with an audience. (shrink)

I compare a 1689 ballad by the Mexican Hieronymite nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “Let Us Pretend I am Happy,” with David Hume’s 1742 essay, “The Sceptic.” I argue that each composition conveys several competing messages. At the surface layer, both compositions employ skeptical reasoning to argue against the usefulness of learning for attaining happiness. They also invite ironic readings on which learning is a primary source of joy – a point also emphasized by Sor Juana’s defenses of (...) women’s right to study. Ultimately, I argue, both Sor Juana and Hume hold an intermediary position between the surface-layer pessimism and ironic optimism. They express this middle position using a literary device I call ‘layered irony.’ Comparing the two compositions reveals that layered irony is a fitting device for producing the middle position, for critiquing skepticism, and for increasing philosophy’s efficacy in its traditional function as a kind of therapy. (shrink)

The topic of exemplarity has attracted considerable interest in philosophy, legal theory, literary studies and art recently. There is broad consensus that exemplary cases mediate between singular instances and general concepts or norms. The aim of this article is to provide an additional perspective on the logic of exemplarity. First, inspired by Jacques Derrida’s discussion of exemplarity, I shall argue that there is a kind of différance between (singular) examples and (general) exemplars. What an example exemplifies, the exemplarity of the (...) example, eludes any fixed identity and follows a logic of supplement. Second, I shall present the so-called logic of exemplarity. The received paraconsistent view has it that the exemplar of X is an X and, at the same time, is not an X. Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s discussion of the standard metre, I would like to present an alternative paracomplete view whereby we can say of an exemplar of X neither that it is an X nor that it is not an X. (shrink)

I argue that in Sheridan Hough's book Kierkegaard's Dancing Tax Collector, the distinctive and novelistic literary form is not a playful, whimsical, or otherwise contingent feature, but a structure that's needed to convey the account of Kierkegaardian faith as practical in nature.

This article illustrates that metamorphosis functions not only as a literary motif but also as a narrative technique: thematic metamorphoses within a narrative often require corresponding textual transformations that alter the narrative’s presentation. Although ancient Greek literature features numerous examples of (bodily) transformations, the Greek term ‘metamorphosis’ is notably absent, appearing only in Hellenistic and Roman texts, with Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" being the most prominent example. In Ovid’s work, metamorphosis functions as both a cosmological principle and a poetic device: divine intervention (...) alters the characters' bodies within the narrative, while playful word order ambiguously transforms the storytelling itself. The article challenges the inclination to view Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" as the definitive model for literary metamorphoses, arguing instead that no single, unequivocal model exists. Various other models are available, two of which will be further discussed here. In Sophocles’ "Oidípous Túrannos", metamorphosis assumes a tragic dimension: Oidipous’ status shifts through reversal and recognition, with wordplay involving oĩda (I know) and pous (foot) undermining his supposed superior knowledge. In Melville’s "Moby-Dick", hermeneutic metamorphosis highlights interpretative transformations, where meaning expands through subjective interpretations, culminating in the multifaceted understandings of the white whale Moby Dick. Together these three models demonstrate metamorphosis as a narrative technique that reshapes both the story and its telling. (shrink)

