polylog 52
Winter 2024
Literatur und Philosophie
Bianca Boteva-Richter und Hans Schelkshorn (Hg.)
Lara Hofner: Editorial
Bianca Boteva-Richter und Hans Schelkshorn PDF | HTML
Literatur und Philosophie
Einleitung
Alena Rettová
Philosophie und Gattung:
Für eine textuelle Basis der afrikanischen Philosophie
This article advocates a multilingual approach to African philosophy, based
on an understanding of philosophy as text. Both oral and written texts,
fictional and non-fictional ones, public and private ones are considered.
A rigorous study of texts, working across multiple genres and several
languages, is the first step in the development of an African philosophy
derived from local African cultures. In establishing a textual basis for African
philosophy, such a bottom-up approach necessitates a reconsideration
of the nature, methods, and themes of philosophy, but also of its textual
strategies, its use of language, of the nature of representation, and of the
relationship between imaginative literature and theoretical thought.
Yet, this article does not understand »philosophy through language«
but »philosophy through genre«, in other words, the article draws on
traditions of literary theory and literary studies for its analytical concepts.
The key premise of this approach is that to understand the philosophical
meaning of texts, it is necessary to start with an analysis of textual genres.
Genres anchor texts in context, in culture and language.
Following a theoretical consideration of genre, this article outlines a comparative
study of several genres of texts in selected African languages and
their philosophical content. These include the essay in Ciluba, the novel
in Swahili, Shona, Acoli, and Lingala, and Islamic Sufi poetry in Swahili and
Wolof. The article challenges the conventional limits of both philosophy
and literary studies and demonstrates how this approach allows for topical
philosophical concerns to emerge from a textual basis.
Jana S. Rošker
Literatur und Philosophie im Zhuangzi:
Neue Hermeneutik und die Methode der Aufhebung
Philosophical themes are often explored in literature, especially when revealing new methods for depicting the problems of existence, moral dilemmas, and the complexities of human nature in a profound way. Authors use structures, characters, and symbolism to convey and examine philosophical ideas, often creating a rich interaction between the two disciplines. Philosophy, in turn, can manifest itself in literary form through dialogues, essays, and philosophical fiction. It employs narrative elements, characters, and allegories to convey complex ideas and engage readers in its discourses in a perhaps more accessible way. This literary expression of philosophy can enhance the understanding of its content and make abstract concepts more comprehensible. The intertwining of philosophy and literature, poetics and analysis, can be observed in the work of the ancient Chinese thinker Zhuangzi. Through a dialectical interaction and constructive mutual sublation of the literary-philosophical elements present in his eponymous work, this essay attempts to present a new form of transcultural hermeneutics, which finds its expression in the method of merging aesthetic spheres (or jingjie 境界).
Ulrich Schmid
Philosophierende Literatur und literarische Philosophie in Russland
Due to political constraints, academic philosophy had a hard stand both in Tsarist and Soviet Russia. This is why the philosophical self reflection of Russian society significantly moved to the realm of literature. All domains of modern philosophy entered the literary discourse. Lev Tolstoi dwelled in War and Peace on the Hegelian problem of the relation between man and history. Fyodor Dostoevsky addressed in his „Legend of the GrandmInquisitor“ from his novel The Brothers Karamazov the problem of theodicee and personal freedom. Finally, Boris Pasternak shaped in his Doctor Shivago a literary version of life philosophy. All three examples show how philosophical ideas gain persuasiveness in the broader context of an epic narrative. This is not a difference but rather a radicalization of the Western way of building a philosophical argument.
Carlos Oliva Mendoza
Codigofagía
Fünf Anmerkungen zur lateinamerikanischen Literatur und Philosophie
In this article, I compare the philosophical and literary traditions that, since the nineteenth century, have taken place in Latin America. These traditions became a fundamental part of Latin Americanism. The main objective is to create a bibliographic and conceptual map of development, history and the status of various Latin-American philosophies and literatures. This map is working around the central thesis of the division of Latin-American tradition in its baroque and romantic deployments.
Carolyn Fornoff
The flesh that speaks: Hubert Matiúwàa and mè’phàà philosophy
Hubert Matiúwàa is the first author to publish poetry in the Mè’phàà language. His bilingual poetry collection Xtámbaa / Piel de tierra / Landskin (2016) responds to the problems faced by the inhabitants of La Montaña in the Mexican state of Guerrero and narrate how the Mè’phàà community mobilizes in response. The fight of the Mè’phàà people, Matiúwàa contends, is ontological. By systematizing Mè’phàà thought as philosophy in his essays, and lyrically deploying its concepts in his poetry, Matiúwàa traces how Mè’phàà epistemological tools combat regional problems and imagine other worlds, ethics, and futures for La Montaña, and in this way, secure its survival and future.
FORUM
Jörg Ossenkopp
Der »Oasenmann« als Philosophie:
Ma’at-Sprechen und Kosmopolitik des Atmens
A detailed reading of »The Eloquent Peasant« (ca. 1850 BCE) is proposed which focusses on philosophical practices, especially »speaking Ma’at« and its way of universalization. This way of universalization is characterized neither by reference to a realm of ideas nor to a form of shared humanity, but by an orientation on the cosmological, especially through the connectivity between cosmos and breath and air, which is part of the concept of Ma’at. In the multiperspectival way displayed in the »Eloquent Peasant«, »speaking Ma’at« is not only a way of speaking philosophically, but cosmopolitical dissent as well. Cosmopolitics is a way of dissenting by referring to universality, and in the »The Eloquent Peasant« it comes in a form of a cosmopolitics of breathing. A parallel reading of the »Zhuangzi« shows another form of cosmopolitics of breathing, elucidating differences, e.g. in their way of universalization.
POLYTOP
Nausikaa Schirilla und Ursula Baatz
polytop – Stimmen, Blicke, Netzwerke
Hannah Schey und Gesa Höhn
Die Vortragsreihe »Dekolonial Philosophieren« an der Universität Freiburg (2023/24)
REZENSIONEN
Marita Rainsborough
Sage Philosophy heute – Versuche des Neudenkens und der Neukonzeptionierung. Zu: Kresse & Nyarwarth (eds.), Rethinking Sage Philosophy (2023). S. 112-14.
Sofia Elena Merli
The Cuban Philosophical Thought between Practical Humanism and Anti-colonial Militancy. Zu: Pablo Guadarrama (ed.): Philosophy in Cuba (2023). S. 114-16.
Franz Gmainer-Pranzl
Die Verunsicherung des weißen Blicks auf die Welt. Zu: Charlotte Wiedemann: Vom Versuch, nicht weiß zu schreiben (2018). S. 116-17.
Mădălina Diaconu
Sozialästhetik: eine zukunftsträchtige Disziplin. Zu: Arnold Berleant: The Social Aesthetics of Human Environments (2023). S. 117-20.
Andrej Krause
Zara Yaqob und Walda Heywat: Äthiopische Philosophen Zu: Zara Yaqob, Walda Heywat: The Hatata Inquiries (2024). S. 120-21.