IntrotoPhilosophyHumeOfMiracles”Hume.docx

Intro to Philosophy
Hume “Of Miracles”
Hume
• David Hume (1711-1776)
• ScoCsh Enlightenment
• Enlightenment 17-18th centuries (the age of
reason, not tradiHon)
• He was a skepHc and is noted for his
argumentsagainst the cosmological and
teleological argumentsfor the existence of
God.
• cosmological and teleological arguments
• cosmos = universe (order)
• telos = end (“beginning” in the sense of
design)
Miracles

• According to Hume, no maQer how strong
the
evidence for a specific miracle may be, it will
always be more raHonal to reject the miracle
than to believe in it.
“A miracle is a viola.on of the laws of nature;
and as a firm and unalterable experience has
established theselaws, the proof against a
miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as
en.re as any argument from experience as can
be imagined …”
“It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good
health, should die on a sudden: because such a
kind of death, though more unusual than any
other, has yet been frequentlyobserved to
happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man
should come to life; because that has never
been
observed, in any age or country.”
“There must, therefore, be a uniform experience
against every miraculous event, otherwise the
event would not merit that appella.on.”

Hume’s BoQom Line
1. The laws of nature describe regulariHes.
2. Miracles are singulariHes, excepHons to the
regular
course of nature and so are exceedingly rare.
3. Evidence for what is regular and repeatablemust
always be more than evidence for what is singular
and unrepeatable.
4. The wise man bases his belief on the weight
of
evidence.
5. Therefore no wise man can ever believe in a
miracle.
Miracles
• Hume noted that thereare two factors to
assess in deciding whether to believe any
given piece of tesHmony: the reliability of
the
witness and the probability of that to which
they tesHfy.
Miracles

• The tesHmony of a witness that is both honest
and a good judge of that to which they tesHfy
is worth much. The tesHmony of a witness
who is either dishonest or not in a posiHon to
know that to which they tesHfy is worth
liQle.
Miracles
The reliability of the witness is therefore
somethingthat is to be taken into account in
deciding whether to believe anything on the
basisof tesHmony.
Miracles
• The probability of that to which they tesHfy,
however, is also relevant
Miracles
• If a witness tesHfies to sighHng a flying
pig
then it is more likely that their tesHmony is
false than that their tesHmony is true, even if

they are a reliable witness.
Miracles
• The reliability required of a witness in order
for his tesHmony to jusHfy belief in that to
which he tesHfies increases as the probability
of that to which he tesHfies decreases.
Miracles
• According to Hume, however, a miracle is by
definiHon an event that is as unlikely as
anything else. Miracles, for Hume, necessarily
involve violaHons of laws of nature. Laws of
nature, though, are as well-established as it is
possible for anything to be.
Miracles
• It will always, therefore, be more likely that
the tesHmony of a witness to a miracle is
false
than that it is true. It will always be more
raHonal to disbelieve a claim that a miracle
has occurred than to accept it.

Miracles
• What holds for the second-hand tesHmony of
others also holds for first-hand evidence from
our own senses. Whatever evidence our
senses may give us that a miracle has
occurred, it will always be more likely that our
senses are in error than that a miracles really
has occurred.
Miracles
• Note that this is not an argument against the
possibility of miracles; Hume’s conclusion is
not that miracles do not happen.
Miracles
• His conclusion is that no evidence is
sufficient
to establish that a miracle has occurred, that
even if a miracle has occurred we ought not to
believe in it.
CriHcism?
• One ground on which to criHcize it, though,

is
in its concepHon of a miracle. Miracles, it
has
been argued, need not be violaHons of laws of
nature. An answered prayer, for example, may
properly be described as a miracle, but it does
not necessarily violate any natural law.
Miracles
• Miracles are simply events that pointus
towards God. This broader understanding of a
miracle raises the possibility that thereare at
least somemiracles that are not so
improbable as Hume supposes, and so which
can aQract raHonal belief.
Hume’s Argument
• In chapter 90 Hume states, "A miracle is a
violaHon of the laws of nature; and as a firm
and unalterable experience has established
theselaws, the proof against a miracle, from
the very nature of the fact, is as enHre as
any
argument from experience can possibly be
imagined." From this Hume seems to be
implying:

1) A miracle is a violaHon of
the laws of nature.
2) The laws of nature are derived
from our
uniform experience and are a descripHon of
what always happens.
3) Thus by definiHon miracles never
happen.
Problem?
• It simply illustrates that the term "miracle"
can be defined in such a manner as to be
logically incoherent, such as a "married
bachelor".
Modified version of Hume’s argument
1) A miracle is a violaHon of
the laws of nature.
2) The laws of nature are a
descripHon of what
usually happens.
3) Thus a miracle is an unusual
event.
A Preface to the Study of Philosophic Genres

Author(s): Mark D. Jordan
Source: Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Fall, 1981), pp.
199-211
Published by: Penn State University Press
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A Preface to thè Study of Philosophie Genres
Mark D. Jordan
At the beginning of the Poetics, Aristotle surveys the various
types of poetic imitation, distinguishing them aecording to
means, objeet, and manner. Under the heading of différences of
me ans, in discussing compositions which use neither harmony
nor verse, Aristotle mentions the genre of the "Socratic conver-
sations."1 I take him to be touching, for a moment, on the
generic classification of philosophie works. He goes on to
distin-
guish a cosmologist writing in verse from a true poet.2 The
Poet-
ics shows, then, both the question of philosophie genres and the
suspect tendency to pass it by. I want to pause over the question
in order to examine its features, its elusiveness, and also its
failures.
I will begin the examination by distinguishing the question of
genre from a host of others with which it is regularly confused.
It will appear, second, that by its nature genre is internai to
philosophie discourse and of universal extent in philosophie
works. Genres are not found only in a few philosophie writings
which are somehow (defectively) literary. Third, the examina-
tion will discover dangers to the inquiry into philosophie genres
which are hidden in the very notion of 'genre'. But let me repeat
what the title says, that this is no more than a preface to the

extended study of the shape of philosophical works. I hâve
thought such a preface useful because of the repeated obscuring
of what is at stake in the study. Yet the essay «would defeat
itself
if it pretended to offer a generically neutral démonstration of
some universal property of genres.
Let me also say that I will not notice during most of the
examination thè intnisive practices of 'structuralist' and 'post-
structuralist' criticism. I will adopt, instead, a way of reading
which is less violent. This is to say that I will begin from those
conditions for reading which the texts of the philosophie tradi-
tion themselves impose upon thè reader, if he would bear them.
What is gained in such an innocent approach - the extent to
which it can be justified - thèse issues will be considered only
at
Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 14, No. 4. Fall 1981. Pubüshed
by The Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, University Park and London.
199
2014 22:06:48 PM
200 MARK D. JORDAN
the essayas end, in treating of the dangers which lie concealed
in
the study of the genres as such.

1. Distinguishing the Question about Philosophie Genres
One of the first battles for philosophy is that in which it sets
itself against poetry and rhetoric. Poetry is the elder rival out of
which philosophy émerges. Rhetoric is the upstart which seeks
to supplant philosophy by its more efficient techniques. So
much is clear in Piato. There is, to cite a single instance, Soc-
rates' s distinction in the Apology between the two classes of
his
accusers. The older class remains unspecified except for "a
comic poet," Aristophanes.3 The younger class is represented
by the "patriotic" accusers, versed in forensic rhetoric, who
now prosecute Socrates.4 Even within this second group, Mele-
tus is said to be prosecuting on behalf of the poets, Lycon on
behalf of the orators.5
Of course, Piato is not the only évidence of this strife between
philosophy and those arts which were later to be shared between
thè trivi um and training in rhetoric. There is a long line of
writings
which reflect on this struggle. To cite only a few, pre-Cartesian
examples: Aristotle's Topics and On Sophistical Réfutations,
which are as much a part of the Organon as are the Analytics;
Cicero' s De oratore; the fourth Book of Augustine' s De
Doctrina
Christiana; Martianus Cappella' s De nuptiis Mercurii et
Philolo-
giae; the Metalogicon of John of Salisbury; and Petrarch's De
ignorantia. With Descartes, the question is obscured but not es-
caped. What he took with him into that stove-heated Dutch
room
was his éducation from La Flèche and his language s. It seems
characteristic that Descartes did not notice thèse latter posses-
sions except when disapproving of them. He suffers language as
what limits the clarity of his ideas.6 Modem philosophy seems

frequently to hâve this unhappy relation to its own language, at
once frustrated and fearful. The relation is exposed by Kierke-
gaard and Nietzsche, in whom the ancient prospect of philoso-
phy's relation to fleshly speech is once again desired, if not
achieved. As a resuit, language is ubiquitously treated in
contem-
porary philosophy, whether in speculative projeets, in the
method of analysis, or in technical works such as the New Rhe-
toric of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca.
Having traced this line of texts, I will set it aside. The ques-
2014 22:06:48 PM
A PREFACE THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHIC GENRES 201
tion of philosophie genres is not addressed by talking about the
external relations of philosophy to the other verbal arts. It must
be understood, rather, as a question about the présence in phi-
losophy of certain shapes of composition, which happen also to
be studied in thè trivi um and by rhetoricians. A second line of
texts then suggests itself , one governed by the topic of writing
philosophy. There are, famously, a number of pedagogical
asides in the prefatory remarks to various philosophical works:
Aquinas's plea for simplicity in the proemium to the Summa;
Francis Bacon, passim, on the mummery of his predecessors;
Kant9 s eschewing of example in the first Critique; the charges
of
Austinian analysts against their Continental rivais. There are
also, more significantly, remarks on style and pedagogy which

seem to adumbrate doctrines. This is the case, in opposite direc-
tions, with Nietzsche and Peirce. Even for the dullest reading,
Nietzsche9 s many aphorisms about style say more than that one
ought to write colorfully. They disclose something, at least,
about the mask, about the connection between woman and
spirit, about the life of the philosopher as guardian and goad.7
But the doctrinal implications are even surer in Peirce, who
treats of philosophie style in relation to the great aspiration of
modem philosophy - the dream of clarity. Peirce' s directives on
clarifying ideas are not chiefly stylistic admonitions; they are a
prescription about how and what ideas can me an.8 Something
similar - the espousal of doctrine through remarks on style - is
familiär enough from the Anglo- American reading of Wittgen-
stein' s Tractatus, especially the réitération of the dictum, "what
can be said at ail can be said e le ari y/'9 The wish for clarity is
from Descartes forward chargea with an epistemological déci-
sion of which Peirce, Wittgenstein, and the Oxford masters are
differentlv the heirs.
Still, the question of philosophie style, even in its doctrinal
form, is not yet frankly enough the question about genres. The
question of style tends to relapse into an external view of philo-
sophie language. The tendency can be seen in Blanshard's book,
On Philosophie Style, 10 where there are some helpful remarks
about writing expository prose. There is very little about what it
is to write philosophy. Blanshard is so sure that philosophy can
be said plainly, so much convinced of the subordination of sty-
listic issues, that his remarks end by being little more than an
ordinary manual of style with philosophie illustrations. But the