Édouard Glissant argues that writing occurs ‘in the presence of all the languages of the world,’ in which languages resonate through echoes, opaque residues, and silences, allowing literature to register the world’s relational complexity. Yet his thought remains grounded in Martinique and the Antillean archipelago, a ‘laboratory’ whose interruptions, passages, and entanglements exemplify his ‘pensée archipélique’: the local place in direct relation to the unfinished complexity of the Tout-monde. Against the historical background of a 17th-century plantation society marked by the (...) slave trade and its aftermath, this framework challenges philosophies of fixed identity and treats fragmentation and uncertainty as constitutive, increasingly resonant with contemporary human conditions. This special issue aims to demonstrate the relevance of Glissant for European philosophy by tracing how insights arise from situated, incomplete and shifting perspectives that move from place (lieu) to connection (lien). The four contributions to this special issue explore different dimensions of Édouard Glissant’s thought and poetics. Martijn Boven examines Glissant’s poetics of mutual opacity as an alternative to traditional hermeneutics focused on forced transparency, illustrating this through William Faulkner’s ambiguous work. Divya Nadkarni analyzes the sea in Glissant’s thinking as a paradoxical archive (fluid, fragmented, and resistant to conventional historiography) and connects this to Glissant’s concept of non-history, critiquing contemporary oceanic logistics as a continuation of imperialist violence concealed by opacity. Birgit Kaiser and Tom van Bunnik offer an ecocritical reading of Glissant’s poetry, showing how the geography of Martinique shapes the lyrical subject and emphasizing that Glissant’s rootedness in place transcends local limitations, resonating globally. Jesse Havinga engages Glissant in dialogue with psychoanalyst Tobie Nathan, comparing their shared focus on ‘dwelling’ (errance) as a form of resistance and highlighting Nathan’s concept of ‘ain’, which underscores the cultural ties endangered by forced migration. (shrink)

In this article, Mieke Bal’s theoretical concepts of internal and external retrospections will be used to extrapolate them in the historical-literary discourse of News of a Kidnapping. The purpose of this use is to unravel the details that are outside the text and that can be recognized through consultation of other sources. This distinction will be important, since it allows us to complement the information and assume a more global idea of the events of certain stages of the countries. In (...) the case of this investigation, the primary focus will be on the last two decades of the 20th century in Colombia, characterized by terror, extortion and narcoterrorism that are part of a macrocriminal period. (shrink)

En este artículo, se utilizarán los conceptos teóricos de Mieke Bal de retrospecciones interna y externa para extrapolarlos en el discurso histórico-literario de Noticia de un secuestro. El propósito de este uso es para desentrañar los pormenores que se hallan fuera del texto y que se pueden reconocer a través de la consulta de otras fuentes. Será importante esta distinción, ya que se permite complementar la información y asumir una idea más global de los acontecimientos de determinadas etapas de los (...) países. Para el caso de esta pesquisa, el enfoque primordial será en los últimos dos decenios del siglo XX en Colombia, caracterizados por el terror, la extorsión y el narcoterrorismo que son parte de un periodo macrocriminal. (shrink)

La volición de esta entrevista a Carlos Francisco Monge es conocer los principios básicos que debe poseer un exégeta para examinar la Literatura Universal, merced a que esta se ha descuidado últimamente en cuanto a su lectura, su interpretación y su análisis por su extenso repertorio bibliográfico. En esta ocasión, el académico propone que será menester revisar a los autores clásicos, puesto que las repercusiones son beneficiosas, tal como se ha visto en la producción literaria centroamericana. Asimismo, la percepción que (...) tiene Carlos Francisco Monge desde su experiencia como estudioso de la Filología española conlleva observar de que obras neurálgicas y fundacionales como el Quijote sean una muestra de esa estimación importante que se hace desde la Literatura. Además, obras como esas facilitan que las investigaciones afines se sigan desarrollando con el devenir de los siglos. Con ese objetivo de revalorar, el intelectual brinda una apreciación en torno a las buenas obras literarias, las cuales no tendrán que introducirse a las engañosas estrategias de la mercadotecnia, sino que permanecerán en el tiempo por su calidad; incluso, llegarán a formar parte del patrimonio lingüístico, cultural y literario de cada país o continente. (shrink)

This essay speculatively proposes to think of John Brown as W.E. B. Du Bois's "ideal" White reader. Beginning with the "Forethought" to The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois attempts to interpellate his "Gentle Reader" with tropes of revelation. While Du Bois initially deploys a more accommodating rhetoric, his tone decidedly shifts in "The Souls of White Folk" (1920). Between these moments, Du Bois wrote John Brown (1909), which offers a model for how White people can receive the gift (...) of second-sight. Concurrent with its writing, Du Bois gave a hagiographical commencement speech on St. Francis (1906) who serves as a model for praxis. By constellating Francis with Brown, I argue that DuBois's writing cultivates what I call a form-of-life-toward-social-death. I then demonstrate how Brown's eschatological comportment intensifies Du Bois's apocalyptic tropes in his speculative fiction "The Comet" (1920), which cultivates a revolutionary desire for the end of the World. (shrink)

