Philosophy of literature. The best books on philosophy Modernity and the future author of a philosophical work
Some thinkers, from Marx and Mann to Adorno, did not fail to take advantage of the brilliant artistic potential of novels and short stories in order to put their worldviews on paper. We have collected in the article the most interesting and unexpected works.
Philosophy seems dry and more reminiscent of mathematics or court documents than art, yet some philosophical works are noted for their playful language and poetic sensibility, and have even been studied for their literary and artistic value. Jean Baudrillard, for example, coined the term "theoretical fiction", he developed scenarios for the future world reality, which stood above science fiction in their uncontrollability and improbability. AT this case, he was guided by the desire to show the absurdity of signs and meanings.
Postmodern suspicion was not the only philosophical niche in which thinkers resorted to fiction to express their ideas about the world. The unsurpassed work of Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit can be read like a sprawling novel in which the characters, avatars of the spirit, move through the world and history. Jean Hyppolite, the French translator of this work, called it a "philosophical novel": in one of the sections on the personality of the Master and the Slave, the issue of recognition is heatedly discussed. Nietzsche attached importance to form, and his Thus Spoke Zarathustra often finds its way into lists of works by the most prominent philosophical thinkers. The work is distinguished by the presence of the main character and the plot, similar to the genre of an educational novel, where the dramatic hero-teacher learns the world, learning from his mistakes.
When industrial capitalism, with its wars and factories, stirred up Europe, the literary form of expression became extremely important for discontented philosophers, especially those who lived in war-torn Germany and who were raised in the Hegelian school, with its inherent notion of the globality of history and dialectics. Some believe that epic poetry, which distinguished the apparently harmonious and unified ancient world, has remained irrevocably in the past, and the modern era has given rise to a new genre of the novel, which was focused on the individual and addressed to the individual. Gyord Lukács' Theory of the Novel, which was written at the height of the First World War, describes fallen personalities modern life as transcendentally homeless and limited in understanding great meanings.
The novel, as a genre, was formed in a world where the personal lives of individuals, revolution and a sense of disappointment were intertwined into a tight ball. By the beginning of the 20th century, the novel had become a favorite form of expression of thought and absorbed all the chaos and disorder of modernity. Lukács, being a communist, suggested that novelists develop rational and functional worlds, similar topics, which were described in the works of Walter Scott and Balzac. In short, Lukacs gave preference to the ideas of Thomas Mann, not sharing the worldview of Franz Kafka. Other philosopher-poets, who absorbed Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, developed a critical theory, adding to their works literary, and to varying degrees, politics and philosophy. They used the exaggeration and emotional resonances of Expressionism, the playfulness of Dadaism or fairy tales, the mystery of allegory and the insight of "New Objectivity". One of the representatives of these philosophers was Walter Benjamin, who will start our selection of philosophical novels.
Walter was known for combining Marxism and messianism in his philosophy, which at times, such as in the Theses on the Philosophy of History, was expressed in allegories, metaphors and poetic descriptions. Less well known is the fact that he also dealt with literary forms: from his pen came many radio plays, sonnets, film critiques, genre literature, novellas and a wide range of other, usually short, works. Among his works are parables a la Kafka, parodies and satirical works inspired by the conditions of his own existence, surreal and fantasy stories, etiological myths for children, psychological novels in which we encounter themes of travel, drama, gambling, love, vicissitudes of fate, literary tradition, intergenerational relationships, action and inaction, just as in his philosophical writings. One of his early works is called "Schiller and Goethe: The View of the Everyman" ( Schiller and Goethe: A Layman's Vision). It is a whimsical illusory vision of German literary history in the form of a pyramid, which was on the verge of destruction by the devil.
Goethe is immense: he is a poet, statesman, playwright, short story writer. He relied on his philosophical views, which were reflected in his literary works, as well as on natural philosophical experiments on the theory of color, optics, botany and evolution. The novel reflects the writer's large-scale passion for understanding the chemistry of human relationships, in what attracts, causes a feeling of disgust, forms inclinations and influences reactions.
In 1837, as a 19-year-old youth, Marx also tried his hand at the genre of the novel. It is full of absurdity, eccentricity and play on words, with elements of the "Tristama Shandi" style. It shows the beginning of a discussion with the German idealistic philosophy, the existence of the material needs of the “I” and the division of society into classes are clearly expressed: “An ordinary mortal is the person who does not have the right to birthright: he struggles with the hardships of life, throws himself into the roaring sea and snatches the gifts of Prometheus right from the depths of the sea, before through his eyes the inner essence of the Idea appears in all its grandeur, and he boldly creates; but he who is born with the dignity of the birthright is content with only crumbs, away from worldly cares, so as not to soil his clothes in any case.
