Coetzee’s Critique of Language

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Literary Experience ◽  
The Way

The critique of language at stake in this chapter is Fritz Mauthner’s little-known Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (1901–2), a text remembered in philosophical circles chiefly because of a brief, categorically negative aside in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). In comparing Mauthner with Coetzee’s own critique of language, McDonald’s wider interest lies in reflecting upon the way in which scholarship often treats literary texts as the vehicles for ideas that can be unproblematically ‘compared’ with philosophical texts. What is involved, McDonald asks, in crediting the fact that literary texts are not ‘quasi-philosophical essays in disguise’? His answer draws on further questions of literary history and the practice of close reading, and examines the faultlines between philosophical questions and literary experience. In particular, through a reading of Disgrace he suggests that the formal workings of literary texts have the potential to unsettle the very salience of the philosophical questions being posed.

Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

When Is a Religion Like a Weed?

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-18
Author(s):  
Nathan Rein
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Study ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
The Way

Caroline Schaffalitzky de Muckadell's 2014 article, "On Essentialism and Real Definitions of Religion," offers a comprehensive rationale for the use of real, essentialist definitions of religion in the field of religious studies. In this article, I examine her arguments and the proposed definition she supplies. I argue that a close reading of Schaffalitzky's piece, concentrating especially on the way she uses examples, helps to demonstrate that she and her anti-essentialist opponents view the field of religious studies in incommensurable ways. While Schaffalitzky views definitions as serving the analytical study of religion as an object, her opponents view definitions primarily rhetorically and seek to focus attention on the process of defining.

Philosophical implications of Tarski's work

1988 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Suppes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Congress ◽  
Unity Of Science ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Philosophical Questions

In his published work and even more in conversations, Tarski emphasized what he thought were important philosophical aspects of his work. The English translation of his more philosophical papers [56m] was dedicated to his teacher Tadeusz Kotarbiński, and in informal discussions of philosophy he often referred to the influence of Kotarbiński. Also, the influence of Leśniewski, his dissertation adviser, is evident in his early papers. Moreover, some of his important papers of the 1930s were initially given to philosophical audiences. For example, the famous monograph on the concept of truth ([33m], [35b]) was first given as two lectures to the Logic Section of the Philosophical Society in Warsaw in 1930. Second, his paper [33], which introduced the concepts of ω-consistency and ω-completeness as well as the rule of infinite induction, was first given at the Second Conference of the Polish Philosophical Society in Warsaw in 1927. Also [35c] was based upon an address given in 1934 to the conference for the Unity of Science in Prague; [36] and [36a] summarize an address given at the International Congress of Scientific Philosophy in Paris in 1935. The article [44a] was published in a philosophical journal and widely reprinted in philosophical texts. This list is of course not exhaustive but only representative of Tarski's philosophical interactions as reflected in lectures given to philosophical audiences, which were later embodied in substantial papers. After 1945 almost all of Tarski's publications and presentations are mathematical in character with one or two minor exceptions. This division, occurring about 1945, does not, however, indicate a loss of interest in philosophical questions but is a result of Tarski's moving to the Department of Mathematics at Berkeley. There he assumed an important role in the development of logic within mathematics in the United States.

Alessandro Grandi: A Case Study in the Choice of Texts for Motets

1988 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-305
Author(s):  
Jerome Roche
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way ◽  
Musical Styles

It is perhaps still true that research into sacred types of music in early seventeenth-century Italy lags behind that into madrigal, monody and opera; it is certainly the case that the textual aspects of sacred music, themselves closely bound up with liturgical questions, have not so far received the kind of study that has been taken for granted with regard to the literary texts of opera and of secular vocal music. This is hardly to be wondered at: unlike great madrigal poetry or the work of the best librettists, sacred texts do not include much that can be valued as art in its own right. Nevertheless, if we are to understand better the context of the motet – as distinct from the musical setting of liturgical entities such as Mass, Vespers or Compline – we need a clearer view of the types of text that were set, the way in which composers exercised their choice, and the way such taste was itself changing in relation to the development of musical styles. For the motet was the one form of sacred music in which an Italian composer of the early decades of the seventeenth century could combine a certain freedom of textual choice with an adventurousness of musical idiom.

scholarly journals ‘God kan net doen wat God wel doen’: Petrus Abelardus se Megariaanse argument in Theologia ‘Scholarium’, Opera Theologica III

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Beukes
Keyword(s):  
Specific Reference ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Restricted Access ◽  
Master Argument ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
The Way