I shall present and defend in this paper a new version of actual intentionalism, i.e., Fundamental Actual Intentionalism. According to it, all legitimate interpretations of literary works irreducibly depend, at least in part, on the actual intentions of their actual authors. In Section 1 I shall provide a brief introduction to philosophical theories of literary interpretation. Moreover, I shall also clarify the notions of grounding/dependence to be invoked in the rest of the paper. In Section 2 I shall present Fundamental (...) Actual Intentionalism, whereas in Sections 3 and 4 I shall provide a defence of it by comparing it with other philosophical theories of literary interpretation. In a nutshell, I shall argue that these other theories still turn out to imply irreducible dependencies of legitimate interpretations upon the actual intentions of actual authors. Finally, in Section 5, I shall anticipate some objections and provide some replies. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como propósito demostrar que hubo un interés por parte de los escritores latinoamericanos en retratar los distintos abusos hacia los derechos humanos desde los gobiernos dictatoriales. Para el caso de Uruguay, recurriré al cuento “La vecina orilla” del Mario Benedetti. De Argentina, cotejaré la novela Prisión perpetua de Ricardo Piglia. Y, para Perú, utilizaré La ciudad y los perros de Mario Vargas Llosa. Estos tres referentes serán indispensables para que se puedan corroborar desde la historia y la (...) literatura las repercusiones que han existido en la sociedad por el mal manejo de las clases hegemónicas y gubernamentales. Para llegar a la conclusión proyectada, se realizarán análisis consuetudinarios de fragmentos de las obras mencionadas, se confrontarán con material histórico y se relacionarán con discursos concomitantes de esa época. De esa manera, se tendrá como resultado la cosmovisión explícita de cada autor trabajado. (shrink)

Este trabajo sustenta la articulación de una dialéctica fatalista que se desarrolla en el vínculo amatorio de ‘Ricardo Somocurcio’ en Travesuras de la niña mala (Vargas-Llosa, 2006). Para ello, recurro a los estudios de Harvey (2018), Sánchez (2005) y Benvenuto (2019), quienes examinaron a autores clásicos como Marx, Hegel y Kant. Esa demarcación permite la construcción epistemológica de las repercusiones degradantes del ser humano al involucrarse en una dinámica consciente y autodestructiva. Esta noción filosófica es propicia para cerciorarse del vacío (...) existencial que se genera en el protagonista, cada vez que frecuenta a la niña mala. Los tratamientos temáticos y estilísticos del escritor peruano servirán para la comprensión de este universo liberal y exacerbado, donde los límites del hombre no son lo neurálgico. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that there was an interest on the part of Latin American writers in portraying the various human rights abuses committed by dictatorial governments. In the case of Uruguay, I will use the short story "La vecina orilla" by Mario Benedetti. From Argentina, I will use the novel Prisión perpetua by Ricardo Piglia. And for Peru, I will use The City and the Dogs by Mario Vargas Llosa. These three references will be indispensable (...) to corroborate from history and literature the repercussions that have existed in society due to the mismanagement of the hegemonic and governmental classes. In order to reach the projected conclusion, customary analysis of fragments of the mentioned works will be carried out, confronted with historical material and related to concomitant discourses of that time. Thus, the result will be the explicit worldview of each author worked on. (shrink)

En este trabajo, se busca analizar la reconstrucción histórica sobre el periodo de Gobierno de Virgilio Barco, a partir de la configuración realizada por Gabriel García Márquez en su reportaje literario Noticia de un secuestro (1996). Para ello, se tomará en cuenta la concepción teórica de Mieke Bal, que consiste en aplicar la noción de retrospecciones interna y externa. Este recurso hace posible que se diferencie qué ideas son propias del material ficcional que se encuentran en la misma historia, así (...) como cuáles son aquellas que son ajenas a este, pero que permite una comprensión global de ese contexto aludido. (shrink)

