Chapter 1: Self-Value Based Literary Function
1.1 The Self-Value of Achieving Self-Perfection
This part discusses the aesthetic characteristics of literature itself with the concept ofcontingency and irony. By criticizing the essentialism of traditional philosophy, Rortyadvocates aesthetic bliss in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, believing that the essenceof the world is full of accidental coincidence, creation instead of discovery is the key topersonal perfection. In this part, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time will be analyzedbased on two key concepts of Rorty: contingency and irony, aiming to prove that literaturehas the function of promoting self-perfection in a private realm.
First of all, contingency is one of Rorty’s key concepts. In the history of Westernphilosophy, contingency and necessity are two concepts used to explain the origin of things,displaying different perspectives and attitude towards the world. Traditional philosophyinsists on the significance of necessity, while modern philosophy advocates contingency.Among them, Rorty’s point of view is the most typical. He makes arguments with purecontingency to deconstruct traditional philosophy’s concepts of truth, ego, universality, andessence. Rorty once claimed: “I hate logic, formalism and everything that has a timelessmeaning, and everything that refuses to be an accidental thing.”(Rorty 1979: 75) According toRorty, compared with traditional philosophical words, human beings are more closely relatedto “randomness”, “uncertainty” and “contingency”. In Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, twolevels of contingency are demonstrated: the contingency of language and the contingency ofselfhood. As for contingency of language, traditional philosophers believe that language, which truly reflects essential things, is an eternal entity independent of the objective world.They believe that truth exists there, only to be found by certain people. Rorty denies this viewand puts forward the fact that language is the product of contingency. He points out thatlanguage, with no essence, is a concrete, individual and accidental existence. As he said: “Ourlanguage and our culture, like orchids and great apes, are just accidents, just a result ofthousands of small mutations that have been located (and countless other mutations that havenot been located).”(Rorty 1979: 77) Rorty believes that according to what beliefs humanbeings speak of their language is sometimes a random result rather than a deep expression inthe heart, language is nothing but a tool, providing various descriptions of the world. Hestrongly agrees with Davidson that language is a “metaphor” that has nothing to do withdescribing the nature of objects. Metaphor itself is meaningless and inevitable, which canonly achieve its significance through imagination and creativity. “What determines most ofour philosophical beliefs are pictures not propositions, metaphors not statements.” (Rorty1979: 46). The results imply a new outlook that the meaning and value of life lies inimagination and creation rather than discovery. As for the contingency of selfhood, traditionalphilosophers believe that each person has a necessary, essential and purposeful human nature.Rorty, affected by Nietzsche, believes that self-knowledge is self-creation. The process ofrecognizing oneself, confronting oneself directly and finding the root cause of oneself is thesame as the process of creating a new language and creating some new metaphors. Besides,Freud’s psychology makes Rorty see that the self does not have any universal essence astraditional philosophers such as Plato and Kant considered, the nature of human being is just a“web of desire”. Besides, Rorty believes that the accidental nature of language makes peopleno longer worship things in the world, abandoning the pursuit of the original essence, therebyregards language, conscience, and society as “products of time and opportunity.”
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1.2 The Self-Value of Avoiding Cruelty
In this part, the function of literature in the public realm will be discussed. According toRorty, literature reveals the moral behavior of human beings, helping reduce the social crueltyand achieve a liberal utopia, which finally promoting social solidity. Rorty manages toexplain the function of literature in public realms by analyzing the novels of Nabokov andOrwell. Although they both in pursuit of social unity, Nabokov and Orwell take completely different approaches. Nabokov focuses on aesthetics. Through the inner description of cruelty,he attempts to make people see how the private pursuit of beauty causes cruelty. On thecontrary, Orwell focuses on morality. Attempting to reduce suffering and pursue humanliberalism through external description of cruelty, that is, from victim’s point of view. In thispart, Lolita by Nabokov will be first analyzed to exemplify the cruelty caused by excessivepursuit of aesthetic and self-egoism.