2014 22:06:48 PM
202 MARK D. JORDAN
question of form in philosophie discourse cannot be reduced to
"verbal dressing."11 In thinking that it might be reduced, Blan-
shard has fallen prey to a misconception. He seems to think that
one gets a philosophie idea and then, in a moment which is
logically and temporally posterior, one begins to worry its ex-
pression. Such a model betrays both a weak sensé of what style
is and a doubtful philosophy of language. A word is not a con-
tainer into which the distilled thought is poured, as if one were
filling différent glasses under a tap.12
So I set aside the question of
*
style' in Blanshard's sensé just
as I set aside the question of the external relations of
philosophy
to the trivium and to rhetoric. What remains? There are a few
précédents for a more searching inquiry into the form of philo-
sophie discourse. At times the issue of philosophie pedagogy
has
been elevated beyond mere "style9 to the status of moral
precept
and informing principle. This is thè case in thè line of esoteric
writings which is promised in Piato' s seventh letter and is seen
in Clement of Alexandria, Haie vi, Maimonides, Spinoza, and
Nietzsche. When one must write while keeping silent about

what is most important, then one must consider 'style' in a far
from trivial sensé. Leo Strauss has written a monograph on the
esoteric tradition.13 If his concern for extrinsic causes is some-
what troublesome, Strauss still shows how to ask reflectively
about the philosophie genres. It is not to look for connections
between philosophy and something eise. It is not to feel the
surface of the text as an afterthought. It is, rather, to ask about
the shape of the work and what it might mean for the discourse
of philosophy 'in' it. Might it be that a work of a certain shape
is
the only one possible for certain thoughts?
2. Philosophie Genres
There is no ready theory of genres in literature which could be
borrowed in analyzing philosophie genres. With some authority,
Northrop Frye complains, "We discover that thè criticai theory
of genres is stuck precisely where Aristotle left it. The very
word 'genre' sticks out in an English sentence as the unpro-
nounceable and alien thing it is. Most criticai efforts to handle
such generic terms as 'epic' or 'novel' are chiefly interesting as
examples of the psychology of rumour."14 What has stood in
for
a theory of genres is the habit of distinguishing literary kinds
2014 22:06:48 PM
according to certain accidentia - the convention of writing po-
etry flush left; the fact that novels are longer than no v e lias,

which are longer than short s tories; and so on. Some of thèse
features are perhaps not so peri phe rai, though it is not clear
whether they are, for that, any closer to the center of genre.15
Nonetheless, we are accustomed to thinking that some things
can be done appropriately in one genre and not in another.
What-
ever it is that makes for thèse différences of possible effect, that
I want to name the formai différence of the genre.
Formai différences are related to what I called 'structure9
when discussing the esoteric tradition in philosophy. I now need
to show a contrast between thè two. In a very suggestive essay
on "philosophie form," Louis Mackey considers three cases of
the embodiment of philosophie thought in the structure of its
articulation - thè circle of Piato' s Euthyphro, the arch of the
sixteenth Question of the first part of Aquinas' s Summa
Theolo-
giae, and the plane of Hume's third Essay in thè Enquiry Con-
cerning Human Under standing. 16 I do not know if thèse ought
to be called analyses of structure; they are not, I think, gener-
ically formai analyses. In his exegesis, Mackey moves from a
particular doctrinal notion to its metaphor-rich embodiment.
The
study of genres would move, instead, from the structure to the
possibilities for the doctrine. Mackey himself points to the
unsta-
ble character of readings which focus exclusively on metaphori-
cal embodiment: A more detailed analysis might resuit in a
new and quite différent understanding. But I do believe that
some such approach to philosophical writings - cali it formai

analysis, structural analysis, stylistic analysis, or what-you-
will - is essential to an understanding of what thèse writings
say."17 About thè generai claim, I hâve no doubt. Nor do I want
to say that Mackey9 s practices, especially the careful attention
to metaphors, ought to be excluded from a generic reading. My
only différence cornes in wanting to distinguish among the three
projects which Mackey equates. I hâve already discussed stylis-
tic analysis. I want now to separate my sensé of generic or
formai analysis from Mackey9 s analysis. Mackey connects doc-
trines to metaphors to structures. I cali this a mate rial or con-
tentimi corrélation. I want to ask, instead, whether there is a
connection from genre to the semantic and criteriological possi-
bilities for what is said 'in9 the genre. This would be a formai
corrélation.
2014 22:06:48 PM
204 MARK D. JORDAN
The question is whether something can be done philosophi-
cally in a certain genre but not in another, just as certain things
can be done in a novel but not in a short story. It is not easy to
find help with such a question. There are some treatments of
some philosophers' use of spécifie genres. The obvious subjects
are Piato, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Stanley Cavell has also
treated of the less noticed genres in Wittgenstein.18 The fact of
genre in the first three, at least, is so patent that it would be odd
if it had gone unnoticed, though it is still habitually forgotten.
There is a generai essay on the genres by Julian Marias, to

which I will come in moment. Beyond that, there is little by
way
of reflection, especially of self-critical reflection. Too fre-
quently, when one passes from thè generai Statement of the
issue to the particular study, one finds the question slipping
away. This seems to be partly the case in Albert William Levi's
"Philosophy as Literature: The Dialogue," which was offered in
this journal as the first in a séries on "philosophy as litera-
ture."19 Let me use Levi's essay as the final stepping-stone in
reaching the question about genres.
Levi is concernée! with what impels philosophers to use the
dialogue as a form. He makes clear that he is not asking a
sociological question which could be answered, say, by référ-
ence to a psychological quirk or to a fashion at the time of
writing. Levi wants to know, rather, what it is about the dia-
logue which commends it to certain writers and not to others.
He concludes that "the intrinsic appropriateness of this literary
form lies in its reproduction of the situationality of philosophiz-
ing, in its exhibition not of philosophie doctrines, but of philo-
sophie activity, and in the possibilités which it provides for the
characteriological embodiment of the oppositional factors in the
lifeofthought."20
As an attempt to say what the form of the dialogue intends,
Levi's answer is a plausible beginning. But notice that he has
already slipped towards that extrinsic view according to which

one chooses genres. He is already turning from the füll force of
the question. To put the issue as Levi does - Why should a
dialogue be chosen? - is already to hâve drifted back towards
making the language external. Hère one ought to recali
Mackey' s stronger thesis and the remarks in the essay by
Marias
entitled "Literary Genres in Philosophy."21 Marias does seem
to face the question about genres in its fullness. Although much
2014 22:06:48 PM
of what he says is directed at the contemporary poverty of the
genres in philosophy, he makes two generai points which secure
the force of the question itself . The first is that philosophy has
frequently evaded the self-examination required by the
question,
rushing to conceal itself in hasty borrowings from literature.
The
second is that a failure with regard to genre - a failure to attend
to one's own genre, to find one's own genre - is a failure of
philosophy simpliciter. Levi's question ought, then, to be re-
versed. The question is not, Why should a dialogue be chosen?
It is, What thought thinks itself as dialogue?
I hâve only three fragments of an argument for this reversai of
Levi's question. They might be made into a case for the exigen-

cies of genre as coeval with the thought 'expressed in' them.
The first fragment is a reflection on the root of generic distinc-
tions. The second is a canon of exegetical practice. The third is
a pattern in the history of Western philosophie writing. It is part
of the prefatory nature of this essay that thèse are fragments and
not a large démonstration, though it may well be that to ask for
a
proof of genres in generai is already to hâve forgotten what the
question requires in the way of self-cri tic ism.
First fragment. When Frye cornes to fili the gap in the study
of literary genres, he claims that generic divisions ought to be
understood by référence to "the radical of présentation."22 Ge-
neric divisions dépend on différences in the mode of présenta-
tion, that is, on différences in "the conditions established be-
tween the poet and his public." Frye emphasizes that it is the
radical of présentation which is in question and not its présent
form. This reminder applies to philosophie composition by re-
calling the root-connection between philosophy and teaching -
that is, between philosophy and persuasion. I use 'persuasion' in
its authentic sensé and not pejoratively.23 The ultimate ground
for the plurality of genres in philosophie discourse may be the
plurality of modes in persuasion. The dialogue, the disputed
question, the lecture, the aphorism are forms both of teaching
and of composition. Even the solipsistic forms of modernity
(the
méditation, the autobiographical essay, the faceless monograph)
are implicitly didactic invitations and are offered as paradigms.
In so far as thèse vert forms might indicate genres, the genres
would reflect the modes in which philosophy can be persuasive,
which is to say, the modes in which philosophy can be