‘God can only do what God does do’: Peter Abelard’s Megarian argument in Theologia ‘Scholarium’, Opera Theologica III Peter Abelard’s contribution to a constellation of central themes in post-Carolingian medieval philosophy, namely on causation, necessity and contingency, with its discursive undertone of the relation between potentiality and actuality, is worked out in a rather informal way in one of his later works, Theologia ‘Scholarium’. Typical of the fusion of philosophical questions and theological premises in medieval philosophy, Abelard addresses the issue by asking whether God can only do what God does. Abelard argues that God can do or not do or omit doing only those things which God does do or does not do or omits doing and that God can do or can not do or omit doing those things only in the way or at the time at which God does and not at any other. Given Abelard’s fragmented and restricted access to the Aristotelian corpus regarding causality, how did he come to this Aristotelian-orientated conclusion? This article stresses the ancient quality of Abelard’s argument from another angle, reminiscent of the so-called Master Argument of the Megarians, with specific reference to the dialectical legacy of Diodorus Cronus, according to whom what can be is what is: what is, in turn, is what must be. Actuality, for the Megarians, exhausts potentiality. The path of actuality cannot be undermined or compromised by issues of potentiality. God’s actions are thus for both the Megarians and Abelard strictly determined and determining. God, in the end, can only do what God does. This article contributes to scholarship in medieval philosophy or theology by making this connection explicit and by thoroughly exploring the link between Abelard and his ancient predecessors.

The Cambridge Introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Hirschkop
Keyword(s):  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Way

In this introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin, Ken Hirschkop presents a compact, readable, detailed, and sophisticated exposition of all of Bakhtin's important works. Using the most up-to-date sources and the new, scholarly editions of Bakhtin's texts, Hirschkop explains Bakhtin's influential ideas, demonstrates their relevance and usefulness for literary and cultural analysis, and sets them in their historical context. In clear and concise language, Hirschkop shows how Bakhtin's ideas have changed the way we understand language and literary texts. Authoritative and accessible, this Cambridge Introduction is the most comprehensive and reliable account of Bakhtin and his work yet available.

World Literature as a Speculative Literary Totality: Veselovsky, Auerbach, Said, and the Critical-Humanist Tradition

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-251
Author(s):  
Ben Etherington
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Literary Practice ◽  
The Face ◽  
Humanist Tradition ◽  
Literary Experience

Abstract This essay revisits critical-humanist approaches to literary totality that have largely been sidelined during the recent revival of world literature studies. While there has been no shortage of defenses of close reading in the face of distant reading and other positivist approaches, this essay argues that it is precisely the hermeneutic attention to particular works that has allowed critical humanists to think about literary practice within the most encompassing purview. For those in this tradition, “world literature” can never be a stable object but is a speculative totality. The essay discusses three exemplary critical concepts that assume a speculative epistemology of literary totality: Alexander Veselovsky’s “historical poetics,” Erich Auerbach’s “Ansatzpunkt,” and Edward Said’s “contrapuntal reading.” Each, it is argued, is grounded in the distinctive qualities of literary experience, a claim for which Theodor Adorno’s account of speculative thinking serves as a basis.

The Justified Body: Hauerwas, Luther and the Christian Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Justin Nickel
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
The One ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
The Way

Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical (read: bodily) person continues to live under law and therefore coercion and condemnation. While not denying that Luther can be so read, I argue that there is another side of Luther, one that recognizes the body’s importance for Christian life. I make this argument through a close reading of Luther’s reflections on Adam and Eve’s Fall in his Lectures on Genesis (1545) and the sacramental theology in ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’. For this Luther, disconnection from our bodies is not a sign of justification but rather the sin from which justification saves us. Accordingly, justification results in a return to embodied creatureliness as the way we receive and live our justification.

Practical Materialism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliyahu Stern
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Primary Target ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Russian Jews ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
The Way

The discovery of Karl Marx’s writings by Russian Jews in the mid-1870s changed the way they viewed their situation and provided a framework for them to become political actors. The chapter provides a careful reading of Jewish philosophical texts and propaganda literature from the late 1870s. It suggests that Jews who were drawn to Marx viewed Marx in conjunction with, not in opposition to, the Hebrew Bible and the Kabbalah. The early Jewish Marxists’ primary target was the Russian state, not their Jewish parents. The Jewish materialists teased out the messianic universal aspirations and nationalist assumptions that they saw behind Marx’s theories of revolution.

scholarly journals The Musicality of 140: Tempo, Rhythm and Structure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Browne
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Interactive Nature ◽  
Spatio Temporal

This paper explores relationships between video games and music through a close reading of the minimalistic platform game 140 (Carlsen, 2014). Of particular interest to this investigation are concepts of tempo, rhythm and structure, and how these ideas can be extended to discuss the immediate case study as well as video games as a medium. Most importantly, this analysis is concerned primarily with these elements in a performative, spatio-temporal sense as opposed to an expression of sonic qualities. Comparisons between video games and other forms of media, while certainly valuable, can become problematic as the interactive nature of games is inherently unique. While cinema or literary texts can be seen as interactive, it is the explicit nature of the interactivity that games manifest which sets them apart from other disciplines. It is in this sense, that commonality can be found between games and music through the act of play. 140 facilitates a unique dialogue on this topic as it is a game that is intensely musical while also functioning outside of some of the precincts of traditional music games, providing a distinctive lens for analysis without being distracted by its own aesthetics. Evidence of this can be seen in the game’s design, aesthetics, mechanics and spatiality—a game where the player becomes part of a greater performance, enacting the musicality of space through play.

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