First of all, the pursuit of aesthetic is mentioned by Rorty. As for Rorty, amongtraditional metaphysicists, books that can help people and society avoid cruelty are generallyregarded as books with moral messages. They divide the books into two categories: “moralitysense” and “aesthetic sense”, which give rise to people with two viewpoints. One kind ofperson is mainly moral and thinks that the aesthetic sense is only a function of the subordinatecategory. This kind of people promote the idea of “live for others”, thus neglect unique valueof individuals. While another kind of people advertises beauty first and the pursuit ofself-perfection has nothing to do with them. But in Rorty’s view, due to the existence ofcontingency, “morality” and “aesthetic” are nothing but composed of people’s unique beliefsand desires, the distinction between “morality” and “aesthetic” is meaningless at all. Someliterary works not only provide aesthetic pleasure, but also have moral educationalsignificance.
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Chapter 2: Self-Creation Based Literary Criticism
2.1 Creative Misreading in Romantic Criticism
Rorty’s post-humanistic literary criticism is deeply influenced by the trend ofromanticism. He praises the romantic philosophers such as Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger.Besides, many of his literary heroes, such as Whitman and Emerson, are also romanticists. Inthe book Romanticism and Pragmatism, Rorty elaborates on the pragmatism’s use ofRomanticism. As for Rorty, pragmatism’s use of romanticism is an integral part of a modernanti-universalist story of progress. In the book University Grandeur, Romantic Depth,Pragmatist Gunning, Rorty follows Isaiah Berlin, regarding the concept of the revival ofromanticism not as a literary trend opposite to classicism, but as a thought movement againstthe paradigm of universalist discourse. Berlin, in the Roots of Romanticism, points out that thecontribution of romanticism is to smash the world view of “puzzle” that has been popular inwestern society until the late 18th century. Traditional philosopher hold that life is like ajigsaw puzzle that consists of various fragments. It is the tiny bits of fragments that makes upof the basis of human lives. The essential features of these fragments and the significance oftheir existence are about to be explored by those who utter the final word, or to say, theomniscient God. (Berlin 2015: 23) They regard human life as solving the “puzzle” problem,which is an inevitable result of universalist thinking. They believe that the real knowledge isto find these pieces and stitch them together to form a complete picture of the world. With this picture of the world, people would find answers to all the ultimate questions from the past topresent such as “what is the nature of the world?”, “what is the nature of human being?” and“what is the meaning of human existence?”. Romanticism weakens the assumption held byPlato-Kant that there is a better argument which has universal reliability, and that there issomething right that we should do or believe. Therefore, the depth of romanticism hasreplaced the height of rationalism’s universality. Berlin declares that Romanticism as thetrend of thought, enlightens human beings that the nature of the world is invented notdiscovered, is generated not found. (Berlin 2013: 87). As a follower of Berlin, Rortyvigorously criticizes universality with validity, but prone to romanticism which offers spacefor imagination and creativity.
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2.2 Seeking Deviant Minorities in Deconstructive Criticism
In the book Romanticism, Pragmatism and Deconstruction, Kathleen Wheeler stressesthe significance of deconstructionism by declaring that deconstruction and pragmatism sharethe similar characteristics in the critiques of metaphysics and the pursuit of dissonance voice.(Wheeler 1993: 12) Consistent with Rorty’s new pragmatic criticism is the deconstructionismrepresented by Derrida, who builds up his own type of literary criticism with thephilosophical concept of “deconstructionism”, manages to escape the idea of “the correct interpretation of the text” and get rid of the interpretation governed by the text itself. In theopening chapter of Deconstruction and Pragmatism, Rorty traces the three sources ofdeconstruction movement that it is Derrida who provides the philosophical programme fordeconstructionism, Paul de Man makes it combine with the interpretation of literary text andFoucault provides the left-leaning political viewpoint, which promotes the formation of a realliterary criticism school. In this part, three aspects of de-structuralism will be discussed,which are: deconstruction theory, deconstruction criticism practice and the relation betweendeconstruction with culture as well as politics. All these aspects of deconstructionism presentanti-mainstream voices that leave space for openness and rebellion, which, as Rorty claims,display the self-creation trait of a specific individual.
