A Theory of the Animate Form of Literary Art: Kind-normativity, Criticism, and Axiology

Abstract

In this dissertation, I ask whether the possibility of experiencing a work of literary art as literature is conditioned by concept of literature or whether we can just get on with reading literature without such a concept. I begin with the question: is a concept of literary art necessary? I explore some key discussions of this idea, particularly over the past century. I argue that a concept of literary art is inescapable, since the very possibility of encountering a work as literature of a specific kind necessitates it. The question then becomes what is the fundamental concept that makes possible our engagement with literary art (and its diversity of forms in their incommensurate particularities)? Chapter 2 develops a fundamental distinction between primary ends that arise from a given whole, and secondary ends. I argue that literary art bears an autonomy beyond such secondary, external ends; it exists first and foremost as an end-in-itself. As such an internally purposive end itself, it may well serve secondary functions, but these can only ever be secondary to that which makes it the kind of whole it is. So, I argue, we have good reason to recognize literary art as an internally purposive, animate whole. And as such a whole, some key forms of inner normativity or “for its own sake” conditions bear necessarily on the activity of reader and literary work. Chapter 3 explores one version of this concept of literary art as an internally purposive whole, through the thought of Goethe and Hegel and as carried forward to some degree by Adorno and T.S. Eliot, and thence into features of various contemporary critical traditions. In chapter 4, I argue that quite apart from the specific moral content and even apart from specific determinate content, the animate form of literary art does bear a key innate moral significance that persists across all forms of literary art in virtue of the kind it is (irrespective of specific content or genre). In Chapter 5, I argue that if the foundational concept of literary art developed so far is correct, and more specifically, if this concept is a condition of the possibility of our experience of such wholes, and if we have reason to think that this condition is a concept of a literary work as an internally purposive whole, then two fundamental axiological paradoxes of literary art are entailed. These axiological paradoxes are a consequence of two features of the concept of literary art. First, the literary work consists in an identity that is not entirely distinct from such seemingly external things as the environment, the experiences and mode of apprehension of the reader, and the thought of the author. At the same time, however, despite an interdeterminative, fluid relation with these, it retains a distinct autonomous identity in-itself, not despite such seemingly external features, but in part through them. I call this first the “paradox of unity in diversity” (or paradox of autonomy in an actual environment). It is a fluid yet stable identity, an organic unity in diversity. At the heart of this first paradox of literary art are three fundamental characteristics of literary art: namely, what I will call (1) entelechy, a term invented by Aristotle to identify the actuality of a flourishing kind through its characteristic activity, but as adopted by Goethe and repurposed by Adorno to what might be called the “process characteristic” of the literary work in itself and visible in T.S. Eliot’s notion of the “autotelic”, (2) the “becoming (or decaying)” of the literary work, and (3) the “self-differentiation” of the literary work from the author’s idea. The second paradox is that the literary work itself is the highest normative standard for good literary criticism. Literary criticism is necessarily conditioned by the inner normativity of the whole itself. Here I explore what it means to enter into a literary work of art on its own terms, for its own sake, without this entailing losing sight of a host of external ends. I suggest that it is through engaging the literary work for its own sake that an experience is made possible that allows for the actualization of the unique value that literary art holds for a range of secondary ends. This axiological paradox is one that, I submit, is shared with all ends that are intrinsically valuable. This account bears significant implications for most literary critical traditions, since it is an argument not about a specific tradition of criticism or area of literature, but about concept that conditions the possibility of experiencing a literary work as such. It entails that, though reading a work through the lens of external forms of normativity (e.g. moral, epistemic, cultural, political, etc.) may be (and are!) of great importance, such external forms are not determinative of the inner normativity of the literary work in itself, even in cases where such external ends are relevant parts and central tropes.