Full Text Available
Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.
Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction
Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2005.
Saved in:
| Other Authors: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
University of Pretoria
2013
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1867613471394234368 |
|---|---|
| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author2 | Mr M C van Niekerk |
| author_browse | Mr M C van Niekerk |
| author_facet | Mr M C van Niekerk |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | © 2005, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
| description | Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2005. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/30658 |
| institution | University of Pretoria (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:36:40.309Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publishDateRange | 2013 |
| publishDateSort | 2013 |
| publisher | University of Pretoria |
| publisherStr | University of Pretoria |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| spelling | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/30658 Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction Mr M C van Niekerk frederiktj@msn.com Taljaard, Frederik UCTD Nussbaum Wittgenstein Adorno Imagination James Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976 Fiction Ethics Ashbery Aletheia Aesthetics Literature Philosophy Truth Shakespeare Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2005. This dissertation applies Heidegger’s belief that works of art ‘disclose’ or ‘unconceal’ the world to the study of fictional texts in the English literary tradition. I supplement Heidegger’s ideas with an account of the creative or innovative imagination, so as to provide an accurate explanation of the way in which works of fiction, born from the human imagination, relate to ‘truth’, ‘life’ or ‘reality’. Heidegger uses an ancient Greek phrase, aletheia, to describe a type of truth that is not reducible to the propositional statements on which other truth-accounts rely. Aletheia literally means ‘unconcealment’ and, according to the Heideggerian philosophy of art, it is precisely by being embodiments of unconcealment that aesthetic artefacts communicate a knowledge that is as numinous and sublime as the experience of colour or music. This knowledge can be located wherever one looks for it, and I seek its presence in three fictional texts: King Lear by William Shakespeare; The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James; and Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery. Shakespeare’s play demonstrates how a work of literature can be constructed from language without being reduced to the sum of its propositional statements. King Lear exemplifies truth-as-unconcealment because critics have offered directly contradictory explanations of the play’s purported ‘meaning’; one can make sense of this paradox by approaching the play as a work that ‘conditions’ such interpretations without necessarily affirming them, which suggests that its truth lies beyond the arguments deduced from the play’s content. The philosophy of aletheia will also impinge on the recent ‘turn to ethics’ among literary theorists and moral philosophers. I follow the critic Robert Eaglestone in claiming that an aletheia-based reading of literary fiction makes more sense of the ethical elements within fiction than interpretations (such as those of Martha Nussbaum) that convert fictional texts into exercises in Aristotelian morality. My reading of The Portrait of a Lady does not conceive of the novel as a philosophical thesis tending towards a ‘moral point’ but considers it, instead, as a work exposing the problematic dimensions of human existence. This disclosure of facets of moral reasoning in the novel’s content finds its analogy in the Jamesian style, and I refer to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s contention that non-propositional truth ‘enters’ propositional language through the idiosyncrasies of style, to explain how the densities of James’s prose connects with the notion of truth as aletheia. But if aletheia is an irreducible and non-propositional truth, it is also a non-fungible truth, which means that the truth of one aesthetic artefact cannot be exchanged with or replaced by the ‘world-disclosure’ embodied in other works. To elaborate on this idea, I employ the aesthetic theory of Theodor Adorno, illustrating his reworked version of truth-as-unconcealment with Ashbery’s postmodern poem Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. I treat Ashbery’s demanding linguistic experiments as attempts to clear a space for authentic truth and imaginative freedom in a culture dominated by fungible commodities. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the consequences truth-as-unconcealment holds for contemporary literary criticism. English MA (English) restricted 2013-09-09T07:23:04Z 2006-08-03 2013-09-09T07:23:04Z 2006-04-06 2005-08-03 2006-03-06 Dissertation Taljaard, F 2005, Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction, MA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03062006-200330/ > http://hdl.handle.net/2263/30658 http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03062006-200330/ en © 2005, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. application/pdf University of Pretoria |
| spellingShingle | UCTD Nussbaum Wittgenstein Adorno Imagination James Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976 Fiction Ethics Ashbery Aletheia Aesthetics Literature Philosophy Truth Shakespeare Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction |
| title | Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction |
| title_full | Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction |
| title_fullStr | Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction |
| title_full_unstemmed | Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction |
| title_short | Imaginative unconcealment : Heidegger’s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction |
| title_sort | imaginative unconcealment heidegger s philosophy of aletheia and the truth of literary fiction |
| topic | UCTD Nussbaum Wittgenstein Adorno Imagination James Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976 Fiction Ethics Ashbery Aletheia Aesthetics Literature Philosophy Truth Shakespeare |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/2263/30658 http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03062006-200330/ |