Trevor is away so I can play around a bit with the literature/philosophy relationship.
Could not literature be seen as providing the most telling response to some of philosophy's concerns?
I put this on the table to counter the common view that neither criticism as practiced in the literary institution nor philosophy can answer the other's concerns. Such a view was held by Paul de Man. That seems to me to be the standard view of the philosophy/literature relationship.
As a literary critic de Man highlights the literariness of philosophy and its roots in rhetoric. Philosophy he argues orginates in literature. Hence you can bring sophisticate techniques of of literary analysis to bear on philosophical writings. -This is the approach de Man takes to Nietzsche's texts in his Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke and Proust.
Fine. Nietzeche's texts are very literary, especially Thus Spake Zarathustra Nietzsche was certainly poetic with a good eye for the one liner--eg., Chriatianity is the metaphysics of the hangman. But Nietzsche was also a philosopher engaged with, and contributing to, the philosophical tradition., eg.the apparent world is all we have. Paul de Man has nothing to say about that philosophical side of things.
We do not read Nietzsche the poet philosopher just because of his literariness.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at November 8, 2003 11:07 PM | TrackBack