written.24
Second fragment. Bad exegesis is characterized precisely by
2014 22:06:48 PM
206 MARK D. JORDAN
inadvertence to the form of the work being interpreted. The
egregious and récurrent example is the présentation of 'Platonic'
doctrine in textbooks, with self-righteous disregard for the fact
that Piato never speaks in the dialogues and that his Socrates is
a master of irony. An equally important, if less apparent failure
occurs in the translation of medieval thought out of the quaes-
tiones disputatele into Indentine treatises. Hère I must disagree
with a conclusion which Levi wants to draw from his survey of
philosophie dialogues. He insists (the remark is italicized) that
"philosophy's literary involvement is almost directly inverse to
the de grée of its professionalization."25 Perhaps the conscious-
ness of literary involvement is so proportional, if 'professional-
ization' is taken to mean what has happened to académie phi-
losophy in the modern period. But it would be more correct to
say that no work of philosophy is not literary.26 It is rather that
there are différent genres. Some genres employed by the mod-
ems prétend disingenuously not to be genres, but that is just one
of their generic features. No altération of thè generai point is
required.
The plurality of genres counts in comparing différent writers;
it also must be considered in analyzing the hierarchy of writings

which is the corpus of a single writer. This analysis might be
called the study of 'authorship', since Kierkegaard made it noto-
rious in his Point of View for My Work as an Author. The
question of 'authorship' is found in any philosophie writer with
an articulated corpus. It is essentially distinct from the question
of chronology, with which it is often confused. Even within a
single corpus, there is no good to be had in collating statements
from différent works without attending to their genres. Identica!
sentences in différent sorts of workmia/z differently. Moreover,
a later work in a narrower genre may be less central to the
authorship than an earlier work in a more expansive one. Any
exegete, then, who ignores the question of 'authorship9 in this
sensé is bound to make important mistakes. Not the least of
thèse is the mistake of assuming that the exegete' s own genre is
neutral with regard to the genres being explicated.
Third fragment. Every philosophie révolution has been ac-
companied by a dispute over the appropriateness of certain
genres for philosophie discourse. There is much play in Piato,
for instance, over the oracular style in Parmenides. There is,
later, thè triumph of thè quaestio disputata over the Augustinian
2014 22:06:48 PM
dialogue, a triumph which is often made convertible with the
rìse of 'Scholasticism'. This révolution is followed, in its turn,
by the polemic of the Humanists against the Scholastic forms
and their introduction of y et other forms. The history of philo-
sophical teaching in the West is mirrored in the history of the

ascendancy of certain genres. This corrélation ought to suggest,
for a third time, the essential place occupied by the genres.
It might be objected against thèse fragments that while they
prove nothing, they suggest too much. In particular, their resuit
is to raise thè possibility of Croce' s critique of the form/content
distinction.27 Wouldn't it be the case that the now elucidated
question about genres would ultimately allow only one genre for
one thought? Wouldn't it follow that each philosophie work,
being somehow unique in its conception, would also be
radically
unique in its formai différences from other works? What could
the 'genres' mean for such a view? There are, I think, two
answers to thèse objected questions. The first is that the generic
catégories hâve been used hère only as preliminary notions
which seem to render certain features discovered in reading the
works of the tradition. Genre has been used as a heuristic de-
vice, not as an ontological tenet. The second answer to the
questions is that it might be well to dissolve the notion of genre
as Croce does, though not for his reasons. This answer requires
a look at the notion of genre in itself .
3. 'Genres'
The program of the two previous sections has been first to
uncover and then to examine the question about philosophie
genres. The program itself must now be scrutinized to find what
is hidden in the notion of genre on which it turn s. The question
of genres seems to risk undoing itself in a multiplication of
genres or in unchecked subjectivity. Any attempt to resist thèse

possibilities by insisting on the giveness of genres leads, how-
ever, to other dangers.
The chief dangers are two; they are connected. The first is
that one will take genre as an ontologically basic entity and will
spill much ink in pursuit of the 'genre as such'. Surely 'genre'
cannot be the name for an Idea or a Form. To think so would
presume a supra-linguistic access to the foundations of language
which has yet to be secured. At most, 'genre' may refer to some
2014 22:06:48 PM
208 MARK D. JORDAN
primitive modalization in language. It might be that the
plurality
of genres is one version of the plurality of modes of discourse
which informs ail language. But thèse are only the beginnings
of
an answer.
The second danger is that the inquiry into genres will degener-
ate into a hunt for the absolute Table of Generic Catégories.
When Marias offers a preliminary list of genres used in Western
philosophy, he is rightfully careful to hedge it about with
qualifi-
cations. "[O]ne ought to expect," he writes, "neither a rigour-

ous nor an exhaustive enumeration of the philosophie literary
genres; it will be enough to note, in approximately
chronological
order, a séries of unequi vocal form s, whose very enunciation
will clarify what our concrete problem is."28 Even the "un-
equi vocal" character of the forms is doubtful, as Marias sees.
"For example, does the fact that the Theaetetus and the Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous are dialogues among
various interlocutors permit us to affirm that they pertain to the
same literary genre? . . . And this leaves aside the necessity for
distinguishing between the original, authentic genres and their
imitations; but even this distinction is not enough, because . . .
one must take aecount of the not trivial fact that in certain
moments of history the literary genre chosen by philosophy has
been nothing less than imitation."29
The doubts raised by Marias confimi what was already becom-
ing evident. The term 'genre' is useful in finding and saying an
essential question about philosophie discourse, but it must be
set
aside once the question has gathered its force. The term 'genre'
must be employed only under erasure (to use a Heideggerian
practice now taken up by Derrida).30 It is put under erasure be-
cause it might otherwise foreclose the question as it raises it;
because it might bring in the temptation of the form/content dis-
junction; and because it might import into the thinking on lan-
guage a literalism which would be decisively inappropriate.
To put 'genre' under erasure is not, however, to embrace a
structuralist or post-structuralist program. If I hâve adopted the
language and even a practice or two from that arsenal, I hâve

not taken up the attack on the subject, on the sign, on the
thought of the West. This does not mean that I intend a return to
the facile reading of classicism in order to ignore every real
problem raised about te tu ali ty; I intend to begin with the
ques-
tion about genres from the kind of reading that is presupposed
2014 22:06:48 PM
even by structuralist writers of essays. This is not to proclaim
the transparency of the text, or the présence of thè signified, or
the subjectivity of the author. It is only to note that structuralist
deconstruction is itself a revolt against the classicism it criti-
cizes. Classicism once offered itself as the critique of a prior
discourse. It might be that such a discourse, the one which
stands on the other side of the classicism of modernity, does not
fall to the critique of classicism deployed by the structuralist s.
It
might also be that the possibility of philosophie discourse dé-
pends in yet undisclosed ways on the thinking about language
which was done in antiquity and among thè medie al s. The
structuralists are not the first to think on language in an anti-
modern way. Perhaps they are not even the most authentic
thinkers, since much of their thought is conditioned by their
polemic against modernity. The value of a pre-Cartesian think-
ing on discourse is suggested not only by following the question

of genres, but also by the persistence in that inquiry of the
question about philosophie silence.
The claim of antiquity that there is something of vital impor-
tance to philosophie discourse which cannot be enunciated by it
touches the study of genres in man y ways. It might suggest a
ranking of genres according to how closely they approach what
they cannot reach. It might serve as yet another measure for
questions of au t hors hip; much might be in the authorship
with-
out being written down in the texts.31 Yet, fi ail y, the question
of the ineffable serves to keep the analysis of genres in check
by
reminding one that there is something beyond. 'Genre9 is put
under erasure not only, or even most radie all y, by the contem-
porary cri tic s. It was originally questioned and reformed by
the
thoughtful practice of that philosophy which modernity sought
to banish. The study of the genres might show why that other
thinking of discourse is needed still.32
Department of Philosophy
University of Dallas
NOTES
1 Poetics, 1447bll: tous Sokratikous logous. Though lexically
attractive, 'con-
versations' is not an adequate translation for logoi in this

context. Logos named
a very spécifie pedagogica! device within the Peripatetic
practice of philosophi-
cal composition. The logoi were passages taken down in
dictation to serve as the
2014 22:06:48 PM
210 MARK D. JORDAN
starting-point for fùrther discussion within the school. See
Joseph Owens, The
Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics (2d ed.,
Toronto: P.I.M.S.,
1963), pp. 75-78; and his référence to Werner Jaeger, Studien
zur Entstehungs-
geschichte der Metaphysik des Aristoteles (Berlin: Weidmann,
1923), pp. 138-
48.
2Poetics, 1447bl6-20.
>Apology, 18dl-2.
4Apology, 24b5.
5Apology, 23e4-24al.
6 Recali this passage from the Discourse on Afethod, 1:
"l'estimois fort
l'Eloquence, & i'estois amoureux de la Poesie; mais ie pensois
que Fune &
l'autre estoient des dons de l'espirt, plutost que les fruits de
l'estude. Ceux qui
ont le raisonnement le plus fort, & qui digèrent le mieux leurs

pensées, affin de
les rendre claires & intelligibles, peuuent tousiours le mieux
persuader ce qu'ils
proposent, encore qu'ils ne parlassent que bas Breton, & qu'us
n'eussent iamais
apris de Rhétorique.*1 In Oeuvres de Descartes, éd. Adam and
Tannery, rev.
ed., Vol. 6 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1973), p. 7, 11. 11-19.
7 Among the many passages in Nietzsche, the most connected
discussion would
corne in the section from Ecce Homo entitled "Warum Ich So
Gute Bücher
Schreibe1* Wh y I Write Such Good Books"). In Nietzsche' s
Werke, ed. Karl
Schlechta (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1955), Vol. 2, pp. 1099-1107;
and in Walter
Kaufmann 's translation of Ecce Homo (New York:
Vintage/Random Hpuse,
1969), pp. 259-325. Among the many other texts on
philosophical composition,
one might well recali Beyond Good and Evil, secs. 27-28, 289,
296.
8 Cf. esp. the famous "How To Make Our Ideas Clear,"
reprinted in Collected
Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Hartshorne and Weiss,
vol. 5 (Cam-
bridge: Belknan/Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 248-71.
9 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans.
D. F. Pears and
B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and
New York: Hu-
manities Press, 1961), Preface, pp. 2 and 3, and secs. 3.251,
4.116.