Bloch did not deal with fantasy, but some of his early philosophical works, such as this collection of essays, stories, fairy tales and anecdotes, in an unobtrusive way, seek to "highlight" the low-key life situations. This is philosophy in poetry.
This is an autobiographical novel with eccentric cinematic passages in the spirit of Chaplin, with a somewhat bitter, sarcastic worldview of an outsider of the “lost generation”. In it, in a cold, comic form, modern vision buildings human body, as well as the loss of individuality in popular culture. Available only in German.
While languishing in the scorching sun of "German California", Mann and Theodor Adorno worked on their massive novel. He talks about cruelty and rationality, portraying a composer who resembles Arnold Schoenberg. The demonic creations of the syphilis-stricken fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn are described in lines from Adorno's Philosophy of New Music. Adorno himself appears in the image of the devil, as "a theoretician and critic who also writes to the best of his ability."
Adorno wrote this libretto in the early 1930s, inspired by Hurricane Over Jamaica ( A High Wind in Jamaica) Richard Hughes. The work describes the friendship of two boys from the American province of the 19th century, but in reality it is about fear and guilt. There is a place here for the theme of murder, haunted houses, executions, the author also recalled such characters as Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, whom he used to embody his favorite “demythologization” technique. Available only in German.
Bernstein was a situationist and therefore the philosophy of Hegel and Marx was very close to him. This novel is believed to have been written for the trivial purpose of making money, and it marked the beginning of low-brow literature aimed at young people in postwar period: “We are all characters in some novel. Didn't you notice it? We talk in dry snippets of sentences. We have something unfinished. Just like in novels. They don't reveal everything. Such are the rules of the game. And our lives are as predictable as a novel."
Zon-Rethel is much better known for his epistemology of real abstraction than for a children's book set in the West Midlands. This is a short story about how an elephant who escaped from the zoo meets a red car. Mini. This is a pitiful, witty and unpredictable story that deserves a movie adaptation. It was published in German in 1987, when the author was 88 years old. On the pages of the book there is a cute illustration of Zon-Rethel himself reading a newspaper Sunday Times, along with many drawings of the elephant trying to get on the car.
Books on philosophy worth reading. The best philosophical books.What Philosophy Books Should You Read? Books on philosophy for beginners.
Abstracts of books on philosophy.
Philosophizing is a special form of life. The philosopher must abandon the generally accepted beliefs, "to obtain all philosophical assumptions by one's own means." Philosophy seeks as reality precisely that which is independent of our actions, does not depend on them; on the contrary, the latter depend on this complete reality. The requirement to take a theoretical position when considering any problem is inseparable from philosophy - it is not necessary to solve it, but then convincingly prove the impossibility of solving it. This philosophy differs from other sciences. When the latter are faced with an unsolvable problem, they simply refuse to consider it. Philosophy, on the other hand, admits from the outset the possibility that the world itself is an insoluble problem. How can one live deaf to final, dramatic questions? Where did the world come from, where is it going? What is the final potency of the cosmos? What is the main meaning of life? We are suffocating, exiled to the zone of intermediate secondary questions.
Philosophy cannot be read - one must do something opposite to reading, that is, think through each phrase, which means breaking it up into separate words, taking each of them and, not content with contemplating its attractive appearance, penetrate it with the mind, plunge into it, descend into the depths of its meaning, to explore its anatomy and its limits, in order to then come to the surface again, owning its innermost secret. If you do this with all the words of a phrase, then they will no longer simply stand one after another, but will be intertwined in the depths by the very roots of ideas, and only then will they really constitute a philosophical phrase. From sliding, horizontal reading from mental skating, one must move to vertical reading, to diving into the tiny abyss of each word, to diving without a space suit in search of treasures. José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy?
The philosopher is not interested in every thing in itself, in its separate and, so to speak, separate existence - on the contrary, he is interested in the totality of everything that exists and, therefore, in every thing - that which separates it from other things or unites with them: its place , the role and rank among many things, so to speak, the public life of each thing, what it is and what it stands in the highest publicity of universal existence. We understand by things not only physical and spiritual realities, but also everything unreal, ideal, fantastic and supernatural, if any. José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy?