After viewing a painting, reading a novel, or seeing a film, audiences often feel that they improve their cognitive standing on the world beyond the canvas, page, or screen. To learn from art in this way, I argue audiences must employ high degrees of epistemic autonomy and creativity, engaging in a process I call ‘insight through art.’ Some have worried that insight through art uses audience achievements to explain an artwork’s cognitive and artistic value, thereby failing to properly appreciate the (...) cognitive and artistic achievements of artists. I move against this worry by arguing that in order to learn via insight through art audiences must collaborate with artists, sharing the labour and credit for the cognitive achievements they co-produce. I claim this co-productive outlook reveals that our appreciation of art’s cognitive and artistic value involves far more audience participation than has hitherto been realised. (shrink)

One of the classical and central problems in philosophy is why choose a life dedicated to knowledge over a life of ignorance that can bring happiness? While there is no central and widely accepted answer to this question, a fine one comes from Voltaire’s story of The Good Brahmin. It is this paper’s objective to provide and introduce the story to many, what I believe its meaning is, and how this can tie into Lessing’s famous polemic about the search for (...) truth and not the truth itself. (shrink)

Escapism is often viewed in only one sense: a negative act used to run away from problems or stressors. This essay transforms escapism into an activity, neither positive nor negative, and attempts a more detailed interpretation that does not focus on the intentions or motivations behind escapism; it instead seeks to show the consequences of escapism and how it arises from creativity. There are two main currents of escapism: one active, the other passive. What makes them active is based on (...) the quality of creativity, along with the magnitude of their actions. A new interpretation of escapism is needed to suit the ever-changing world, and this interpretation seeks to ‘open up’ the subject instead of narrowing it. (shrink)

This paper will attempt to elucidate a problem present from the 20th century onwards: that is, a gatekeeping of what it means to be a philosopher, and the objective of this essay is to show that the term “armchair philosopher” is the direct result of such gatekeeping, when in reality, philosophy is not about prestigious titles, or even the institution one attends or has attended; it is about thinking and offering new perspectives, a novel idea that perhaps shows what another (...) philosopher, or society, has overlooked. If that is the case, does the armchair philosopher truly exist, or are they just philosophers who come from the non-traditional route? -/- . (shrink)

This paper presents the Index of the Interesting (II) — a formalized method for evaluating the quality of texts across genres, from scholarly theories to literary narratives. Building on the author's earlier theoretical work on "the interesting" as a cognitive-aesthetic category (Epstein 2001, 2009), the study operationalizes the original insight that interestingness equals provability divided by probability. The Index comprises a core function measuring unexpectedness and credibility, and a modulator capturing secondary parameters: interpositional tension, openness, rhythm, and resonance. The paper (...) provides theoretical foundations with reference to the etymology of "inter-esse" (being between), presents the formula's structure with detailed parameter descriptors, and offers calibration examples using canonical texts: Gogol's "The Overcoat," Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog," Montaigne's "Of Friendship," Bacon's "Of Studies," Bakhtin's "Epic and Novel," and classical aphorisms from Hippocrates, La Rochefoucauld, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Genre-specific adaptations for essays, aphorisms, and other forms are discussed. The method emerged through extended dialogue between the author and the large language model Claude (Anthropic), representing an early case of humanistic methodology developed through human-AI collaboration — what the author terms "syntellect" (a concept introduced in Epstein 2004). The paper reflects on the implications of this co-thinking for the future of humanistic research. The Index of the Interesting offers both a diagnostic tool for authors and critics seeking to improve texts, and a theoretical framework for analyzing the qualities that make texts intellectually and aesthetically compelling. (shrink)

Intentionalism is a theory about the interpretation of artworks, particularly literary works. In this essay, I defend a form of intentionalism according to which the intentions of authors are both necessary and sufficient to fix the meaning of their literary works. In the first part, I offer brief definitions of intentions, interpretation, and work-meaning. Second, I defend E. D. Hirsch’s argument for the necessity condition. Finally, I argue that prominent objections to the sufficiency condition fail.