10 Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style (Bloomington and
London: Indiana
University Press, cl967). A récent number of The Monist has
been dedicated to
the topic of t4Philosophy as Style11 (63/4, October 1980). See
in it, for compari-
sons with Blanshard and generai arguments in favor of the
importance of style:
Donald Henze, "The Style of Philosophy,11 417-24; Lee B.
Brown, "Philoso-
phy, Rhetoric and Style,11 425-44; and Lawrence M. Hinman,
"Philosophy and
Style,11 512-29.
11 Cf. Blanshard, On Philosophical Style, p. 64. Susanne
Langer seems to share
the sentiment: "The argument is the /discursive/ writer's motif,
and absolutely
nothing eise may enter in. As soon as he leads feeling away
from the motivating
thought to (say) mystical or moral reaction, he is not supporting
the process of
understanding. A subtle leading away from the literal statement
in a discourse is
the basis of what is commonly called 'rhetoric'
"
(Feeling and Form /New York:
Charles Scribners1 Sons, 1953/ p. 302).
12 Julian Marias underscores the misconceptions occasioned by
such tacitly held
images in his "Los Generös literarious en filosofia,11 reprinted
in Obras de
Julian Marias (Madrid: Ed. de la Revista de Occidente, 1969),
voi. 4, 331-54,
esp. pp. 331-32. I will return to this essay below.

13 Leo Strauss. Persécution and the Art of Writine (Glencoe:
Free Press. 1952).
14 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays
(Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1971), p. 13.
15 Aristotle, for instance, treats appropriateness of the length of
plot as a feature
of tragedy (Poetics, 7, 1450b34-1451al5). But note, first, that
the argument is
secured by a loose analogy to one1 s sensé of biological
proportion. It is also
interesting, second, that Aristotle explicitly excludes the
question of the duration
of the performance (1451a5-9).
16 Louis Mackey, "On Philosophical Form: A tear for Adonais,"
Thought, 42
(1967), 238-60.
2014 22:06:48 PM
A PREFACE THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHIC GENRES 21 1
17 Mackey, 'On Philosophical Form," 257.
18 Stanley Cavell, "The Availability of Wittgenstein' s Later
Philosophy," in
Must We Mean What We Say? (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1969; rptd.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 44-72,
especially pp. 70-71.
Cavell also makes this generai remark: "The significance of the
fact that writing

of ail kinds (not just 'literature') is dépendent, in structure and
tone and effect,
on a quite definite (though extensive) set of literary forms or
genres is nowhere
to my knowledge so fully made out as in Northrop Frye's
Anatomy of Crit-
icism. . . . [T]he small use I hâve made of it hardly suggests the
work it should
inspire" (p. 71, n. 14).
19 Albert William Levi, "Philosophy as Literature: The
Dialogue," Philosophy
andRhetoric, 9(1976), 1-20.
20 Ibid., 17-18.
21 The füll citation appears in n. 7, above; translations from the
essay are my
own. See also, on the question of genres, the essay by Berel
Lang, "Towards a
Poetics of Philosophical Discourse," The Monist, 63 (1980),
445-64. Lang gives
further bibliographie suggestions on 461-64.
22 Frye, Anatomy, pp. 246-47.
23 It is with its "authentic sensé" that the question of persuasion
occurs in the
Platonic dialogues. At any number of points, the central concern
is with an act of
philosophie persuasion, which is repeatedly marked off from the
rhetorical and
the sophistical. I think especially of Glaucon's choice at
Republic, IX, 580b; of
Theaetetus's concession in the Sophist, 265d; and of the
Athenian's deliberately
gentle preamble to the législation on sacrilège in the Laws, X,
888a-c, 903b,
907c.
24 On this point, I would want to qualify the attack by Marias
on the teachmg

forms in modern philosophy (see pp. 335-36 of his essay).
Marias is right if by
'docencia' he means institutionalized professorial instruction.
But surely that is
a debased form of philosophie teaching.
25 Levi, The Dialogue," 19.
26 Mackey say s this forcefully: "In one extravagant word:
every philosopher is a
poet and every student of philosophy should be a literary critic
(and vice versa)"
(Mackey, On Philosophical Form," 259).
27 Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic as Science of Expression and
General Linguistic,
trans. Douglas Ainslie (rptd. New York: Farrar, Straus, &
Giroux, 1972), Ch. 9,
pp. 67-73.
28 Marias, Los Generös hteranos, Obras, IV, 334. 1 wonder
whether Lang s
suggestion, by way of a "working hypothesis," of a "four-fold
generic distinc-
tion" pays enough attention to thèse and similar Problems. See
Lang, 449-54.
29 Marias, "Los Géneros literanos," Obras, IV, p. 334.
30 See the remarks by Gayatn Spivak in thè Preface to her
translation of Der-
rida's De la grammatologie , published as Of Grammatology
(Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. xiv-xvii and passim.
31 Recali those remarks which Wittgenstein daims, in a letter to
Ficker, to hâve
deleted from thè Preface to his Tractatus: "My work consists of
two parts: the
part presented hère plus ail that I hâve not written." He adds:
"And it is
precisely this second part that is the important one." Quoted in
Allan Janik and

Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein' s Vienna (New York:
Touchstone/Simon &
Schuster, C1973), p. 192.
32 An earlier version of this paper was read at the American
Philosophical
Association' s Western Division Meeting in April of 1980. I am
grateful for the
questions raised there and especially for the comments of Berel
Lang and Anton
Donoso. Although the paper which Lang subsequently published
in The Monist
refers to much of the matter which is covered hère, we seem to
differ in our
conclusions. Lang gives too much weight, I think, to the
catégories of his sty lis-
tic and generic analyses. He may also be assuming that he has
found a fîxed,
Newtonian point from which he can describe quite objectively
the varieties of
philosophie speech.
2014 22:06:48 PM
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 199p. 200p. 201p. 202p. 203p. 204p. 205p. 206p.
207p. 208p. 209p. 210p. 211Issue Table of ContentsPhilosophy
& Rhetoric, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Fall, 1981), pp. 199-261Volume
InformationFront MatterA Preface to the Study of Philosophic
Genres [pp. 199-211]Rhetoric and Action in Francis Bacon [pp.
212-233]Situation in the Theory of Rhetoric [pp. 234-248]Book
ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 249-251]Review: untitled [pp.
251-253]Review: untitled [pp. 253-257]Review: untitled [pp.
257-258]Review: untitled [pp. 258-259]Back Matter

Philosophical Genres and Literary Forms:
A Mildly Polemical Introduction
Jonathan Lavery
Philosophy and Contemporary Studies, Wilfrid Laurier
University (Brantford)
The essays collected in this special issue of Poetics Today
examine philo-
sophical genres with illustrations from important and
representative texts.
Since the inception of Western philosophy, myriad expository
styles and
literary forms have been used there with extraordinary subtlety
in address-
ing the conceptual problems within the tradition. Aphorisms,
dialogues,
epistles, autobiographies, essays, systematic treatises, and
commentaries—
to name only some of the most obvious examples—should be
familiar to
both casual and serious readers. Philosophers have exercised a
great deal
of ingenuity in their experiments with these and other genres.
Still, it is fair
to say that the amount of scholarly research on philosophical
genres is not
commensurate with either the diversity of genres that have been
used in the
tradition or with the vast amount of research on other
dimensions of these
texts, including, for example, philological work on the
provenance and
integrity of source manuscripts, historical work on intellectual

influences
upon the authors, or analytical work on the logical cogency of
individual
arguments. In short, there has been little elucidation of the
distinctive
virtues and limitations implicit in the different genres. The
present special
issue draws critical attention to a representative sample of
genres that have
been used in different periods of the Western philosophical
tradition.
Most of this introduction will review what little scholarship
there is on
the formative role and hermeneutical demands of philosophical
genres.
This part of the introduction is polemical insofar as the account
is ani-
Poetics Today 28:2 (Summer 2007) doi 10.1215/03335372-
2006-020
© 2007 by Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
172 Poetics Today 28:2
mated by a complaint that philosophical genres have not
received the
respect or critical attention they deserve. But the polemic is
tempered by
the fact that the article I begin with ( Jordan 1981) raises a set
of theoretical
points that inform the focused studies collected in this special
issue of Poet-
ics Today. Reviewing this and similar work will help draw out,
develop, and