Under the feet of the philosopher there is no solid foundation, solid stable ground. He rejects any reliability in advance. José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy?
Philosophy is the highest mental effort. The true necessity is the necessity for every being to be himself: for the bird to fly, for the fish to swim, for the mind to philosophize. Philosophy is the basic need of the mind. José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy?
To philosophize means to seek the integrity of the world, to turn it into the Universe, giving it completeness and creating a whole from a part, in which it could easily accommodate. Philosophy is the knowledge of the universe, or of everything that exists. All philosophy is a paradox, it diverges from our natural ideas about life, because it subjects even the most obvious, indisputable beliefs in ordinary life to theoretical doubt. Philosophy is a powerful desire for transparency and a stubborn craving for daylight. Its main goal is to bring to the surface, expose, reveal the secret or hidden. José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy?
Philosophy begins with the statement that the external world does not belong to the initial data, that its existence is doubtful, and that any thesis that asserts the reality of the external world is not obvious, is alien to the proof; at best, it requires other primary truths to substantiate. The exact expression of what philosophy asserts is this: neither the existence nor the non-existence of the world around us is completely obvious, therefore, it is impossible to proceed from either one or the other, since this would mean proceeding from what is assumed, and philosophy took an obligation to proceed only from what is relied upon in relation to oneself, that is, it is imposed on oneself. José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy?
The first question of philosophy is to determine what is given to us in the Universe - the question of initial data. José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy?
Who is this book written for?
What is this book about?
This book is about life.
Who is this book written for?
This book is for people who are seeking, progressive, reading. This book is for responsible people who think about their lives and the lives of their loved ones, for people who believe that something can be changed in life and this is within our power.
What is this book about?
This book is about life.
In the book you will find stories about family relationships between parents and children, between spouses, this book is about children and their upbringing, about respect for people and culture, about creativity and self-development, about health, about money and success and much more .
This book is a collection of stories that inspire people to change, provide food for thought, energize and answer questions that constantly arise in everyday life.
After reading the next story, do not rush to read the next one. Think about the main idea short story. Take at least a small step towards changing your life in the designated issue, and if everything is in order with you, then help someone who is nearby, but has not yet resolved this issue.
3.11.2017 at 22:48 · pavlofox · 46 470
Top 10 Best Philosophy Books
The best books on philosophy have absorbed all the wisdom of the ages, which the great thinkers managed to put on paper. They teach a person to be wise, make them think in a completely different way and illuminate issues that have been hidden behind a veil of secrecy for several centuries. The World Library stores many philosophical works, which are the real property of all mankind. The list below includes only the smallest part of the best works of the great thinkers of all time.
10. Words and things | Michel Foucault
(Michel Foucault) opens the list of the best books on philosophy. This is the only work of the philosopher to date, which is available in Russian. One of the most controversial and complex creative works Foucault, where the thinker considers a shift in the history of Western knowledge. The question is considered that in the Western culture of the 19th century a certain form of thinking arose, which is characteristic of the humanities. The writer separately identifies three different configurations of knowledge - these are the Renaissance, classical and modern.
9. Creative evolution | Henri Bergson
"Creative evolution"(Henri Bergson) - one of the best philosophical works. We can safely say that this book concentrates not only the views of the thinker himself, but also represents the idea of a whole philosophical direction. One of the key works of the French philosopher claims to be a treatise on the philosophy of evolution. According to the thinker himself, evolution gives the realization that matter is “rather a flow than a thing”, and the engine of evolution is a “life impulse”. The book contains a large number of phrases that turned into "winged" and became aphorisms.
8. Free will | Sam Harris
(Sam Harris) - one of the best philosophical works of the great thinker. This book, which highlights such questions as whether a person really has free will and whether he bears undeniable responsibility for his actions. Harris suggests that a person's actions are largely determined by genes, not by society or upbringing. People who consider themselves and others to be individuals are convinced that they have freedom of choice. However, the author of the book debunks this belief in his philosophical work. He argues step by step that, in principle, free will does not exist.
7. Second floor | Simon de Beauvoir
(Simon de Beauvoir) is rightfully one of the top ten books on philosophy. One of the most famous works of the great thinker of the second half of the 20th century tells about the attitude towards women throughout the existence of mankind. This book has a feminist bias, so it will be of interest primarily to women. It took de Borvoir about a year and a half to write the work. The resulting two-volume book was included by the Vaticon in the list of books forbidden to read. The first volume was called "Facts and Myths", the second - "The Life of a Woman". This philosophical work is primarily about the difficult fate of women throughout the history of mankind.