文学理论论文参考
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Chapter 3: Self-Understanding Based Literary Interpretation....................323.1 Meaning as the Significance of Understanding...................................... 32
3.2 Bildung as the Basis of Understanding.................................36
3.3 Making as the Openness of Understanding..............................39
Conclusion........................................... 44
Major Findings....................44
Limitations................................... 45
Chapter 3: Self-Understanding Based Literary Interpretation
3.1 Meaning as the Significance of Understanding
Meaning, in the field of epistemology, is equivalent to the truth and essence of the text.The main problems traditional epistemology tries to solve are universal necessity andobjectivity of knowledge. And there are always fixed essence and meaning waiting for readersto discover. However, as a pragmatist, Rorty argues that meaning is constructed rather thandiscovered, it cannot be independent of people’s life and practice, purpose and interest. In thissense, every interpretation of the text is a “re-description”, text is already being used when itis being interpreted. In the “Tanner Lectures”, Rorty puts forward the idea that “interpretationis free from constriction”, which derives from his depreciation of certain discourse privileges,hoping to realize the “popularization” of culture. As far as Rorty is concerned, acknowledgingthat interpretation is constrained means acknowledging that one interpretation is superior toanother, and the existence of this compulsive force is the least thing Rorty wants to see. InRorty’s view, all interpretations follow the intention, purpose, or need of present time andplace. Since the intention, purpose and need are different from person to person, varied withtime and place, the interpretations of those are unlimited and unconstrained. The openness ofthe interpretation brings the openness of meaning, and the openness of meaning is thesignificance of self-understanding. It is worth to notice that Rorty’s ideas about textualinterpretation originate from his profound pragmatic thoughts: anti-essentialism and the ideaof “meaning is in use”. In order to analyze Rorty’s textual interpretation more clearly, thispart stresses Rorty’s anti-constraint thought from two sources: one is Rorty’s anti-essentialism thought, the other is Rorty’s anti-essentialism of “meaning is in use”. From these two aspects,it aims to prove that meaning is the significance of understanding.
文学理论论文怎么写
Conclusion
Major Findings
Rorty’s theory of “post-humanism” is by nature, a kind of “humanist finitism”, with twoprominent features. On the one hand, it is a thought movement against the paradigm ofuniversalist discourse. On the other hand, it is liberal humanism focusing on the specificactions of limited individuals. From the discussions above, it can be observed that thehumanistic spirit of finitism is constructed in Rorty’s pragmatic literary theory, whichreflected itself in Rorty’s understanding of literary function, literary criticism, and literaryinterpretation.
In Rorty’s pragmatic literary theory, the function of literature is reflected in theconstruction of self-value. In the private realm, the function of literature is to promoteself-perfection. Rorty’s ideals of contingency and irony can be mobilized as paths towardself-perfection, which highlight the value of a finite but independent individual. In the publicrealm, the function of literature is to promote social solidarity. For Rorty, the existence ofdifferent solidarity is often a source of moral conflict, the top priority of which is to reducecruelty. There are two kinds of descriptions of cruelty. Rorty believes that literature can makepeople more sensitive to suffering and pain, thus facilitates the capacity for awareness, andempathy for others. It is in this way literature functioned that self-value is achieved in bothprivate and public realm. Besides, self-creation is reflected in literary criticism. Humancreation, as for Rorty, is not merely the recombination of the existing available materials, buta transformation of reality into novel things with the help of conscious activities of anindividual. In Bloom’s romantic criticism, self-creation represents itself in creativemisreading, which focuses more on the openness and diversified interpretations of reading,stressing the principal body with independence, initiative, and creativeness. In Derrida’sdeconstructive criticism, self-creation represents itself in deviant minorities, which meansinterpreting the text as a process of continuous self-betrayal, self-transcendence, andself-reversal, thereby creating self-contradiction in the text. In Stanley Fish’s reader reactioncriticism, self-creation is expressed in the idea “meaning is event”, which highlights theinitiative and feeling of the reader himself. Rorty believes that in literary criticism, in this way,highlights the self-creation of individuals. Moreover, in literary interpretation,self-understanding is manifest in three concepts, which are “meaning is in use”, “bildung isessentially dialogue” and “making rather than finding”. For Rorty, Gadamer plays afoundational role in applying hermeneutics into practice. As for pragmatists, the way that people do to anything in the world is a kind of “use”. Interpreting, knowing and describing arenothing but different ways of using things; bildung is an exchange activity between subjects, abreak from boundaries, which is equal to dialogue that can achieve self-understanding;“Making”, as the core element of practical hermeneutics, becomes the openness of personalunderstanding. To establish a new order is the base of understanding a new self. Rortybelieves that though literary interpretation, people could get chance to a betterself-understanding.
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