Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Cutrofello
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
French Translation ◽  
German Word ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Philosophical Texts

Jacques Derrida was a philosopher for whom nothing about the philosophical enterprise was to be taken for granted. Without ever repudiating philosophy or abandoning the ideal of philosophical rigour, he relentlessly challenged all seemingly settled philosophical practices. He did not believe that his questions could be adequately characterized as metaphilosophical, because he regarded the question ‘What is philosophy?’ as an eminently philosophical one and thus itself in need of scrutiny. To indicate the unique kind of engagement with the philosophical that he was after, Derrida introduced a number of essentially provisional terms, one of which was déconstruction, initially conceived as a French translation of the German word Destruktion which Heidegger had used in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) to characterize his own project of ‘dismantling’ the history of Western metaphysics. In the USA, ‘deconstruction’ came to be associated with a style of literary criticism that was inspired by the work of Derrida but that often lacked its adherence, however uneasy, to the distinction between responsible and irresponsible ways of reading, thinking, and writing. During his lifetime, Derrida was frequently dismissed as a sophist by Anglo-American philosophy professors, whether because they assumed, without reading him, that he himself disregarded this distinction (when in fact he merely insisted on the philosopher’s perpetual responsibility to problematize it anew), or because they resisted the challenges that he posed to merely self-reassuring philosophical practices. Those who appreciated the care and rigour that Derrida brought to bear on philosophical texts and institutions took deconstruction to be the most promising (if not exactly legitimate, since not self-legitimating) offspring of the Kantian critical project.

6. Making sense of reading

2019 ◽  
pp. 94-113
Author(s):  
Belinda Jack
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
History Of Reading ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophical Texts

Reading is an interpretative act and this is not simply the case when it comes to what we think of as more complex writing—religious scriptures, philosophical texts, legal documents, or literary works. The simplest language can need interpretation. Hermeneutics is the discipline that concerns itself with the theory and methodology of interpretation. Its history is crucial to the history of reading and brings to the fore the myriad ways in which reading has been understood across time and space. ‘Making sense of reading’ considers the relationships between rhetoric and translation with reading, and then discusses the study of literature, modern literary criticism, and the concept of rereading.

Cavell, Stanley (1926–)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mulhall
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Theory Of Value

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Stanley Cavell has held the Walter M. Cabot Chair in Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University since 1963. The range, diversity and distinctiveness of his writings are unparalleled in twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. As well as publishing essays on modernist painting and music, he has created a substantial body of work in film studies, literary theory and literary criticism; he has introduced new and fruitful ways of thinking about psychoanalysis and its relationship with philosophy; and his work on Heidegger and Derrida, taken together with his attempts to revitalize the tradition of Emersonian Transcendentalism, have defined new possibilities for a distinctively American contribution to philosophical culture. This complex oeuvre is unified by a set of thematic concerns – relating to scepticism and moral perfectionism – which are rooted in Cavell’s commitment to the tradition of ordinary language philosophy, as represented in the work of J.L. Austin and Wittgenstein.

Cavell, Stanley (1926–)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mulhall
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Theory Of Value

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Stanley Cavell held the Walter M. Cabot Chair in Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University from 1963 until his retirement in 1997. The range, diversity and distinctiveness of his writings are unparalleled in twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. As well as publishing essays on modernist painting and music, he has created a substantial body of work in film studies, literary theory and literary criticism; he has introduced new and fruitful ways of thinking about psychoanalysis and its relationship with philosophy; and his work on ‘Continental’ philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, together with his attempts to revitalize the tradition of Emersonian Transcendentalism, has defined new possibilities for a distinctively American contribution to philosophical culture. This complex oeuvre is unified by a set of thematic concerns – relating to scepticism and moral perfectionism – which are rooted in Cavell’s commitment to the tradition of ordinary language philosophy, as represented in the work of J.L. Austin and Wittgenstein.

scholarly journals Introduction: Literary Advice from Quill to Keyboard

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Anneleen Masschelein
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Publishing World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Cultural And Creative Industries

AbstractThis chapter presents a brief history of the dominant, Anglo-American literary advice tradition from the nineteenth century to the present as well as a state of the art of the existing scholarship on literary advice. We focus on several key moments for literary advice in the USA and in the UK: Edgar Allan Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” (1846), the debate between Sir Walter Besant and Henry James surrounding “The Art of Fiction” (1884), the era of the handbook (1880s–1930s), the “program era” (McGurl 2009) and postwar literary advice, the rise of the “advice author” in the 1980s and 1990s, and finally advice in the “digital literary sphere” (Murray 2018). The overview captures both the remarkable consistency and the transformations of advice, against the background of changes in the literary system, the rise of creative writing, changes in the publishing world, and the rise of the Internet and self-publishing. It highlights the role of some specific actors in the literary advice industry, such as moguls, women, and gurus, and draws attention to a number of subgenres (genre handbooks, self-help literary advice, and the writing memoir),  as well as to counter-reactions and resistance to advice in literary works and in avant-garde manuals. Advice is regarded both in the context of the professionalization of authorship in a literary culture shaped by cultural and creative industries, and of the exponential increase of amateur creativity.