6. Life of mind | Hannah Arendt
(Hannah Arendt) is one of the best works German-American philosopher Jewish roots. This is the last and most significant work of the great thinker of the 20th century. In this book, Arendt conducts his own study of the meaning of the word. The philosopher managed to complete only the first two volumes under the titles "Thinking" and "Volition". The third volume, entitled "Judgments", was never to appear, as Hannah Arendt was overtaken by death. One of the most significant political and thought figures made a great contribution to philosophy.
5. Language, truth and logic | A. J. Ayer
(A. J. Ayer) is one of the best philosophical works of our time. The book is one of the most published analytical philosophy. The book is the source of a turn in linguistics, which in turn has to some extent changed the image of philosophy in the 20th century. Thus, "Language, Truth and Logic" serves to form the image of philosophy not only in the eyes of professional philosophers, but also among ordinary people. This work is especially popular in England, where more than one million copies have been produced to date.
4. Being and time | Martin Heidegger
(Martin Heidegger) - one of the best books on philosophy, which has defined a whole direction in the science of all sciences. Main topics scientific work Loneliness, feelings of abandonment and death. The book traces the echoes of the works of such prominent postmodern writers as Sartre and Camus. In this work, Martin Heidegger created his own style of language, in which he expresses his thoughts in a very complex form. "Being and Time" is a difficult book to comprehend, requiring deep thoughtfulness, and not everyone can understand it.
3. About responsibilities | Cicero
Philosophical work (Cicero) opens the top three books on philosophy. In this total work done by Cicero, many political and legal problems are covered. The works of such thinkers as Aristotle and Plato had a great role in his worldview in this book. The state for Cicero is nothing but the common property of the people. The main reason for the emergence of the state, according to the thinker, is the need to exist in a team. The duties of every person who is a citizen of the state, according to Cicero, are justice, decency and greatness of spirit. Justice in the understanding of Cicero is not to harm the people around you.
2. Nicomachean ethics | Aristotle
(Aristotle) is included in the list of the best philosophical works of ancient thinkers. This is one of the three ethical writings of Aristotle. The work covers such topics as the highest good, happiness, virtue. According to the philosopher, the true good and happiness lies in the virtues that he teaches in his work. The voluminous work of the thinker includes nine books in total.
1. Conversations and judgments | Confucius
» (Confucius) completes the list of the best books on philosophy. One of the most prominent thinkers in history had a great influence on philosophy. His dialogues, notes and aphorisms were written down by his students, after which they were published under the name Lun-yu, which means “Thoughts and judgments” in translation. For many centuries, this treatise was considered mandatory for memorization in many higher educational institutions peace. The book was translated into Russian only at the beginning of the 20th century. The main themes of the book are mercy, justice and common sense.
What else to see:
philosophical theory of literature. There are three main options: firstly, the inclusion of literature as an equal component in the context of the philosophy of a particular thinker, secondly, a comparison of philosophy and literature as two autonomous practices in order to discover their similarities and differences, and thirdly, attempts to find philosophical problems actually in literary texts (relatively speaking, according to the typology of L. Mackie, literature? philosophy, literature and philosophy, philosophy? literature).
In contrast to the theory of literature, which is developed by specialists as a conceptual basis for literary criticism, F. l. practiced by philosophers who are interested in placing literature in the context of their own philosophical system. So, in Plato's dialogues, poetry is considered along with the metaphysical, epistemological and ethical-political views of the philosopher. Aristotle's "poetics", constituting the earliest example of Western literary theory, is also an attempt to use the experience of Greek poets and playwrights in philosophical system thinker. If Aristotle's "Poetics" as a philosophical and literary work is the basis of classical poetics, then the basis of romantic poetics is "Literary Biography" by S. T. Coleridge, whose philosophy of literature was devoted both to substantiating the universality of poets' creativity, and to metaphysics, which corresponded to this creativity. Attempts to include literature in philosophical constructions were made by D. Hume and A. Schopenhauer, M. Heidegger and J. P. Sartre. To a large extent, these trends were due to the desire of thinkers to prove the possibility of various ways of existence of meaning. German romantics (F. Schlegel, Novalis) considered literature, like other arts, the cornerstone of philosophy itself: "Philosophy is the theory of poetry. It shows us what poetry is - poetry is everything and everything" (Novalis). The literary theory of the Romantics, based on German transcendental idealism, tended to explain the world by means of artistic creativity: "the vast and versatile range of problems that represent the literary theory of romanticism is largely directed towards the philosophical sphere, which is especially characteristic of German romanticism. ." (A. Dmitriev). In the future, the "romantic" line of philosophizing was developed in the philosophy of life, phenomenology, existentialism - philosophical schools concerned about the growth of the partiality of human existence due to the dominance of rationalistic ideas in culture, cultivated by traditional metaphysics and striving for the immediacy of contemplation of the depth of reality.