Open-ended, controlled, and graphic, Claire Keegan’s narrative style is powerfully brief and succinct and her mastery with the short story form has garnered global attention. Allowing herself limited space to share her depths and insights, she portrays slivers of lives and pieces of Irish history by getting to the point and introducing us to characters who in an almost chronicle-like fashion represent national stereotypes. Their queries and anxieties are set in narratives within a provincial Irish context expressing local concerns yet (...) possessing wider relevance as universal issues. Their fates bind us across cultural borders and divides, therein lie their wider relevance. This essay inserts Keegan in an existentialist framework and draws on Zygmunt Bauman, Walter Benjamin, and Susan Sontag while focussing on stories where the mundane hides deeper concerns which are expressed less through verbal communication than pauses and silences charged with emotion. (shrink)

Richard Rorty (1931–2007), once dubbed ‘the man who killed truth’, is best known for challenging the idea that philosophy provides foundational knowledge. Yet beyond the controversy lies a vital, underexplored side of Rorty’s work: his constructive vision for fostering democratic solidarity in a world shaped by contingency and uncertainty. This volume shifts focus from defending Rorty to applying his insights for today’s fractured, post-truth culture. -/- Centered on Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), the collection explores how his pragmatism helps (...) us reimagine philosophy as a cultural practice—one grounded not in timeless truths, but in shared hopes, vocabularies, and democratic cooperation. The volume brings together seven original essays that revisit Rortyan concepts like liberal ironism, poetic redescription, eirenism, and democratic solidarity, and explore their implications for social justice, feminist theory, public discourse, and the humanities. -/- Rather than lament relativism or retreat into essentialism, these contributions demonstrate how Rorty’s philosophy offers practical, imaginative tools for navigating difference and building inclusive societies. Emphasizing creativity over certainty and solidarity over skepticism, this timely volume reclaims Rorty’s legacy as a philosopher of hope—and a resource for democratic renewal in our era of radical uncertainty. (shrink)

We intend to justify studying Murakami and his works philosophically and challenge the belief that only philosophers or traditional philosophical objects qualify for philosophical studies. Philosophy, in its capacity as an ever-evolving field of science, is free to critically control the objectification of whatever happens to be dealt with in the field of Murakami Studies and to reassess and develop any of its methods and objects within the framework of this interdisciplinary field that provides room for philosophical inquiry. To suggest (...) how Philosophy could become involved in Murakami Studies, we paid some attention to the Semiotics of Poinsot. Since Poinsot and Murakami were never before linked, this brings a new relationship to life and sets the stage for future breakthroughs. (shrink)

This essay is part of my project of reclaiming the concept of spontaneity for philosophy, jazz, and literature. I bring together Immanuel Kant’s notion of spontaneity from the Critique of Pure Reason with Elvin Jones’ album Puttin’ it Together and Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz to address critical impasses around the concept of spontaneity and its cognate term, “improvisation. -/- I need to make it absolutely clear at the outset that the spontaneity that concerns me is epistemic spontaneity; it has more (...) to do with the imaginative underpinnings of knowledge production than with vitalism. This may be confusing to readers steeped in the colloquial use of the term (see section 3 below). My claim here is that verbal and rhythmic art can make palpable the spontaneous possibilities of knowledge-making that are always there but are either negated through structural violence or just ignored. But the epistemic sense of “spontaneity” is exactly what has become muted in the dominant reception of the term. (shrink)

Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1645-1720) was the most important woman of letters of her time and Of the Causes of the Corruption of Taste is her most significant work. This book is one of the wellsprings of modern aesthetics. While Dacier was a classical philologist—not an aesthetician or philosopher of art—in several ways she anticipated and laid the groundwork for subsequent writers on the fine arts, including Batteux and Du Bos, both of whom cite her. Her views on art are (...) at least as sophisticated and interesting as those found in contemporaries such as Addison and Shaftesbury or anyone in France. Dacier addresses topics that would become staples in the philosophy of art, in many cases long before other writers did. She contributed to the demise of the rationalist approach to art criticism and to the rise of the view that the beauties of art are apprehended by means of experience, a view which came to dominate eighteenth-century thinking about the arts. -/- Dacier was one of the first eighteenth-century authors to emphasize that art is essentially the imitation of nature and belle nature. She raised questions about whether art can be a source of moral knowledge long before this became a widely discussed question in the philosophy of art. She richly deserves a prominent place in the early history of aesthetics. This volume is the first-ever translation of a work by Dacier into English. It includes a substantial introduction that not only examines her contributions to the philosophy of art but also traces her influence on the development of the subject through the eighteenth century. (shrink)

This book provides interdisciplinary perspectives on the work of the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, with a particular focus on the conceptual material of his work. It seeks to answer the following questions: Is there any philosophic material or concepts in the work of Haruki Murakami? If so, why are they important? Does philosophic engagement add anything to the Murakami research field? Equally, does Murakami’s fiction present us with anything valuable for the field of philosophy? -/- The volume uniquely develops the (...) field of Murakami studies through acting as a forum for interdisciplinary researchers to share their perspective on his work. Importantly, it furthers the conversation on Murakami’s philosophic value and through doing so, is a must-read not only for those interested in Japanese literature or culture, but also for those interested in the productive space existing at the intersection of philosophy, literature, and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Using Philosophical Formalism, I am executing a close textual examination of Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” as a “postmodern” novel. By looking into the implications of genre and/into the supposed self-aware critico-novelistic vision of Pynchon, I cascaded this critique as follows: Part 1: the semiotic/semiological texture of the novel; Part 2: the novel as a critical attempt to the Enlightenment-infused concepts in the contemporary time-space reality; Part 3: the novel as a psychedelic commentary on the modernist psychosis, thus (...) a celebration and an interrogation of the legacies (?) of the intricacies or the lack thereof of the Postmodern cultural mood; for better or worse. What we can gleaned from this novel as a signifying practice of the Postmodern turn is something that is open to interpretations that I wish to consolidate and bring forth to the discourse—(con-)current to the issues that hover the Subject—elsewhere. (shrink)

What does it mean for a text to be transparent? If in order to be considered such, as the Oxford English Dictionary among others tells us, a thing must either be ‘easily seen’ or else ‘easily seen through’, what does this contradiction embedded into the term mean for the reader of transparent things? Vladimir Nabokov engages precisely this line of inquiry in the candidly named 1972 Transparent Things, his penultimate text before his death in 1977. In doing so, Nabokov also (...) articulates a particular understanding of and attraction to transparency which has permeated his body of works since at least the 1920s and which, in this emphatic iteration, serves to complicate the notion of any stability in the roles of ‘authors’ and ‘readers’; to dismantle the dichotomous logic of the categories of ‘surface’ and ‘depth’; and finally to advocate for that which appears as ‘surface’ as the space where writing, reading and criticism is at its most fluid, inventive and kaleidoscopic. (shrink)

With the increasing popularity of large language models, there has been an increase in the number of AI-generated literary works. In the absence of clear authors, and assuming such works have meaning, there lies a puzzle in determining who or what fixes the meaning of such texts. I give an overview of six leading theories for ascribing meaning to literary works. These are Extreme Actual Intentionalism, Modest Actual Intentionalism (1 and 2), Conventionalism, Actual Author Hypothetical Intentionalism, and Postulated Author Hypothetical (...) Intentionalism. I argue that only Conventionalism and Postulated Author Hypothetical Intentionalism show any promise of adjudicating how we ought to ascribe meaning in the case of AI-generated texts, and further that Postulated Author Hypothetical Intentionalism is the stronger of the two views. (shrink)