The History and Foundations of Criticism of H.L.A. Hart’s Legal Positivism in R. Dworkin’s Philosophy of Law

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (7) ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
Sofya V. Koval
Keyword(s):  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Competing Models ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Concept Of Law ◽  
Theory Of Law

The paper discusses the Anglo-American philosophy of law of the 20th century, more specifically the philosophy of law of Ronald Myles Dworkin and his criticism of the legal positivism of Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart. The author presents the history of the criticism of legal positivism in Ronald Dworkin’s philosophy of law and distinguishes historical stages. The subject of the study is the critique of legal positivism but not the Hart-Dworkin debate itself, well known in Western philosophy of law. The reason is that the discussion was conducted between Dworkin and Hart’s supporters but not between Dworkin and Hart by himself. The latter responded to the criticism only after twenty seven years. The article explains why Dworkin chose for his criticism Herbert Hart’s version of legal positivism. This is due to the fact that Dworkin highly appreciated Hart’s positivist theory of law and characterized it as the “most clear.” The article presents the methodological foundations of criticism of Hart’s legal positivism in Dworkin’s philosophy of law. It reveals a methodological divergence between the two legal theories, which directly affects the understanding of the concept of law and its content. Therefore, we can assume that the legal theories of Hart and Dworkin are two competing models of law: Dworkin’s model considers law as a set of rules and principles and Hart’s model acknowledges only rules and court decisions as a source of law. The article also presents the key principles of positivism criticized by Dworkin. These principles, firstly, interpret law as a set of legal rules determined through a special legal criterion, secondly, provide the judge with an opportunity to make a decision “at his own discretion” in a situation not regulated by law, and, thirdly, recognize only legal rights and obligations enshrined in legal regulations. It is important to note that in this article the author describes criticism as an independent phenomenon of legal philosophy with a particular focus on the history and foundations of this phenomenon.

Hegel and the New Historicism

1990 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Stern
Keyword(s):  
Richard Rorty ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Ian Hacking ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Shared Norms ◽  
Contextual Dimension

… intellectual and moral process (is) a history of increasingly useful metaphors rather than of increasing understanding of how things really are.” (Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 9)In an engaging recent paper, Ian Hacking has argued that Hegel is “speaking to us” once again, after a long period (in Anglo-American philosophy, at least), in which he appeared to be speaking to another audience, located in another world. He has our ear once more because our philosophical thought has once again begun to incorporate Hegelian themes, after decades in which our respective paths did nothing other than diverge. The aim of much Anglo-American philosophy has been to combine a Kantian “conceptual scheme” idealism with a late Wittgensteinian picture of the individual subject as embedded within a system of shared norms, practices and understandings; this has meant that it is now receptive to a form of “internal realism”, which also has a social, historical, contextual dimension, and it is this that many claim to have found in Hegel. As Richard Winfield has noted recently, after decades in the wilderness, Hegel is now an inspirational figure for the anti-foundationalism, anti-Cartesianism and anti-realism of the “new orthodoxy”:

Philosophy of Boredom

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Affective State ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Rich History ◽  
Empty Time

Even the most cursory of glances at the history of boredom reveals that boredom has been a topic of immense discussion. That same glance also reveals that there is not just one kind of boredom. There is the fastidium of Seneca, the horror loci of Lucretius, and the religious boredom of acedia. There is the sadness and listlessness of tristesse and melancholy, the void of Pascal, and the emptiness of La Rochefoucauld and of 18th-century Versailles. There is the ennui of Mme Du Deffand, of Chateubriand’s René, and of Goethe’s Werther. There is the despair of Schopenhauer, the monotony of factory workers, the empty time of leisure, the existential meaninglessness of Sartre’s Roquentin, and the profound attunement of Heidegger. And, of course, there is the simple and democratic boredom of the rest of us—that ubiquitous affective state that permeates and colors our everyday existence. The aim of this entry is to provide the reader with a philosophical map of the progression of the concept and experience of boredom throughout the Western tradition—from antiquity to current work in Anglo-American philosophy. By focusing primarily on key philosophical works on boredom, but also often discussing important literary and scientific texts, the entry exposes the reader to the rich history of boredom and illustrates how the different manifestations of boredom—idleness, horror loci, acedia, sloth, mal du siècle, melancholy, ennui, monotony, and emptiness—are grounded in the historical context in which they arise.

Literature in Our Time, or, Loving Literature to Bits

CounterText ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Callus
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Don Quixote ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
Paul Auster ◽  
Anne Michaels

In this essay Ivan Callus provides some reflections on literature in the present. He considers the tenability of the post-literary label and looks at works that might be posited as having some degree of countertextual affinity. The essay, while not setting itself up as a creative piece, deliberately structures itself unconventionally. It frames its argument within twenty-one sections that are self-contained but that also echo each other in their attempt to develop an overarching argument which draws out some of the challenges that lie before the countertextual and the post-literary. Punctuating the essay and contributing to its unconventional take on the practice of literary criticism is a series of exercises for the reader to complete, if so wished; the essay makes no attempt, however, to suggest that a countertextual criticism ought to make a routine of such devices. The separate sections contain reflections on a number of texts and writers, among them, and in order of appearance, Hamlet, Anthony Trollope, Jacques Derrida, The Time Machine, Don Quixote, Mark Z. Danielewski, Mark B. N. Hansen, Gunter Kress, Scott's Reliquiae Trotcosienses, W. B. Yeats, Kate Tempest, David Jones, Anne Michaels, Bernice Eisenstein, Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee, Billy Collins, Deidre Shauna Lynch, Tim Parks, Tom McCarthy – and Hamlet again. The essay's length fulfils a performative function but also facilitates as extensive a catalogue of aspects of the countertextual in literature and elsewhere as is feasible or as might be dared at this stage.

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