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Ricoeur, in this chapter, elaborates upon earlier dialectical transactional analyses relating to the reader and the authors relative contribution to the format of the fictional text. His analysis begins with a discussion that reminds one of old medieval debates over the unreality of the characters in a fictional work, and the comparison made here is to the reality content of historical narratives. Aristotle reminded us that all forms of art are “imitations” of reality, but they are nevertheless “real” imitations aiming at the real objective of “The Good”. The characters of fictional narrative might not be located in the real space-time continuum of the real physical world, but they are purposeful teleological creations, and the extent to which we are able to fully understand their point or telos is related to how successful the author is in imitating the human form of life and its world. Both the power of understanding and judgement, in this context, relates to the logical structure of aesthetic understanding and judgements that occur in the process of writing/reading/appreciating/criticising the text. Two of the primary judgements of importance are the judgement ,”This is beautiful!” and “This is sublime!”. These are universal and logical judgements related to the “form” or “principles” and the aesthetic ideas of the text, and we rely on Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy and Kantian critical Philosophy for the explanation/justification of these judgements. In the cognitive process, which aims at understanding the text we are reading, there may well also occur a play of emotions such as pity and fear(if we are dealing with a tragedy) for the fate of the major characters of the work, and these emotions will be connected to powers of perception and imagination. In the end, however, this non-cognitive part of the process will also be regulated by our powers of understanding and reason. To prioritise the imagination at the expense of the understanding, in the context of such judgements, risks jeopardising the universal and necessary aspect of these judgements, which belong in the context of explanation/justification. Wittgenstein contributed to the philosophical understanding of the power of the imagination in the following way:
“Images tell us nothing either right or wrong about the external world.”(Zettel, 109e)
622. One would like to say:The imaged is in a different space from the heard sound. Hearing is connected to listening: forming an image of a sound is not. That is why the heard sound is in a different space from the imagined sound.”(Zettel, 109e)
So, according to this reasoning, the reader, in spite of the fact that the initial input from the text is visual, cognitively responds not to the visual data, but to the sound(and not the image of the sound). In the context of this discussion, it would be misleading to use the term, as some literary critics of poetry have, of the “auditory imagination”. The space of the auditory, is a space of understanding and reason, and not one of perception and imagination. Tied up with the above quote by Wittgenstein, is a grammatical point about the formation of images, namely that forming images is driven by the will and intention, and therefore cannot surprise us in the way that hearing something or listening for something can.
The hearing process is connected to a readiness on the part of the reader to learn what the author intends the reader to learn. All activity aims at the Good, Aristotle argues, and the Good involved in tragic texts will inevitably involve the greek ideas of areté(doing the right thing at the right time in the right way) and diké(justice, getting what one deserves). These will be the formal and final causes respectively involved in the appreciation of the text. The Kantian moral law is, we have argued in previous essays, merely a formalised reformulation of the Greek idea of the Good. This reformulation takes two forms:
1, So act that the maxim of your action can be willed to become a universal law
2. Treat everyone(including oneself) as ends-in-themselves and not merely instrumentally as means to some further end.
Freedom is very much involved in the above reformulations, and allows an ethical foundation for the concept of human rights we encounter in the political/legal domain. Maxims are principles regulating our action, and one such principle is that of happiness(which Kant called the principle of self love in disguise). The ego-centred nature of the principle of happiness, however, cannot be universalised and therefore cannot be connected to moral necessities and duties, because treating everyone as a means to ones own happiness is a principle destined to lead to conflict, if everyone embraces it. Conflict infringes upon everyones freedom. Part of the problem with instrumental forms of action, is its appeal to the sensible state of happiness, rather than the higher mental powers of understanding and reason. Such an appeal does not facilitate the organisation of communal/political forms of life.
Hearing is a sensory activity, whilst reading with understanding, resembles more an active listening state that is able to both understand and reason about what is being experienced. This auditory space is a space of learning, and is connected to the pleasure principle for Aristotle. We take pleasure, Aristotle argues, in imitations, which aim at the Good and this, in turn, in the case of the fictional narrative involves both areté and diké. This, in Kant’s view, helped to prepare the mind for a commitment to a life of freedom and duty. Robert Wicks in his Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant’s Critique of Judgement(London, 2007) correctly, claims in our view, that the Kantian power of Judgement presupposes both Aristotelian logic as well as the Aristotelian essence-specifying definition of man as a “rational animal”. Kant, we know classifies beauty as a feeling, but Kant also insists, it is a feeling we can speak with a universal voce about in a spirit of universality and necessity. It is also, according to Kant a feeling that we can encounter in both moral and scientific contexts.