clarify our theme and focus. The final part of this introduction
will survey
the contents of this special issue itself, emphasizing both how
the essays
assembled here collectively fill the scholarly lacuna indicated
above and
how each individual article contributes to this purpose.
It is appropriate to begin outlining our theme by recalling a
point made
in Mark D. Jordan’s “Preface to the Study of Philosophic
Genres” (1981),
one of the few attempts to consider the topic generally and
directly. After
raising the issue of how one asks questions about the formative,
interpre-
tive, and theoretical implications of philosophical genres,
Jordan (ibid.:
202) responds:
It is not to look for connections between philosophy and
something else. It is
not to feel the surface of the text as an afterthought. It is,
rather, to ask about
the shape of the work and what might it mean for the discourse
of philoso-
phy “in” it. Might it be that a work of a certain shape is the only
one possible for certain
thoughts? (Emphasis added)
The hypothesis that Jordan frames here as a question, which I
have itali-
cized, encapsulates much of the spirit of this special issue:
certain thoughts,
along with ways of formulating and collecting these thoughts,
appear to

be inextricably bound to the form of the text in which they are
embodied.
Jordan’s use of scare quotes with reference to the discourse that
philoso-
phy is “in” is suggestive. He seems to have picked up his
corporeal meta-
phor from Julián Marías (1971 [1953]: 1), who invokes it with
even stronger
emphasis:
Philosophy is expressed—and for this reason is fully made
real—within a defi-
nite literary genre; and it must be emphasized that prior to this
expression it did
not exist except in a precarious way or, rather, only as intention
and attempt.
Philosophy is thus intrinsically bound to the literary genre, not
into which it is
poured, but, we would do better to say, in which it is
incarnated. (For references
to Marías see Jordan 1981: 210n12, 211n24, 28, 29.)
This conception of genre as an indispensable, unifying feature
of the text
is in keeping with an Aristotelian conception of immanent,
substantial
form—as opposed to separable form.
After twenty-five years, it is time to return to Jordan’s
hypothesis in
order to fill out its implications and open up the question of its
explana-
Lavery • A Mildly Polemical Introduction 173

tory adequacy. First, let me extract two distinct but related
questions that
are combined in Jordan’s single question:
1. In articulating and formulating a single thought or a set of
coor-
dinated thoughts, why might one genre be more appropriate than
others as a mode of representation?
And
2. To what extent, if any, is the philosophical content of the
text defined
by its genre, i.e., its unifying form?
I have tried to formulate these questions in a way that is
consistent with
Jordan’s careful handling of the form/content relation. In the
passage
quoted above, he complains about form and content being
conceived as
a sharp dichotomy. The complaint is more explicit in another
passage in
connection with the view that “one gets a philosophic idea and
then, in a
moment which is logically and temporally posterior, one begins
to worry
its expression.” Such a model
betrays both a weak sense of what style is and a doubtful
philosophy of lan-
guage. A word is not a container into which the distilled
thought is poured, as if
one were filling different glasses under a tap. ( Jordan 1981:
202)
Bearing in mind this warning and our two questions, let me try

to illus-
trate our theme with reference to two contrasting philosophical
texts. The
first is Joseph Butler’s Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls
Chapel (1729), which
explores a host of philosophical questions about moral
psychology in a
book of thematically linked sermons. The second example is
Friedrich
Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (1889). As announced by the
subtitle, How to
Philosophize with a Hammer, Twilight of the Idols is an
iconoclastic philosophi-
cal work; it consists of over a hundred aphoristic remarks
attacking various
presuppositions about morality (as being rational and objective,
as being
metaphysically grounded, as a coherent system of prescriptions
and pro-
scriptions of human behavior, etc.).
Both Fifteen Sermons and Twilight of the Idols are
unmistakably philosophi-
cal in their aims, Butler attempting to ground morality and
Nietzsche to
undermine it. But differences in the specific character of these
works are
tied up with differences in their formal, literary construction,
and such
genre-oriented differences are not reducible to matters of pure
“content”—
that is, content conceived independently of form. The moral
psychology of
Fifteen Sermons emphasizes “reflection” (a kind of analytical
self-awareness
about one’s own moral principles) as a central component of
moral agency,

and the sermons return repeatedly to the sorts of theoretical
issues that
are central to such reflection (e.g., the cogency of egoism, the
possibility
of genuine benevolence, etc.). By contrast, Nietzsche’s (1954
[1889]: 470)
grand ambition to provoke a “revaluation of all values” requires
a criti-
cal approach to any moral or metaphysical principle that
purports to be
axiomatic, foundational, or unquestionable (e.g., the distinction
between
appearance and reality), and the scattershot presentation of
aphorisms in
Twilight of the Idols is a formal expression of his contempt for
systematic
theorizing (see, for example, Aphorism I 26: “I mistrust all
systematizers
and I avoid them”).
The philosophical purpose of Fifteen Sermons is conveyed by
Butler’s
focus on moral reflection and the manner in which he addresses
his
readers. His implied audience consisted of sophisticated,
reflective Angli-
cans seeking clarity and guidance for their own moral agency,
and the ser-
mons serve their needs by removing obstacles to such agency
(e.g., doubts
about human benevolence planted by popular and systematic
versions of

psychological egoism are dismantled in Sermon XI) and by
explicating
the implications of accepted moral principles (e.g., of Christian
charity in
Sermon XII). Butler is issuing a specific kind of exhortation,
not arguing
for a purely theoretical purpose. He is, therefore, not obliged to
situate his
position in relation to all the relevant theoretical alternatives, as
would be
the case were he addressing an academic audience in a treatise.
The homi-
letic mode of address, together with the audience it
presupposes, explains
both why Butler is not required to differentiate his own position
from that
of rivals and why his posture is predominantly didactic.
As Nietzsche (1954 [1889]: 466) says in his preface, Twilight
of the Idols
is “a great declaration of war.” From the beginning, he subverts
a range
of conventional views and authority figures by subtly
transforming what
they say. A proverbial “truth” such as “the lord helps those who
help them-
selves” is reformulated in Aphorism I 9 as “Help yourself, then
everyone
will help you,” and in Aphorism I 3 Aristotle’s declaration “to
live alone
you must be an animal or a god” is supplemented with “Leaving
out the
third case: you must be both—a philosopher” (ibid.: 467). Ad
hominem
attacks on Socrates, on the English, on the German national
character,
on systematic moral theorists, and on others only make Twilight

of the Idols
all the more unsettling for most readers. As a whole, the book
might mis-
takenly be criticized for being a fragmented, inconsistent
statement of
its author’s own theoretical position on the issues addressed by
his many
opponents. But this would be to treat Twilight of the Idols as a
failed trea-
tise. If anything, its construction and polemical tone defy the
expectation
that there is a systematic theory within or behind the text, and
this defi-
ance appears to be indispensable to its purpose (see Aphorism I
26 above).
It is revealing that one of the few people to receive Nietzsche’s
praise is
Heraclitus, whose own thought was both polemical and
aphoristic (ibid.:
480). Not only would the iconoclasm of Twilight of the Idols be
less forceful
if presented in a treatise of explicitly connected arguments, the
treatise
form itself would undermine an essential part of its message—
that one
should not depend on a book or an author to deliver conclusive
answers
to momentous questions. A didactic posture, which is perfectly
natural in
Butler’s sermons, would be incongruous with the evident
purpose of phi-

losophizing with a hammer. Provocation that consciously avoids
providing
explicit guidance is better accomplished in an oracular text: in
this case,
one that consists in a series of clipped, apothegmatic barbs
whose connec-
tions are left loose or obscure.
A sermon addresses a reasonably well-defined audience and
can natu-
rally strike a didactic tone (although this is not necessary),
whereas a com-
pilation of aphorisms tends to be oracular for any audience. So,
while both
Fifteen Sermons and Twilight of the Idols may be intended to
direct a reader’s
attention to the underlying presuppositions of morality, the
manner and
purpose of the encouragement is quite different in each case.
Nor are these
differences only a matter of major substantive disagreement;
they are also
very much bound up with the respective genres of each of these
books. The
two questions I teased out of Jordan’s hypothesis are designed
to press for
a further consideration of the nature of the relation between the
thought a
text embodies and the genre that shapes that embodiment.
Fifteen Sermons
and Twilight of the Idols succeed as philosophical texts in large
part because
the thoughts they articulate, including connected and
disconnected lines of
thought, are suitably, generically embodied.
Contributors to this volume were asked to bear in mind the two
ques-

tions posed above about the generic form/content relation.
While there
has been some recent work that anticipates the theme of this
special issue,
there are no real predecessors who have covered these questions
with the
same focus and historical scope attempted here. A brief review
of these
“anticipations” may help define our theme more precisely.
Jordan’s own
study is—as advertised—prefatory; it points out a route for
further explo-
ration rather than following this route into the territory to
examine any
particular texts. Around the same time, however, Berel Lang
embarked on
a wide-ranging program of research on the literary forms of
philosophical
discourse. Lang’s (1990: 1) general goal was to consider the
“formulations
or modalities . . . implicated in the conjunction of philosophy
‘and’ litera-
ture” (as opposed to a more narrowly focused consideration of
philoso-
phy “in” literature). To this end, he uncovers the substantive
implications
implicit in a range of stylistic devices—genre among them—
used by phi-
losophers in their written work. Although Lang 1983 and 1990
do not refer
to Jordan, both works capture the spirit of Jordan’s hypothesis

in some cru-
cial respects, and both may be read as providing partial
elaboration and
testing of it.
In particular, Lang’s two monographs stand out for making
several pro-
vocative suggestions about philosophical genres. (Lang 1980, an
anthology
on philosophical style, touches occasionally on genre, too.)
Using a model
of literary “action” as the transaction between speaker, reader,
and referent,
Lang (1983: 29) adopts as his working hypothesis a schema of
four super-
ordinate genres (each one capable of ramifying into narrower
categories):
the dialogue, the meditation or essay, the commentary, and the
treatise.
He further identifies three meta-generic modes to characterize
the dynam-
ics of the transaction between speaker, reader, and referent,
these modes
being all defined in terms of the speaker’s posture toward
reader and ref-
erent. They are the expository mode, in which the author
presents material
in a detached, impersonal manner (as, e.g., in Hobbes’s
Leviathan); the per-
formative mode, in which the author’s personal point of view is
prominent
(as, e.g., in Descartes’ Meditations); and the reflexive mode,
which synthesizes
the kinds of engagement distinctive of the first two modes
(ibid.: 50–59).
In both Lang 1983 and 1990, these explanatory categories are
theoretically

