Table Of ContentA Companion to the Philosophy
of Literature
A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature Edited by Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost
© 2 0 10 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-14170-3
Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
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Iris Marion Young Edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero
14. A Companion to Cognitive Science 39. A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology
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Edited by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer Edited by Elizabeth S. Radcliffe
16. A Companion to the Philosophers 41. A Companion to the Philosophy of History
Edited by Robert L. Arrington and Historiography
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Edited by Robert E. Frederick 42. A Companion to Aristotle
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20. A Companion to Analytic Philosophy 44. A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature
Edited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa Edited by Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost
21. A Companion to Genethics Also under contract:
Edited by Justine Burley and John Harris
A Companion to Latin American Philosophy, Edited by
22. A Companion to Philosophical Logic Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, and Otávio Bueno
Edited by Dale Jacquette A Companion to Schopenhauer, Edited by
23. A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy Bart Vandenabeele
Edited by Steven Nadler A Companion to Relativism, Edited by Steven D. Hales
A Companion to
the Philosophy
of Literature
Edited by
Garry L. Hagberg
and
Walter Jost
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition first published 2010
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to the philosophy of literature / edited by Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost.
p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-4170-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Literature–History and criticism. 2. Literature–Philosophy. I. Hagberg, Garry, 1952–
II. Jost, Walter, 1951–
PN501.C626 2010
801–dc22
2009018607
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/13pt Photina by Graphicraft Limted, Hong Kong
Printed in Singapore
01 2010
Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost
Part I Relations between Philosophy and Literature 5
1 Philosophy as Literature and More than Literature 7
Richard Shusterman
2 Philosophy and Literature: Friends of the Earth? 22
Roger A. Shiner
3 Philosophy and Literature – and Rhetoric: Adventures in Polytopia 38
Walter Jost
4 Philosophy and/as/of Literature 52
Arthur C. Danto
Part II Emotional Engagement and the Experience of Reading 69
5 Emotion and the Understanding of Narrative 71
Jenefer Robinson
6 Feeling Fictions 93
Roger Scruton
7 The Experience of Reading 106
Peter Kivy
8 Self-Defining Reading: Literature and the Constitution of Personhood 120
Garry L. Hagberg
v
contents
Part III Philosophy, Tragedy, and Literary Form 159
9 Tragedy and Philosophy 161
Anthony J. Cascardi
10 Iago’s Elenchus: Shakespeare, Othello, and the Platonic Inheritance 174
M. W. Rowe
11 Catharsis 193
Jonathan Lear
12 Passion, Counter-Passion, Catharsis: Flaubert (and Beckett) on
Feeling Nothing 218
Joshua Landy
Part IV Literature and the Moral Life 239
13 Perceptive Equilibrium: Literary Theory and Ethical Theory 241
Martha C. Nussbaum
14 Henry James, Moral Philosophers, Moralism 268
Cora Diamond
15 Literature and the Idea of Morality 285
Eileen John
16 Styles of Self-Absorption 300
Daniel Brudney
Part V Narrative and the Question of Literary Truth 329
17 Narration, Imitation, and Point of View 331
Gregory Currie
18 How and What We Can Learn from Fiction 350
Mitchell Green
19 Literature and Truth 367
Peter Lamarque
20 Truth in Poetry: Particulars and Universals 385
Richard Eldridge
Part VI Intention and Biography in Criticism 399
21 Authorial Intention and the Varieties of Intentionalism 401
Paisley Livingston
vi
contents
22 Art as Techne, or, The Intentional Fallacy and
the Unfinished Project of Formalism 420
Henry Staten
23 Biography in Literary Criticism 436
Stein Haugom Olsen
24 Getting Inside Heisenberg’s Head 453
Ray Monk
Part VII On Literary Language 465
25 Wittgenstein and Literary Language 467
Jon Cook and Rupert Read
26 Exemplification and Expression 491
Charles Altieri
27 At Play in the Fields of Metaphor 507
Ted Cohen
28 Macbeth Appalled 521
Stanley Cavell
Index 541
vii
Notes on Contributors
Charles Altieri teaches modern poetry and literary theory at the University of
California, Berkeley. His two most recent books are The Particulars of Rapture and
The Art of Modernist American Poetry. He is working on a book on Wallace Stevens.
Daniel Brudney is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
He is the author of Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy. His work in philosophy and
literature includes “Lord Jim and Moral Judgment: Literature and Moral Philosophy,”
in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and “Marlow’s Morality,” in Philosophy and
Literature.
Anthony J. Cascardi is Director of the Townsend Center for the Humanities and
Margaret and Sidney Ancker Professor of Comparative Literature, Rhetoric, and
Spanish at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications on literature,
philosophy, and aesthetics include The Subject of Modernity, Consequences of Enlighten-
ment, and Literature and the Question of Philosophy. Since 1995 he has been General Editor
of the Penn State Press series of books on literature and philosophy.
Stanley Cavell is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the
General Theory of Value, Harvard University. He is the author of many influential and
groundbreaking books, including The Claim of Reason, Cities of Words, and Philosophy
the Day After Tomorrow. His work has been the subject of numerous books, edited
volumes, and journal issues.
