Gene Fendt

The thesis of this text is that representation and mimesis, and so reason and passion, are not opposed, but differ. Their presumed opposition leads to many false and therefore harmful ideas and practices, as Glaucon exhibits in his republic, but even these harmful ideas and practices exhibit not only that it is not possible to escape either mimesis or representation but also that the harm is precisely to develop a culture along the lines of a hegemonic structure wherein one is dominant and the other secondary—that is the point Plato exhibits in his Republic. Mimesis and representation are, in a more contemporary parlance, differing regimens of phrasal connection, phrase being a word that is as musical as it is grammatical. No ground can serve as a place of judgement between the two of them for all ground is the dust/blood/text of both. As Plato says, "all the arts of the muses are iconic and mimetic." It is more accurate, and therefore best, to see mimesis and representation not as differing acts, but as differing aspects or moments of every semiotic act—and every act is semiotic to a being for which any act is so.

This paper answers the questions ‘what is the Merchant of Venice?’ and ‘how may it accomplish its purpose?’ I argue that the usual treatments of this play are inadequate and show how the play is a comedy through which the passions appropriate for the good human being are engendered. What is raised and ridiculed are our own temptations to lesser joys and less sweet uses mimetically roused in us by the action and characters of the play. What is whetted but left unsatisfied is our higher love for justice. Thus the play provides a catharsis (purification) of desire and sympathy.

This paper's aim is threefold. First, I wish to show that there is an analogy in section nine that arises out of the interaction of the interlocutors; this analogy is, or has, a certain comic adequatic to the traditional (e.g. Aquinas's) arguments about proofs for the existence of God. Second, Philo's seemingly inconsequential example of the strange necessity of products of 9 in section nine is a perfected analogy of the broken arguments actually given in that section, destroying Philo's earlier arguments. Finally, I raise the question of the designer's intent in creating such a humourous piece

This paper attempts to explicate the philosophical and theological premisses involved in Fr. Paneloux’s second sermon in Camus’ The Plague. In that sermon Fr. Paneloux says that the suffering of children is our bread of affliction. The article shows where one must start in order to get to that point, and what follows from it. Whether or not the argument given should be called a theodicy or a reductio ad absurdum of religious belief is an open question for a philosopher, but the argument is shown to cohere with the traditional belief in God’s omnipotent goodness.

This paper aims at interpreting (primarily) the first six chapters of Aristotle’s Poetics in a way that dissolves many of the scholarly arguments conceming them. It shows that Aristotle frequently identifies the object of his inquiry by opposing it to what is other than it (in several different ways). As a result aporiai arise where there is only supposed to be illuminating exclusion of one sort or another. Two exemplary cases of this in chapters 1-6 are Aristotle’s account of mimesis as other than enunciative speech (speech that makes truth claims, or representation) and his account of the final cause of tragedy in itself as plot, vis a vis its final cause as regards the audience, which is katharsis. Confusions arising from failure to see the otherness of representation and katharsis leads to an overly intellectualist understanding of the purpose of tragedy.

This paper explicates the relationship of innate corruption and natural goodness in Kant's Religion against a background of mistaken arguments and interpretations by Goethe, Allison, and Gordon Michalson, among others. It also argues that the only argument that can be given for the claim of innate moral corruption is a kind of ad hominem; it shows that Kant is giving such an argument, and argues that that argument is valid in its place. It concludes by saying that if this explication is true then it is a mistake to read Kant as a despiser of the body.

This paper reads through some contemporary literary critical problems and theorizing about textuality to Augustine's Confessions, to the enrichment, if not the ecstasy of both contemporary and medieval thinking. It shows that Augustine is both aware of much that passes as new in theorizing about language, and that his text is argumentatively and rhetorically structured to set difference at play. Like Augustine's writing, this article is a performance piece: besides arguing, it acknowledges; beside demonstration, it questions; besides telling, it shows; it would not be called a study of textuality in Augustine, but a performance of textuality with (in) Augustine.

Why would an empiricist look at a poem? And if he did, what could he find? This paper begins with Hume's programmatic statement for literary renewal based on the empirical principles set forth in the first Enquiry, and raises the question about the worth of poetry according to those principles. There is little "abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number, or experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence" in poetry and so "commit it to the flames." The second Enquiry allows that since disputation among men is based on the passions, poetry might have a place as a means to speak to the affections, to inforce particular sophistries close to our hearts. The second half of the paper defends poetry on grounds opposed to the premises of empirical science. Specifically, whereas in science knowledge is power, in the arts knowledge is suffering, or,where science aims at mastery and ownership, poetry relates us to that in being which is not ours. This view is explicated by use of King Lear.

This paper's aim is threefold. First, I wish to show that there is an analogy in section nine that arises out of the interaction of the interlocutors; this analogy is, or has, a certain comic adequatic to the traditional arguments about proofs for the existence of God. Second, Philo's seemingly inconsequential example of the strange necessity of products of 9 in section nine is a perfected analogy of the broken arguments actually given in that section, destroying Philo's earlier arguments. Finally, I raise the question of the designer's intent in creating such a humourous piece.