refined and applied to particular philosophical works.
Both thus seem to take up Jordan’s hypothesis and advance the
study of
philosophical genres in ways that resemble the aims of this
special issue
of Poetics Today. Some important differences between these
studies and the
present one should be noted, however. First, Lang’s
programmatic sug-
gestions are part of a wider investigation into the relationship
between
theoretical content and style, within which genre is subsumed as
one com-
ponent. The style of a written work can, of course, be studied
without any
special regard for the macrostructural features that are
associated with its
genre, and Lang 1983 is, indeed, devoted largely to such
nongeneric fea-
tures—the implications of authorial point of view, for example.
Lang 1990
uses genre as a lens for studying several philosophical texts,
but—as with
Lang 1983—when it turns to particular cases, the focus is more
diffused
than that of this special issue, and only Lang’s two
programmatic opening
chapters and the chapter on Descartes can be read as exploring
the same
territory as that outlined in Jordan 1981. Lang’s (1990: 94)
wider interest in
style (“The style, in other words, is also the philosophy”)
includes consider-
ations of tone (e.g., irony), of point of view, and of various
literary devices,
such as allegory, metaphor, and metonymy. All of these Lang

often studies
without reference to genre. Richard Eldridge (1993: 80–81),
who finds
much to admire in particular chapters of Lang 1990 and in
Lang’s overall
project, faults the book on the following points: for the
ambitious themes it
urges, the book has, “not enough concentration on enough
specific cases,
not enough attention to precursors [on the wider concept of
style], and not
enough thinking about the implications of positions.” Eldridge’s
demand
for more exegetical corroboration of Lang’s theoretical themes
seems espe-
cially pertinent with regard to his suggestions about
philosophical genres,
given that the true appeal of Lang’s schematic array of genres
and modes
is the promise that these analytical tools will yield new insights
into the
primary sources themselves.
More recently, Robyn Ferrell’s Genres of Philosophy (2002),
which surveys
Western philosophy from antiquity to the present, seems to
make some
inroads along the historical and thematic lines pursued in this
special issue.
This turns out not to be the case, however. Certainly, it does not
inspire
confidence that she never cites or comments upon Jordan,

Marías, or Lang.
Early on, she disavows any interest in “practical criticism”
(ibid.: 5). Fer-
rell’s very aims turn out to be different from those of this
special issue both
historically and thematically.
First, her coverage of historically significant works of
philosophy tips
toward modern and postmodern texts. After two chapters on the
ancient
quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Plato and Aristotle,
the book
jumps ahead to David Hume, leaving aside two millennia of
philosophi-
cal work. There is much to be said about late ancient, medieval,
and
Renaissance philosophy that gets bypassed in this enormous
leap (see, e.g.,
Sweeney 2002). Second, the book’s exegesis of particular texts
is very much
fixed by the author’s interest in the contemporary rivalry
between Anglo-
American and Continental philosophy; consequently, the
general conclu-
sions drawn from these texts have little to do with the formative
and exe-
getical questions we are asking about philosophical genres.
Third, Ferrell’s
analysis of primary sources often subserves a partisan, extra-
exegetical pre-
occupation with the contemporary professional rivalry
mentioned above
and, in particular, with her defense of a conception of
philosophy that is
derived from Gilles Deleuze. In the end, it is clear that Ferrell’s
real exper-

tise lies in this contemporary theoretical material on which her
exegetical
work depends, not on the historically significant philosophical
texts that
are the purported subjects of each individual chapter. Again, as
in Lang
1983 and 1990, a book which at first appears to promise a
comprehensive,
wide-ranging development of Jordan’s hypothesis turns out to
be pursuing
other theoretical questions.
Interpretive or analytical work that can be read as refining and
testing
Jordan’s hypothesis in a focused, detailed way is scattered
throughout the
secondary literature on a variety of particular philosophical
texts. Plato
scholars have contributed by far the most intensive and
sophisticated work
in this area. But they usually focus on Plato’s use of the
dialogue without
regard to other practitioners of the form; also, they tend to
differentiate
the dialogue form by contrasting it with “the treatise”—using
treatise as
a crudely conceived catchall category that includes all
nondialogic genres
without further differentiation.
Let me single out one example which illustrates both of these
features.
In the aptly named “Treatises, Dialogues and Interpretation,” J.

J. Mul-
hern (1969: 631) promises to canvass the “different problems
presented
to an interpreter by philosophical treatises, on the one hand, and
philo-
sophical dialogues, on the other. . . . Special notice is taken of
the Pla-
tonic dialogues; but what is said of them is meant to be
applicable, mutatis
mutandis, to other philosophical dialogues.” What Mulhern says
about the
relationship of Plato’s dialogues to other dialogues is
problematic in itself,
for there are obvious differences between Plato’s dialogues and
the dia-
logues of Augustine or George Berkeley, for example.
Augustine casts him-
self in his own dialogues; Plato never does this. And in
Berkeley’s Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1974a [1710]) one
character, Philonous,
develops philosophical theses that Berkeley (1974b [1713])
defends in his
own voice elsewhere; Plato never left analogous documents to
enable this
sort of comparison. What Mulhern implies about treatises is
more prob-
lematic still: “philosophical treatise” is tossed off as self-
explanatory and is
supposed to include every other genre except dialogue. No
special notice
is taken of how any particular author uses the treatise or of the
treatise as
one genre among many that could be compared with the
dialogue.
Consider, also, Michael Frede’s “Plato’s Arguments and the

Dialogue
Form” (1992). Frede uses “treatise” in a more restrained way
than Mulhern.
But his references to the treatise still imply that the
dialogue/treatise con-
trast is more illuminating than, for example, a dialogue/sermon
contrast
or a dialogue/aphorism contrast. After developing his own
account of the
role of the arguments in Plato’s dialogues, Frede (ibid.: 219)
concludes:
It turns out that there are a large number of reasons why Plato
may have chosen
to write in such a way as to leave open, or to make it very
difficult to determine,
whether or not he endorses a particular argument. It seems that
these reasons
are at the same time reasons against writing philosophical
treatises, and hence
offer an explanation as to why instead Plato wrote the kind of
dialogue he did.
If something along these lines is true, it is clear that the
dialogues are not
philosophical treatises in disguise. (Cf. ibid.: 203)
Should we still wonder if Plato’s dialogues are not
philosophical medi-
tations in disguise? This question would probably seem
uninstructive to
Frede. Yet the dialogue/meditation contrast it rests on is not
more of a pre-

sumption than Frede’s dialogue/treatise contrast; moreover, my
question
seems to address the issue about whether Plato endorses the
arguments in
his dialogues just as well as Frede’s. The persistence of Frede’s
presump-
tion is nicely illustrated in the way it is left unquestioned even
by J. Angelo
Corlett in his criticisms of Frede’s position on Plato’s use of the
dialogue
(see Corlett 1997: 425, 431–33).
Scholars working in other areas of historical or philosophical
research
also display some interest in the role of genre as it relates to
their indi-
vidual specialities. Without trying to be exhaustive, we might
point to a
few pockets of such activity. Augustine’s Confessions has been
examined
for the relation between its intimate, prayerful, confessional
form and its
content (e.g., Crosson 1999 and Hartle 1999, which considers
Augustine’s
Confessions with reference to Rousseau’s Confessions). Several
authors have
explored the debt of Descartes’ Meditations to the genre of
religious docu-
ments known as spiritual exercises. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty
(1983), Gary
Hatfield (1986), and Zeno Vendler (1989) diagnose some
possible influences
from St. Ignatius Loyola; Lang (1990: 57) joins Bradley
Rubidge (1990)
in cautioning against this reading. Along broader lines, Shlomit
Schus-

ter (2003) exhaustively surveys philosophical autobiography,
and Jeffrey
Mason (1999) gives an account of the philosophical journal
article. Focused
and analytical contributions of this sort are, however, few in
number and
limited in generic scope. So, as I said earlier, while genres are a
ubiquitous
and ineluctable presence in the history of Western philosophy,
they have
not received their due in the secondary literature.
How did this disparity arise between the variegated literary
forms used
by philosophers and the treatment of their works in scholarly
contexts? It
does not seem to be a direct, considered, self-conscious reaction
on the
scholarly side to the instability of genres as they transform over
time and
ramify into subgenres or cross-pollinate with each other. That
authors of
the primary sources sometimes deliberately confound
established genre
categories does not seem to be the problem either. No one has
articulated
these objections in any case. Nor is there any reason to believe
that these
kinds of mutability present insuperable difficulties for anyone
attempting
to incorporate genre in philosophical exegesis—certainly, no
difficulties
more formidable than those faced by literary critics working on
fictional
genres or by biologists working on species evolution. Most
scholars simply
take for granted or ignore the implications of genre in the works

they are
studying.
The closest anyone comes to consciously formulating
nominalist objec-
tions to the existence, formative role, or interpretive utility of
genres is
chapter 9 of Benedetto Croce’s Aesthetic as Science of
Expression and General
Linguistic (1964 [1909]: 67–73). But Croce’s (ibid.: 71–72)
skepticism about
the function of rhetorical or fictional genres applies to their use
in aes-
thetics; in science and philosophy, he grants that such terms can
be per-
fectly helpful. No one has attempted to extend Croce’s
arguments about
form and content to a denial of the formative and interpretive
function of
genres in philosophical exegesis; in general, the possibility is
simply ignored.
So, while authors of the primary sources exhibit thoughtful
regard for the
genres they use, there is little corresponding interest among
commentators
or scholars.
In general, scholarly disregard for philosophical genres must be
attrib-
uted to what may be called cultural factors. Most contemporary
philoso-
phers simply prefer to take science rather than literature as their
point of