Aesthetic Judgement contains a moment which Kant describes as disinterested, but whilst, in some sense, the judgment is cognitive, it is not saying of any object that the object possesses the objective feature of being beautiful or sublime. We are not attempting. in an aesthetic judgment i.e., to determine what kind of object we are confronting. Wicks points out that the Greek term “aistheta” means “sensible particulars”(P.19), but the judgement as such focuses not upon the object per se, but rather upon what Kant called the form of finality of the object(as an end?). The feeling involved is universalised over the field of judging subjects, and is related to what Kant calls the feeling of life, which in turn is a response to the mystery of life(psuche) and the world. Judgements relating to the sublime, introduce a more direct connection to our moral feeling about ourselves, via a more uncomfortable(displeasurable) feeling of the magnitude or power of nature. These feelings are not conceptually mediated in their pure form, but when we experience them in relation to a text , they are conceptually mediated because of an intended relation to perfection. The purpose of a tragic work for example, relates beauty to the moral good via the ideal conception of rational activity or rational action. Kant argues the following:
“Only that which has the purpose of existence in itself, the human being–who through reason determines his purposes himself, or where he must derive them from external perception can nevertheless compare them to essential and universal purposes and in that case also aesthetically judge their accordance with them–is alone capable of an ideal of beauty, just as the humanity in his person as intelligence, is alone capable of the ideal of perfection, among all the objects in the world.”(P.72 in Wicks)
It is possible that the better translation of this passage would not have contained the term “intelligence”, but rather the term “personality”, or alternatively “rational intelligence”. The importance of the aesthetic idea of the perfection of our humanity is clear in the above quote, however. Tragedy, then, in the process of reading, will be reflected upon via the aesthetic idea of humanity, in relation to areté and diké. The “purpose” of our humanity is knowable apriori, Kant maintains. The essential feature of rationality is a “principle” that attempts to organise the “material” of the world and life, in terms of the “form” of “rationality”. A clearer case of the Kantian commitment to Aristotelian hylomorphic Philosophy would be difficult to find. Reading is primarily a thought activity, in which material is being organised by the forms of principles and ideas, in an auditory space. This auditory space is, in fact, a space for the kind of discourse that is occurring between the author and the reader, via the medium of the language of the text. It is not, as has been suggested, a dialectical transactional phenomenon in which the imagination forms images which say nothing right or wrong about the external world, and which then need “interpretation” by reference to the idea of “seeing-as”. In this kind of hermeneutical/phenomenological account, there is no place for understanding in terms of the categories or categorical essence-specifying judgements such as “Man is a rational animal capable of discourse”. Neither is there space for logical conceptual judgements that rely on the principles of noncontradiction, and/or sufficient reason in order to determine the nature of the relation of the judgements to each other.
Focussing upon the “unreality” of fiction, and claiming that the reference to the world which we find in historical narratives, no longer works for fictional narratives, because there is an absence of what Ricoeur refers to as “productive reference” provided by a “productive imagination”, is a recipe for confusion. Ricoeur also refers to the idea of “application”(P.158), and claims that this idea is an organic part of every hermeneutic project. But these ideas can only be supported against the background of a suspension of the ontological status of the text.(P.158-9). Seeing-as is invoked as part of the power of the imagination and a relation is postulated to the ontological notion of “being-as”, but there is no argument for the validity of this relation.