Ted Cohen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. In addition to
a series of widely influential articles in philosophical aesthetics, he published Jokes:
Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters a few years ago, and Thinking of Others: On
the Talent for Metaphor recently. He is a past president of the American Society for
Aesthetics and of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association.
Jon Cook is Professor of Literature and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities
at the University of East Anglia. His recent publications include Hazlitt in Love andPoetry
in Theory. He has taught at universities in the United States, Europe, and India, most
recently as a Hurst Visiting Professor at Washington University in St Louis.
viii
notes on contributors
Gregory Currie teaches philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Before that
he taught in New Zealand and Australia. He was a Fulbright Fellow, and more
recently a British Academy/Leverhulme Research Fellow. He has held visiting
positions at Cambridge, the Australian National University, Maryland, and Oxford.
His latest book, Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories, is due to appear
with Oxford University Press in 2010. His current project, on aesthetics and the
sciences of mind, is supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research
Council.
Arthur C. Dantois Johnsonian Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at Columbia Univer-
sity. He is the author of numerous books, including Nietzsche as Philosopher, Mysticism
and Morality, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Connections to the World: The Basic
Concepts of Philosophy, and Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present,
a collection of art criticism which won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for
Criticism, 1990. Among his most recent books are Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the
Gap Between Art and Life andAndy Warhol.
Cora Diamondis the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Virginia and Professor of Law at its law school. Diamond’s scholarly interests are in
Wittgenstein, Frege and the philosophy of language, moral and political philosophy,
and philosophy and literature. She is the author of The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein,
Philosophy, and the Mind and the editor of Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Philosophy of
Mathematics andIntention and Intentionality.
Richard Eldridge is Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy
at Swarthmore College. He is the author, among other volumes, of Literature, Life,
and Modernity and The Persistence of Romanticism, and he is the editor of The Oxford
Handbook of Philosophy and Literature andStanley Cavell.
Mitchell Greenis the NEH/Horace W. Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Professor
at the University of Virginia. His research is in the philosophy of language, aesthetics,
and the philosophy of mind. Major publications include Self-Expression and Moore’s
Paradox (co-editor). He has held grants from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Science
Foundation. He is currently working on empathy, the epistemic value of literature, and
the evolution of language.
Garry L. Hagberg is the James H. Ottaway Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics
at Bard College, and has in recent years held a Chair in the School of Philosophy
at the University of East Anglia. He writes at the intersection of aesthetics and the
philosophy of language, and is the author of Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein,
Henry James, and Literary Knowledge andArt as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic
Theory. He has recently completed Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Auto-
biographical Consciousness for Oxford University Press and an edited volume, Art and
Ethical Criticism, for Wiley-Blackwell, and is presently writing on literature and self-
formation. He is joint editor of the journal Philosophy and Literature.
ix
notes on contributors
Eileen John is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick.
She has written on art and knowledge, and on moral and aesthetic value, and has a
special interest in philosophical questions arising from literature. She is co-editor of an
anthology, Wiley-Blackwell’s Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings.
Walter Jost is Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is the author
of Rhetorical Thought in John Henry Newman and Rhetorical Investigations: Studies in
Ordinary Language Criticism, and editor or co-editor of six previous books, including A
Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism.
Peter Kivy is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, and a past president of the American Society for Aesthetics. He
has published numerous books and articles on the philosophy of art, in the sub-fields
of eighteenth-century British aesthetics, aesthetic concepts, philosophy of music,
and philosophy of literature. His most recent book, from Oxford University Press, is
Antithetical Arts: On the Ancient Quarrel Between Literature and Music.
Peter Lamarqueis Professor of Philosophy at the University of York. He was editor
of the British Journal of Aesthetics from 1995 to 2008 and is author of Truth, Fiction,
and Literature(with Stein Haugom Olsen), Fictional Points of View, and The Philosophy
of Literature. He edited the Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Languageand Aesthetics
and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition: An Anthology(with Stein Haugom Olsen).
Joshua Landy is Associate Professor of French at Stanford University, where he
co-directs Stanford’s Initiative in Philosophy and Literature. He is author of Philosophy
as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust; editor, with Claude Bremond and
Thomas Pavel, of Thematics: New Approaches; and editor, with Michael Saler, of The Re-
Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age. He is currently completing a
second book, How to Do Things With Fictions.
Jonathan Lear is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee
on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
He works primarily on philosophical conceptions of the human psyche from Socrates
to the present. His books include Aristotle and Logical Theory, Aristotle: The Desire
to Understand, Love and its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian
Psychoanalysis, Open Minded: Working out the Logic of the Soul, Happiness, Death and the
Remainder of Life, Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony; Freud, and Radical Hope:
Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation.
Paisley Livingstonis Chair Professor of Philosophy and Academic Dean of Humanities
at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Author of a number of volumes in philosophical
aesthetics, his most recent book is Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy.
Ray Monkis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. He is author
of the award-winning biographies Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Bertrand Russell: The
Spirit of Solitude 1872–1921, and Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921–1970,
and he is presently working on a biography of Robert Oppenheimer. He has also
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