Many authors have remarked on the relationship between the aesthetic categories of the sublime and the uncanny. Building on a suggestion made by Cynthia Freeland, my aim in this paper is to show how, once inverted, Kant's theory of the sublime provides a valuable resource for developing a novel theoretical approach to the uncanny. Whereas, according to Kant, the positive feeling of the sublime is a feeling of the superiority of one's faculty of reason over anything in nature, the uncanny (...) as antisublime is a feeling that arises when something in nature overwhelms one's faculty of reason. Using Kant's distinction between the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime, I propose that there are two sources of uncanny experiences: one that involves a threat to one's capacity to make sense of the world as a systematic whole (the "theoretical uncanny"), and another that involves a threat to the unity or autonomy of the thinking subject (the "moral uncanny"). I illustrate these with two examples from literature: the house in Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves, and the doppelganger in Edgar Allan Poe's short story "William Wilson.". (shrink)

A long-standing complaint about The Wheel of Time (WoT) is that it is derivative of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (LotR). I argue that this (1) misconstrues the mechanics of genre creation and membership, (2) misconceives the nature of artistic influence, and (3) fundamentally misunderstands Robert Jordan’s project in writing WoT. Tolkien’s project in LotR was to write a kind of background mythology for England; Jordan’s project in WoT was to do the same thing for the entire world. And in (...) so doing, I argue, he did something very neat, philosophically-speaking: he built the truth of LotR into Randland’s background, so that it is true, in WoT, that a hobbit named Bilbo won a riddle contest with a scary cave-dweller, that Gimli is the son of Gloin, and so on. (shrink)

In 1848, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote a short yet highly significant theater review, titled “Mr. Phister as Captain Scipio.” This review deals with a seemingly prosaic problem: how can an actor convincingly play the role of a drunk police captain while simultaneously disclosing that this captain is deliberately concealing his intoxicated condition? This article argues that this ‘disclosure of concealment’ underlies Kierkegaard’s oeuvre. It elucidates this argument by illustrating that the three levels of theatrical performance highlighted in “Mr. (...) Phister as Captain Scipio” correspond to three parallel levels of authorial performance. Drawing inspiration from the actor, Kierkegaard adopts the persona of a pseudonym who conceals his true identity behind an incognito while simultaneously disclosing that this pseudonym is hiding something. Emulating the dramatic performativity of the actor, Kierkegaard developed a method of indirect communication that constantly works against itself and thus relies on a form of linguistic performativity. (shrink)

Though he is no stranger to philosophy, his character and ideas in the English-speaking world are, and it is this paper’s objective to show why that possibly is the case, why the biases, stereotypes, and bad faith interpretations of Jacques Derrida run amok, and, in the process, perhaps offer a clearer and more faithful interpretation of the man and his work. The work that many either refuse to read and look at, in favor of uncharitable images and, at worst, lies (...) about a complex individual with an equally complex, subtle, and reasonable philosophy. From Deconstruction to statements of his character, this is to clear the bad air and preposterous myths that surround Derrida. (shrink)

Menschen streben von Natur aus nach Verstehen – Hermeneutik ist die Lehre vom Verstehen. So leicht, könnte man meinen, lasse sich die Frage nach der bleibenden Relevanz und Stellung der Hermeneutik im Kanon der Wissenschaften beantworten. Doch heute kommt kaum eine Publikation, die das Stichwort „Hermeneutik“ im Titel trägt, ohne die Frage aus, wie es mit der Hermeneutik weitergeht. Ihr scheint nicht mehr dieselbe Schlüsselrolle zuzukommen wie in vergangenen Zeiten. Deshalb sind die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes, die eine Tagung aus (...) Anlass des 60. Geburtstags des Zürcher Instituts für Hermeneutik und Religionsphilosophie dokumentieren, der Frage „wie weiter?“ gewidmet. Sie unternehmen in allgemeinen und disziplinären Perspektiven eine aktuelle Klärung von Konstitution und Ausrichtung der Hermeneutik als Kunstlehre und Theorie des Verstehens. (shrink)