reference. This is why the academic essay, extended treatise,
and special-
ized anthology have become the predominant genres of
philosophy in the
last century. Professional philosophers, those working in
academic depart-
ments under the title “philosophy,” rarely use “nonstandard”
genres—dia-
logue, confession, epistle, aphorism, and so on. (For some
detailed, diag-
nostic speculation on the role of professionalism on this point,
see Marías
1971 [1953]: 6–7; Levi 1976: 19–20; and Mason 1999: 26, 30,
117–22.) This
narrow generic range in contemporary philosophical writing is
excep-
tional in the history of philosophy and accordingly notable. It
helps to
explain why scholars and historians of philosophy generally
have so little
regard for genre, even when a primary source exhibits a kind of
literary
form that calls for notice.
In contemporary philosophy, questions of methodology tend to
be
framed independently of questions about the formulation or
communication of
philosophical thought. In the marketplace of philosophical
ideas, the cru-
cial work is thought to take place in the research and
development depart-
ment, where explanatory principles are assumed to emerge pure
from a
self-contained laboratory of contemplative activity. Matters of
exposition,
literary form, and presentation are presumed to have more to do

with the
packaging, marketing, and advertising of what comes out of the
labora-
tory. Naturally, these ideas need to be expressed in some form
before being
circulated, but the form of this expression is thought to be of
secondary
importance. The presumption is that philosophical content is
independent
of the literary form of the text in which “decontextualized
content” is pre-
sented. Accordingly, an author’s use of a treatise, a dialogue, a
set of dis-
puted questions, or a series of aphorisms relates to the content
only con-
tingently and externally as its outward shape. This view is
precisely what
Jordan (1981: 202) ridicules as getting “a philosophic idea and
then, in a
moment which is logically and temporally posterior, one begins
to worry
its expression.” It is no mystery, then, that examination of
philosophical
genres has taken place only sporadically and is not part of the
main current
of philosophy scholarship.
Jordan’s hypothesis goes against this current, however. If,
indeed, “a
work of a certain shape is the only one possible for certain
thoughts,” then
the architectural construction of a philosophical text can evince

aspects of
thought that are not reducible to decontextualized doctrines. In
the hands
of an author who is blessed with some measure of literary or
rhetorical skill
and sensitivity, the function of genre may be as much
organizational or forma-
tive as expressive. This is the most important and least
thoroughly explored
corollary of Jordan’s and Marías’s Aristotelian conception of
the form/
content relation. The suggestion here is that genre can play an
organiza-
tional role in the way one conceives philosophical problems and
questions
in the first place. By characterizing the role of genre as
organizational, I do
not mean that it imposes shape upon separable, formless
content; rather, I
am arguing for a kind of textual hylomorphism in which form
and content
are reciprocally responsive to each other. The unity of a text (in
so far as
it exhibits unity) is a function of its generic form, and its
relationship to
other texts may be mediated as much by similarities of generic
form as it
is by doctrines (if, indeed, it’s possible to decontextualize
doctrines). These
critical, interpretive considerations do not rule out the
possibility that a
particular text may be a hack job which fails to mesh form and
content,
nor will they blind us to the subtle act of subversion by an
author who
deliberately sets out to transform the established practices

associated with
a given genre. If the general developments of Jordan’s
hypothesis that I
have attempted to sketch out in this introduction are correct,
then genres
are integral to the formulation of doctrines, definitions,
explanatory prin-
ciples, and arguments that are ordinarily treated independently
of genre.
Individually and collectively, the contributions in the body of
this special
issue of Poetics Today (presented in two parts) extend these
general develop-
ments by looking closely at particular texts, using the two
questions teased
out of Jordan’s hypothesis as points of departure. The first
question presses
us to consider how the articulation of thoughts, singly or
collectively, might
require one genre rather than another to be authentically
expressed. The
second question presses us to consider how the content is
shaped and con-
stituted by the genre of a text. The studies presented here seem
to confirm
Jordan’s initial hypothesis on a wide range of philosophical
texts, repre-
senting a sample of genres manifested throughout the history of
Western
philosophy. More importantly, they also prepare the ground for

a refine-
ment of the hypothesis, and this, as we see in several cases,
leads to further
questions about what philosophy is.
These eleven studies are ordered chronologically, according to
the his-
torically significant philosophical texts at the center of each
essay. The
first four contributions explore ancient and medieval
representatives of
several different genres: Plato’s dialogues, the ancient tradition
of com-
mentary up to Simplicius (ca. 530 CE), the inner dialogues of
Augustine
and Anselm, and Abelard’s autobiography and letters to
Heloise. The next
four turn to Renaissance and early modern texts, including two
distinc-
tive uses of the dialogue by sixteenth-century authors Justus
Lipsius and
Giordano Bruno, Pascal’s aphoristic Pensées, and Spinoza’s
systematic,
Euclidean, impersonal guide to personal salvation, Ethics.
While the first
eight articles examine traditional ways in which literary form
coordinates
with substantive content in various works, the final three
articles concen-
trate on some recent experiments in which the genre is
indispensable for
unseating deeply ingrained expectations as to what a
philosophical text is
supposed to accomplish. These experimental efforts are evident
in Kierke-
gaard’s subversion of conventional genre categories in several
of his works,

in Wittgenstein’s reflections on some basic problems underlying
the notion
of philosophical self-examination, and in the unappreciated
philosophical
potential implicit in biography.
Because Plato occupies such a central place at the origins of
Western
philosophy and because his dialogues have already provoked
extensive
and detailed reflection on the interrelationship between literary
form and
philosophical content, it is natural to begin with a focused
review of the
reception of his dialogues. My own contribution, “Plato’s
Protagoras and the
Frontier of Genre Research,” surveys a cross section of critical,
exegetical
scholarship on Plato since 1956 (exactly half a century from the
time I write
this). During this time, a now-familiar set of approaches to
Plato emerged
and evolved, using logical, literary, historical, and other kinds
of analy-
sis. With reference to the scholarship on Protagoras as a case
study, I track
this evolution as it proceeded in three reasonably distinct
stages. From the
beginning of this period to the present, we see two
transformations, one in
the way the dialogue is conceived as a complex text and the
other in the
way scholars interact with each other as they comment on the
text. For
much of the first three decades following 1956, the dialogue
was treated
as a collection of atomically self-contained parts or “modules,”

each of
which was routinely explicated in isolation from the whole.
Then, in the
early 1980s, a trend developed in which commentators
explicated the parts
with an attentive eye on the relations between these parts and
the whole
dialogue. Finally, since the early 1990s, a number of innovative
interpretive
strategies have become popular which are marked by an
increasing sensi-
tivity for the text as a dialogue, that is, a genre that has its own
distinctive
features, which impose their own conditions upon
interpretation.
Han Baltussen’s “From Polemic to Exegesis” follows the
growth and
maturation of ancient commentary. Baltussen identifies the
principal ante-
cedents of the genre as (1) the polemics of pre-Socratic
philosophy, (2) the
recognition of some philosophical texts as “canonical,” and (3)
the prac-
tice of writing second-order texts (i.e., exegetical texts about
other texts)
on canonical literary works. Here we see how the tradition of
philosophi-
cal commentary came to be defined by two impulses for
criticism (kritikos,
Greek for “judge” or “discern”): from philosophy (1) and (2),
the impulse

to judge a text by the standard of truth; from literary criticism
(3), the
impulse to discern most precisely what that text means. Over
time, greater
and greater sophistication is evident in the way the
philosophical canon
(Plato and Aristotle, in particular) was interpreted and analyzed
in formal
commentaries by such authors as Galen and Simplicius.
Baltussen argues
that commentaries in the late ancient period do not simply
supplement
canonical philosophical texts, they are philosophical texts in
their own
right and, accordingly, must be read as full-fledged
contributions to the
wider tradition.
Gareth Matthews also traces the advent and advance of a
distinctive,
influential genre—in this case, the soliloquy, meditation, or
inner dialogue
in Augustine and Anselm. Although the possibility of this genre
is broached
by Plato’s account of thinking as the soul conversing with itself
(Theaetetus
189e–190a), Augustine’s Soliloquies (386 CE) is clearly the
progenitor of the
inner dialogue as a literary philosophical form. There are,
however, two
significant epistemological obstacles to the genre, and these are
not dealt
with adequately by Augustine himself. Matthews identifies
these as fol-
lows: (1) the Targeting Problem, that is, how does one know in
advance of an
investigation at what to aim one’s inquiry? and (2) the

Recognition Problem,
that is, how does one know during the course of an inquiry
when one has arrived at a
satisfactory answer? In a standard dialogue between two or
more interlocu-
tors, each individual might be able to contribute part of a
response to these
problems so that the parties involved may overcome them
collectively. But
these problems impose themselves more forcefully and
problematically in
the solo enterprise of an inner dialogue. The lone inquirer
appears to be
trapped by limitations of perspective that seem, on the face of
it, insur-
mountable: there is no immediately available source of guidance
to target
one’s efforts and no one to corroborate one’s own judgment
when one
thinks it is completed. According to Matthews, it is not until
Anselm’s Pro-
slogion (ca. 1077–78) that we find an example of the genre that
deals with
these problems consciously and adequately.
The final essay concerning texts from the ancient or medieval
periods
is Eileen Sweeney’s “Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum and
Letters.” Swee-
ney examines Abelard’s sophisticated construction of his own
“self ” in an
autobiography, Historia Calamitatum, and in his letters to