The second variant of understanding F. l. presupposes an attitude to philosophy and literature as two different and autonomous spheres of activity, which are related to each other in one way or another. In this version, F. l. tries to identify, first of all, the points that distinguish philosophy from literature and clarify their relationship. Both differ in their subject (the first deals with objective structures, the second - with subjectivity), by methods (rational in the first case; associated with imagination, inspiration and the unconscious - in the second), by results (the first creates knowledge, the second - emotional impact). Then the relations of these spheres of activity are considered as developing in those areas where the differences between them can be overcome. For example, although their subjects are different, the results may be similar: both cause understanding (the first - facts, the second - feelings). Or: although their methods are different, they may approach the same subject from different angles. Reasoning of a similar plan was developed by Thomas Aquinas, believing that philosophy and poetry can deal with the same objects, only one tells the truth about objects in the form of a syllogism, the other inspires feelings about them through the language of images. According to M. Heidegger, the philosopher explores the meaning of being, while the poet touches the sacred, but their tasks are connected at a deep level of thinking: "art - poetry belongs to it - the sister of philosophy", poetry and thought "mutually belong", "poetry and thought ... are entrusted to the mystery of the word, as the most worthy of their comprehension, and thus are always related to each other. At the same time, Heidegger's understanding of the relationship between philosophy and poetry was connected with the thinker's desire to resist the objectifying power of language, including philosophical language, to find means for thinking immersed in existence, to find a new language close to the "mimetic-expressive possibilities of reality itself" (L. Moreva ), contributing to the fulfillment of the truth of being as "unhiddenness".
For J. P. Sartre, literature is a biased philosophy, an existential-political activity, consisting "in the service of freedom." The case of the attitude of the French existentialist to literature and his active appeal to it in his work is interesting for the combination of various artistic means used by the thinker to demonstrate the inauthenticity of human existence, the images he draws, as if intended to "personify" the philosophical needs of the author. It turns out that in itself an active appeal to literature is not yet a guarantee that the result will be artistically full-bodied.
The third meaning of F. l. - attempts to discover in literary texts philosophical problems and points of value to philosophers. The philosopher in this case seeks to explore and evaluate the content of literary texts that express certain philosophical ideas and discuss philosophical problems, for example, the discussion of the problem of free will and theodicy in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. In a similar vein, F. l courses are read. at US universities. Examples of this kind of research are the essay "Three Philosophical Poets" by J. Santayana (1910), the works of S. Cavel dedicated to Emerson and Thoreau, "Knowledge of Love" by M. Nasbaum (1989). The attention of American researchers to philosophy in literature is not accidental. By note? S. Yulina, in Europe there is an image of American philosophy as something "empirical" and "scientist". This is far from true. The creators of the American tradition - Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Emerson, Walt Whitman, William James - were rather philosophical poets who painted the world aesthetically and offered a variety of poetic and metaphorical pictures of reality. Alfred Whitehead, who moved to America, perceived and developed the tradition of aesthetic pluralism. And John Dewey, in his mature and penetrating work Art as Experience, followed this path. If the cultivation of "poetic philosophy" was typical for American thinkers of the first half of the 20th century, then modern authors (A Macintyre, C. Taylor, M. Nasbaum) pin hopes on literature in terms of clarifying and expressing complexities spiritual search personality in the process of gaining its self-identity. Thus, the American ethicist and philosopher of literature M. Nasbaum shows, in addition to the above, in such his works as "The Fragility of the Good: Fate and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy" (1986), "Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics" ( 1994) that philosophical discourse should be enriched and expanded through the use of novel narratives, dramaturgy and poetry. In particular, narrative expresses the complexities of the moral life more fruitfully than the abstract ethical theorizing of philosophy. In The Knowledge of Love, the thinker reflects penetratingly: “When we examine our life, so many things prevent us from correcting our vision, there are many motives for remaining blind and stupid Among us and in our vivid perception of a concrete “vulgar heat” of jealousy and self-interest are not uncommon. Roman simply because it is not our life puts us in a more perceptually advantageous moral position and shows us what it would be like to take that position in life We find here love without possessiveness, attention without partiality, involvement without panic."