The author, Ricoeur argues, attempts to “persuade” the reader of the fictional narrative in this postulated psychological transactional context. Aristotle is invoked in this discussion, not for his adherence to the importance of areté and diké in fictional narratives, but in relation to a postulated telos of persuasion which , it is claimed, it is the telos of techné to achieve. The telos of rhetoric is persuasion, Ricoeur argues, but it is not clear that in fictional narrative we are dealing with a rhetorical use of language. Aristotle argues that the means that rhetoric uses to achieve its purposes are ethos, pathos and logos(character, emotion, and enthymeme), and the rhetorician does for the soul what the doctor does for the body, but in the former case, the good aimed at has a political aspect that must be achieved in the external world(e.g. should we defend ourselves by attacking our neighbour or by building a fortified defensive wall?). The rhetorician does not ,as Ricoeur claims, straighforwardly, “refigure” the world, which is manifested in his enthymemes, because the reasoning and understanding involved must obey the Aristotelian principles, one of which insists that something must remain the same throughout the change. That something cannot be “refigured”, either by seeing something as something else, or via “imaginative variation”. The major difference between rhetoric and the other sciences, is that the major premise will not always be a universal and necessary premise of the kind we encounter in the different sciences, e.g. theoretical science–“every effect has a cause”, or practical science–“promises ought to be kept”. The major premise of rhetoric, however must at least be justified in terms of being a judgement of the many, or a judgement of the wise. The conclusion of a rhetorical argument must, therefore, count as either a justified true belief, if it relates to what we ought to believe, or alternatively, count as a good proposal to perform a justified (just) act in the realm of action. The powers of the mind involved in this context, are clearly understanding and reason, and perception and imagination may be involved only in subsidiary roles(e.g. schematising concepts). The form of communication involved in Ricoeur’s problematic transactional process of “refiguring” the beliefs of the reader, is one in which the primary aim is the alteration of attitude, rather than the presentation of a demonstration which proves the authors position. Ricoeur attempts to strengthen his account by adhering to his commitment to the imagination, and claims that the author is attempting to communicate a “vision of the world” to a reader who is “suspicious” because “modern literature is dangerous”(P.163-4). Ricoeur also, controversially claims here, that the structure of the text is not the result of the work of the author and his principles and aesthetic ideas, but rather that the primary cognitive work is brought about by the reader in the act of reading(P.165). The strange idea of an “incomplete text” is postulated as the signal for a phenomenological investigation to begin—an investigation in which expectations are not destined for fulfilment but must rather be dialectically modified. James Joyce’s work Ulysses is invoked because it manifests what Ricoeur refers to as “discordant concordance”. In the reading of such a work:
“Reading becomes a picnic where the author brings the words and the readers the meaning.”(P.169)
Words, on this account are reduced to “signals”, that have an initial configuration, but require refiguration. The Greek “aisthesis”, Ricoeur claims , both reveals and transforms, in a spirit which challenges and confronts traditions and customs. Catharsis, Ricoeur claims, is needed in this context of confronting and challenging tradition and custom. This context is then endowed with the strange combination of making a free choice in the realm of the imaginary. Perhaps catharsis also is required, on the part of the author, to free him/her from the passion of anguish, and the emotion of anxiety. “Imaginative variations” obviously play a significant role in the authors work of composing a plot, which is the framework for the thoughts and actions of agents. Of course, in some sense, a “vision of the world” must be a possible part of the authors creation, but if so, this vision is more a product of understanding and reason, than the freedom of the imagination to vary and transform our traditions and customs. Speaking a language cannot be reduced to speech acts, because it is partly the result of the discourse of generations of speakers, following the customary-traditional grammatical rules of language(in the sense of “grammatical” proposed by Wittgenstein). Without this historically created linguistic form of life, rooted in instinct, but supported by the categories of the understanding/judgement and the principles of reason, authors would not understand the principles and aesthetic ideas they are using to create their work. It is doubtful whether it is correct to speak of “persuasion” in this context, but if it is, then it must be pointed out that persuading someone about something requires a language rooted in instinct but supported by understanding and reason.
Ricoeur speaks of the author attempting to seduce the reader, and even of terrorising the reader, and this relies on the strange idea of an incomplete text which, like an image or a picture of something, can be interpreted in different ways, e.g. as Anscombe points out in her work on Wittgenstein´s Tractatus–an image of a stick boxer-man can be interpreted in different ways depending upon whether one sees the picture as providing an instruction of how one ought to stand(when defending oneself) or ought not to stand(when attacking ones opponent). Signals too, can, of course be interpreted in different ways, but it is actually part of the desired skill of an author to eliminate ambiguity in the text and make his/her meaning clear, especially if something as important as a vision of the world is to be communicated. Ambiguity is anathema to a great author who wields language like a tool with considerable accuracy. Ricoeur concludes the chapter by arguing that Reading itself is unreal(P.179) and the following paradoxical statement is made:
“the more readers become unreal in their reading, the more profound and far-reaching will be the work’s influence on social reality.”(P.179)
These words leave one with the feeling that they belong in a phenomenological dream or nightmare that is cleansed of all categorical understanding and logical reasoning.