Phenomelology-2

8/11/2019 Phenomelology-2

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PhenomenologyEdmund Husserl sought to develop new method that wouldbring certainty to a disintegrating civilization.

Objects could be regarded by consciousness.

everything not immanent to consciousness must be excluded and

all realities must be treated as phenomena.


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To grasp any phenomena is to grasp what is essential and

unchanging in it.

Asked about the conditions which made knowledge possible.

Kants philosophy: A trascendental inquiry, individualconsciousness= trascendental subject.

It claimed to lay bare the very structures of consciousness

itself and also the very phenomena.


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A form of methodological idealism, exploring human

consciousness.

Leavis mimetic theory: poetic language embodying the very

stuff or reality itself.

Leavis and Husserl: what is intuittive is eidosandlife.

It is an authoritharian theory (intuiton).

Phenomenology promised a science of subjectivity itself.


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The subject was the source and origin of all meaning, it

brought the world to be

Phenomenological criticism: Aims at a wholly immanent

reading of the text, unaffected by the outside and also at

complete objectivity.

The text is reduced to the embodiment of the authors

consciousness, his mind is the unifying essence.

Language is more than the expression of meanings andmeaning pre-dates language.


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HermeneuticsMeaning is produced in language.

Recognition that meaning is historical led Martin Heideggerto

break with Husserls line of thought.

The world is not an object

Heidegger partially decentre the human subject from the

position of dominance( imaginary)


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It provided one imaginary solution to the crisis of modern

history.

Heidegger describes his philosophical enterprise as a

hermeneutic of Being and the word Hermeneuticmeans the

science or art of interpretation.

questions of historical interpretation rather than on

transcendental consciousness.

Heideggers successor was Hans-George Gadamer(Truth

and Method)


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What is the meaning of a literary text?

Meaning was a kind of ideal object, it could be expressed ina number of different ways but still remain the same meaning.

E.D. Hirsch Jr:The meaning of a literary work is fixed: it isidentical with whatever mental object the author had in mind

or intended at the time of writing

System of typical expectations and probabilities and the

authors meaning.


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Meanings are not as stable and determinate as Hirsch thinks,

even authorial ones.

All he can do is reconstruct the authors probable intention.

But he pays no attention to the ways in which such

reconstructing can only go on within his own historically

conditioned frames of meaning and perception Eagleton

Gadamer: The meaning of a literary work is never exhausted

by the intentions of its author; as the work passes from one

cultural or historical context to the another

All interpretation is situational


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Creative prejudices are those which arise from the tradition

and bring us into contact with it

Tradition holds an authority

Hermeneutics sees history as a living dialogue between past,present and future .

It refuses to recognize that discourse is always caught up witha power which may be by no means benign


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Reception Theory

Examines the readers role in literature- Active

process

Literary texts are processes of signification

materialized only in the practice of reading.

Many questions can arise from reading only the

first to sentences of a text


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The reader makes implicit connectionsThe text gives cues.

Wolfgang Iser:Codes or rules that govern the way in whichmeaning is produced. One needs to know that the words

belong to a code of reference.

Most effective literary work is one which forces the reader into

a new critical awareness of his or her customary codes and

expectations.


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Reading brings us into deeper self-consciousness, catalyzes a

more critical view of our own identities.

Roman Ingardenpresumes that literary works form organic

wholes, and the point of the readers filling in their

indeterminancies is to complete this harmony

Jean Paul Sautre: Whom is it written for? Every work

encodes what Iser calls animpliedreader (language)


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Stanley Fish-Reading is a process of experiencing

what it doesto you. This is also a matter of what we do

to the text, a question of interpretation

Institutions affect the readersresponses.

Any set of data can be explained by more theories than

one. Culture affects interpretation


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Phenomenology

Hermeneutics


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Subjectivity and Objectivity

in a nutshell

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Phenomelology-2