Heloise. Both the
autobiography and the letters are philosophically complex,
literary exer-
cises in self-presentation and self-definition. According to
Sweeney, these
works embody Abelard’s struggling efforts to integrate the
outer self of his
actions and the inner self of his intentions in a project that aims
at the very
modern goal of authenticity. The result is a significant
development in the
conception of the “self ” (standing between Augustine and
Rousseau) that
owes its success as much to Abelard’s literary ingenuity as to
his theoretical
originality.
The next four articles (to be presented in part 2), on
Renaissance and
early modern subjects, can be paired instructively. First is a pair
of essays
on two Renaissance authors who use the dialogue form to quite
different
purposes. These are followed by another pair of essays
examining works
which represent two genres that could not be more different
from each
other—namely, the collection of aphorisms and the Euclidean
treatise.
John Sellars offers a close reading of a single dialogue by
Justus Lipsius,
De Constantia (1584), after which Eugenio Canone and Leen
Spruit survey
the variety of devices used in Giordano Bruno’s six Italian
dialogues (pub-
lished 1583–85). Not only do these two essays expand the scope
of our

understanding of the dialogue form beyond Plato’s use of it; the
dialogues
under consideration are more intimately autobiographical than
those of
Plato. This is not to say that Lipsius and Bruno are not elusive
in their own
ways, however. In De Constantia, Lipsius casts himself as a
younger man
in conversation with a mentor, Langius. It is to Langius that
controver-
sial Stoic doctrines are attributed. Is this Lipsius’s way to
distance himself
from theses that might have gotten him persecuted by church
authorities
(the sort of trouble that led to Bruno’s trial in 1600)? Perhaps,
but that is
not all. According to Sellars, a stronger interpretation of the
interlocu-
tor/author relationship in De Constantia emerges if we
understand how the
relationship between the two dramatis personae really depicts
the author
in dialogue with himself; it is in this regard that De Constantia
constitutes a
spiritual exercise. It would be desirable, of course, for readers
to follow the
author’s lead in this exercise, but according to Sellars, it is
already enough
for his core purpose that Lipsius himself has benefited from the
act of com-
position. Here we see, also, how ordinary dialogue shades into

the kind of
“inner dialogue” examined earlier by Matthews.
According to Canone and Spruit, Bruno’s purpose, on the other
hand, is
more political than spiritual. Bruno’s six Italian dialogues,
which were all
composed while he was in London, are personal in so far as they
explicate
the genealogy of his own views. But the unifying goal of the
dialogues is
to effect political and ethical reform, which they aim to achieve
by model-
ing or evoking in words the kind of community Bruno wishes to
develop in
reality; consequently, doctrines are dealt with in such a way as
to encour-
age readers to take up the discussion where the interlocutors
leave off.
Thus, while both Lipsius and Bruno attempt to secure a reader’s
“partici-
pation” in the conversations they dramatize, the manner in
which these
dialogues encourage this participation is quite different.
Whereas Lipsius
models personal growth, Bruno models a political ideal.
In “Philosophy as Inspiration,” Louis Groarke builds a
theoretical frame
around the limpid, incisive, fragmented thought of Pascal’s
Pensées and
shows that these aphorisms are more rationally defensible than
might
be supposed by more systematically minded readers. There is, in
fact, a
neglected strand of epistemology that recognizes the legitimacy
of nonde-
monstrative knowledge. Several influential philosophers,

including Plato,
Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas, have argued that systematic,
scientific
knowledge requires a prior kind of knowledge which may be
called var-
iously nondemonstrative knowledge, direct insight, or intuition.
Pascal
was not personally familiar with this strand of epistemology,
but his own
work fits into the tradition, and Groarke traces the conceptual
connec-
tions between Pascal and his “precursors.” Groarke argues that
the apho-
ristic form of Pensées conveys this nondemonstrative, intuitive
knowledge
in a perfectly appropriate manner. Indeed, the aphoristic form of
Pensées
should be accepted as integral to the insights it seeks. As a
consequence of
this epistemological fit between form and content, we should be
wary of
well-intentioned but ill-conceived attempts by editors and
commentators
to rearrange or reconstruct Pascal’s aphorisms into a systematic
order.
We turn next to one of the most systematic texts ever written,
Spino-
za’s Ethics, the organizational scheme of which is explicitly
announced in
the subtitle, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order. In “The
Geometrical Method
in Spinoza’s Ethics,” Laura Byrne argues that the Euclidean
construction
of Spinoza’s masterpiece is, indeed, essential to his purpose.
This despite
occasional apparent departures from the strict geometrical order

of its
argumentation and despite an apparent incongruity between the
abstract-
ness of this method and the personal orientation of its ethical
purpose.
Typically, commentators treat Spinoza’s organizational scheme
as an
affectation or a nonessential overlay that does not really convey
the logi-
cal, epistemological, or metaphysical order of the thought it
contains. Part
of the reason commentators are inclined to disregard the logical
order of
the Axioms, Propositions, Corollaries, and so forth is that
several times
Spinoza resorts to rhetorical devices that do not seem to fit this
geometri-
cal order. There are passages in which he directly addresses the
reader
and others which are ironic. These seemingly incongruous
passages, Byrne
argues, are carefully interlaced with the geometrically
developed meta-
physical and ethical tapestry that makes Ethics so impressive.
Spinoza does
not drop the thread of the central argument, nor do these
passages under-
mine the systematic design of Ethics; rather, they supplement
the system by
anticipating a set of assumptions that Spinoza could expect to
be held by

the Cartesian friends in his immediate circle. Byrne reconciles
not only the
two seemingly inconsistent strands of Spinoza’s work but also
the imper-
sonal, systematic organization which makes Ethics so
distinctive, with its
manifest personal and ethical purpose.
The final three essays examine more radical experiments in
literary,
philosophical form. First, Kierkegaard’s imaginative
experiments in genre
challenged assumptions about the form/content relation that
were popu-
lar among his peers. Nineteenth-century Danish readers
expected a liter-
ary work to exhibit a systematic harmony between its form and
its con-
tent. According to George Pattison, Kierkegaard’s critique of
systematic,
Hegelian philosophy and conventional, European Christian
culture are
of a piece with his self-conscious violation of bourgeois literary
practices.
In “Kierkegaard and Genre,” Pattison fills out the theoretical
background
against which this complex critique takes place. A looming
presence in
this background is J. L. Heiberg, the most influential Danish
literary critic
in Kierkegaard’s day and whose careful delineation of genre
categories
was undertaken as a thoroughly systematic, Hegelian enterprise.
Pattison
interprets Kierkegaard’s open defiance of Heiberg’s genre
categories in
terms of Bakhtin’s account of “carnivalesque transgressions.”

The disorder
created by these transgressions of cultural and artistic forms
exposes what
is for Kierkegaard the deep paradox of Christ’s human
incarnation of the
divine. Thus, Kierkegaard’s literary experiments in genre are
integral to
the overarching religious purpose of all his work.
Wittgenstein is central to both of the final two articles in this
special
issue. First, in “Wittgenstein’s Voice,” Garry Hagberg explores
the special
kind of self-examination that Wittgenstein is undertaking in
Philosophical
Investigations. Then, in “Life without Theory,” Ray Monk
(Wittgenstein’s
biographer) gives an account of biography that exposes its
inherent,
though unappreciated, philosophical potential; again, the sense
in which
biography is philosophical is drawn from Wittgenstein.
Hagberg focuses directly on Wittgenstein’s critical exploration
of “read-
ing” in a few pages of Philosophical Investigations (sec. 154–
77). In these pages
Wittgenstein worries about the misleading conception of self-
knowledge
that derives from the Cartesian picture of it as “reading” one’s
inner life.
Both the conventional account of reading and the Cartesian
account of

self-knowledge that uses it are subjected to a searching critique
by Witt-
genstein, which Hagberg presents as an exercise in self-
monitoring. In
this investigation, Wittgenstein gives voice to a succession of
pictures and
explanatory schemas that tempt him to simplify and
overgeneralize what
is involved in self-understanding. The result is an interpretation
of Philo-
sophical Investigations as an intensely personal, intellectually
rigorous form
of self-examination.
Monk, on the other hand, reviews numerous accounts of
biography that
attempt in various ways to distinguish it from, and relate it to, a
traditional
account of philosophy as necessarily theoretical. By Monk’s
own estima-
tion, biography ought to be divorced from theory and should
convey a
strong “point of view” that unifies the individual moments in
the life being
narrated. This perspectival conception of biography turns out to
exemplify
the Wittgensteinian goal of philosophical insight as
“understanding that
consists in seeing connections.” Whereas Hagberg elucidates the
sense in
which Philosophical Investigations, in particular, is
autobiographical, Monk
expounds a conception of the literary form of biography that
satisfies the
philosophical impulse in ways that are not available to
theoretically ori-
ented genres.

In this last article especially and in all the articles to some
extent, we
see how opening up questions about genres of philosophy leads
inexora-
bly to questions about what philosophy is. For we cannot ask
about the
genre of a philosophical work without asking also what makes it
philo-
sophical. And whether we are talking about Plato’s dialogues,
Abelard’s
letters to Heloise, Pascal’s aphorisms, Spinoza’s Ethics, or any
other works
at the center or the periphery of the Western tradition, the
question about
what makes a text philosophical turns out not to be answered by
a simple
glance at the content. We must examine the text’s unifying form
and con-
sider what implications its formative, literary features have for
its overall
purpose.
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Meir Sternberg
for indis-
pensable guidance and moral support as this project was being
completed.
Many thanks also to the referees, whose thoughtful comments
improved
this introduction and the articles that follow.
References
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