Gregory Brazeal

The thesis presents two reflections on what it might mean to read Wallace Stevens philosophically. The first section argues that we would be better off avoiding the search for a supreme fiction in Stevens' poetry. By the poet's own standards, he never succeeded in creating one. The second section attempts to justify the abandonment of the search for the supreme fiction by suggesting another, perhaps more productive way in which Stevens' poetry might be philosophically read. In particular, it will be argued that what Helen Vendler calls Stevens' "qualified assertions" can be seen as a potent technique for the avoidance of philosophical dogmatism

An individual's beliefs can be seen as rationally related to one another in a kind of web. These beliefs, however, may not form a single, seamless web. There may exist smaller, largely self-contained webs with few or no rational relations to the larger web. Such “webs of faith” make it possible for reasonable deliberators to persist in a disagreement even under ideal deliberative conditions. The possibility of reasonable disagreement challenges the assumption that rationality should lead to consensus and presents an obstacle to the goals of liberal democracy.