Reading Notes

Left: William Desmond, photographed on March 15, 2018, at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.


I'm currently reading Wonder Strikes, a book on the philosopher William Desmond by Steven Knepper: "Tragedy chastens systematic philosophy, with its confidence in the comprehensive power of the logos and its tendency to abstract from the particular into categories or concepts. Systematic philosophy often excludes first-person experience. The experience of the philosopher is hidden behind 'an impersonal universal system' (Beyond Hegel and Dialectic, 163). Philosophers who hear Lear’s howl and see him carrying the body of Cordelia, who fully reckon with being at a loss, will be left questioning their systems’ ability to account for such loss. They will be confronted with the impossibility of words ever doing it justice." [Knepper, Steven E. Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond (p. 255). State University of New York Press. Kindle Edition.]

If tragedy challenges the generalizations of philosophy, literature itself can challenge the generalizations used to characterize it. Here's a quotation I lifted many years ago from a biography of the French thinker Pierre Duhem: "Auguste Angellier (1841-1911) completed his doctoral dissertation on the poetry of Burns. Duhem most likely heard Angellier argue its principal thesis: abstract categories are useless for literary criticism which rather must take account of the ‘immense complexity of things, of their inextricable confusion, and of their apparent contradictions’ (see ‘Angellier’ in Dictionnaire de biographie francaise, 2:1073). This reminder of the complicatedness of the historical record could strike but responsive cords in Duhem.” [Stanley L. Jaki, Uneasy Genius:  The Life & Work of Pierre Duhem. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987, Page 85, note 50.]

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