Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-14T06:18:55.927Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Skewed Path: Essaying as Un-Methodical Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

R. Lane Kauffmann
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Is the essay literature or philosophy? A form of art or a form of knowledge? The contemporary essay is torn between its belletrist ancestry and its claim to philosophical legitimacy. The Spanish philosopher Eduardo Nicol captured the genre's uncertain status when he dubbed it “almost literature and almost philosophy” (Nicol 1961:207). The problem is hardly a new one. It goes back to what Plato called the “ancient quarrel” between poetry and philosophy, and more recently to the German Romantic theorist, Friedrich Schlegel, who called for a mode of criticism which would be at once philosophical and poetic. But today, when the status of critical discourse is up for grabs, reflecting the crisis of knowledge in the universities, the question of the essay takes on a new urgency. Now the predominant form of writing in the human sciences, it cannot avoid the challenge to define itself according to the prevailing standards of scientific knowledge and method.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 36 , Issue 143 , September 1988 , pp. 66 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, Theodor W., “The Actuality of Philosophy.” Telos 31 (Spring 1977), pp. 120–33.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W., Prisms. Translated by Samuel, and Weber, Shierry. London, Neville Spearman, 1967.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W., “The Essay as Form.” New German Critique 32 (Spring 1984), pp. 151–71.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W., Minima Moralia. Translated by Jephcott, E.F.N.. London, NLB, 1974.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W., Negative Dialectics. Translated by Ashton, E.B.. New York, Seabury Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Auden, W.H., Forewords and Afterwords. New York, Random House, 1974.Google Scholar
Barfield, Owen, The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays. Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland, Image-Music-Text. Edited and translated by Heath, Stephen. New York, Hill and Wang, 1977.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland, “Lecture in Inauguration of the Chair of Literary Semiology, Collège de France.” October 8 (Spring 1979), pp. 3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, Walter, Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik. Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1973.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter, The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Translated by Osborne, John. London, New Left Books, 1977.Google Scholar
BENSE, MAX, “Über den Essay und seine Prosa.” Merkur 3 (1947), pp. 414–24.Google Scholar
Berger, Bruno, Der Essay: Form und Geschichte. Bern, Francke, 1964.Google Scholar
Buchler, Justus, The Concept of Method. New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan, The Origin of Negative Dialectics. New York, Free Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Collingwood, R.G., Philosophical Method. Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press., 1933.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology. Translated by Spivak, Gayatri C.. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, “La loi du genre/The Law of Genre.” Glyph 7 (1980), pp. 176–232.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference. Translated by Bass, Alan. Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Translated by Colin Gordon et al., edited by Gordon, Colin. New York, Pantheon, 1980.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel, The Use of Pleasure. Translated by Hurley, Robert. New York, Random House, 1986.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Hugo, Montaigne. Translated by Rovini, Robert. Paris, Gallimard, 1968.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Neal W., Renaissance Concepts of Method. New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Handelman, Susan, “Jacques Derrida and the Heretic Hermeneutic.” In Displacement: Derrida and After, edited by Krupnick, Mark. Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Hartman, Geoffrey, Criticism in the Wilderness. New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Hunecker, James, “Concerning Critics”. In A Modern Book of Criticisms, edited by Lewisohn, Ludwig. New York, Boni and Liveright, 1919.Google Scholar
Janik, Allan, and Toulmin, Stephen, Wittgenstein's Vienna. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1973.Google Scholar
Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923-1950. Boston, Little, Brown, 1973.Google Scholar
Keats, John, “Four Letters”. In Criticism: The Major Statements, edited by Kaplan, Charles. New York, St. Martin's, 1975.Google Scholar
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, and Nancy, Jean-Luc, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism. Translated by Barnard, Philip and Lester, Cheryl. Albany, State Univ. of New York Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Luft, David S., Robert Musil and the Crisis of European Culture 1880-1942. Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg, Soul and Form. Translated by Bostock, Anna. Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François, Economie libidinale. Paris, Minuit, 1974.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian. Minneapolis, Minnesota Univ. Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François, Rudiments païens. Paris, Union Générale d'Éditions, 1977.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel, The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Translated by Donald M. Frame. 1965. Reprint. Stanford, Stanford Univ. Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Nicol, Eduardo, El problema de la filosofia hispánica. Madrid, Tecnos, 1961.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Portable Nietzsche. Translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann. Kingsport, Tenn., Viking, 1982.Google Scholar
Pater, Walter, Plato and Platonism. London, MacMillan, 1912.Google Scholar
Schlegel, Friedrich, Kritische Schriften. Munich, Hanser, 1964.Google Scholar
Ulmer, Gregory L., Applied Grammatology: Post-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press., 1985.Google Scholar
Ulmer, Gregory L., “The Object of Post-Criticism.” In The Anti-Aesthetic, edited by Foster, Hal. Port Townsend, Wash., Bay Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar, Plays, Prose Writings, and Poems. London, Dent and Sons, 1975.Google Scholar
Wohlfarth, Irving, “Hibernation: On the Tenth Anniversary of Adorno's Death.” MLN 94 (1979), pp. 756–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolf, Virginia, The Common Reader. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1948.Google Scholar