These views are not simply a critique of a particular philosophical style, but are a profound critique of the moral fundamentalism of Plato and Kant. In The Fragility of Good, exploring moral fate (luck) as reflected in the writings of Aristotle, Plato and Greek tragedy, Nusbaum shows that the accidents of human life make some goods "fragile", for example, love, but they are from this are not made less valuable to human prosperity. Recognition and recognition of such value presupposes the concept of practical reason, which includes, along with the intellect, feelings and imagination. According to Nusbaum, this approach is best embodied in narratives, since they capture the peculiarity and contingency of human action and reveal the contextual richness of moral reflection (in Sophocles' Antigone alone, the theorist has over fifty different references to reflection). P. Ricoeur, a thinker who also widely uses literature in his writings, following Nasbaum, notes that the call to “think right” and “think rightly” contained in Greek tragedies does not mean at all that we find in them the equivalent of moral teaching. Tragedy, in his opinion, creates an ethical-practical aporia, in other words, a gap is created between tragic wisdom and practical wisdom. By refusing to resolve the conflict in accordance with the latter, tragedy induces the practically oriented person, at his own peril and risk, to reorient his action in accordance with tragic wisdom.
At the same time, this kind of philosophical-literary approach implicitly proceeds from the premise that literature and philosophy are only different forms of the same content: what philosophy expresses in the form of arguments, literature expresses in lyrical, dramatic or narrative form. The attitude of the philosopher to literature is accompanied by the conviction that he, by virtue of his mere belonging to the philosophical guild, has the right to identify and clarify the subject to which philosophical and literary texts are devoted, and that the language of philosophy gives the optimal expression to the content that is (less adequately) expressed in language. literature. The model for such an approach is Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, in which art, along with religion, is understood as imperfect outlines of truth, which only dialectical concepts are able to express with maximum completeness and properly.
Dissatisfaction with this approach (an implicit preference for philosophy over literature) led to a fundamentally different understanding of the connection between them, and on its basis to a different concept of F.L. with Hegel and his, as they say today, "philosophical imperialism." This strategy was picked up by F. Nietzsche, who brought together the history of truth and the history of literary fiction and reflected on the ability of art to comprehend the truth. The trend of "aestheticization of the mind" in European philosophy late XIX- XX century. (T. Adorno, G. Bachelard, V. Benjamin, P. Valery, G. G. Gadamer, M. Heidegter) was accompanied by an awareness of the autonomy of the functioning of "artistic" in general and, in particular, literature, as well as the fact that artistic content cannot be transformed without loss of meaning into propositional structures, into well-defined formulas. This trend was further radically developed in the works of J. Derrida and his followers, who believe that considering philosophy and literature as alternative expressions of identical content is a serious mistake, just as it will be a mistake to treat philosophy as a dominant discourse, a "proper" expression of content, "insufficiently accurate" expressed in the literature. According to this position, all texts have a "literary" form, so the texts of philosophers are no worse and no better than the texts of novelists and poets, and their content is internally determined by the means of its expression. Therefore, "literature in philosophy" is no less than "philosophy in literature." Scrupulously analyzing the philosophical text and the linguistic means by which it is created, Derrida demonstrates the multi-level nature of his "linguistic empiricism", as a result of which a thought can die under the pressure of generally valid label words, but can also be freed from the "tyranny of someone else's writing". Understanding the "literariness" of philosophical texts as their rhetorical structure, the system of tropes and figures that actually determine the functioning of philosophical argumentation, Derrida demonstrates how thought is destroyed in the self-confident monologism of "logocentric" metaphysics. "Literature" is linked by the thinker with the objectifying tendencies of Western rationality and manifests itself, in his view, in the text primarily in that it tends to "remove", "smooth", "complete", "formulate" the letter, i.e. encroaches on the spontaneity of philosophical speech. In turn, the possibility of philosophy as a "speech" of thought, as a "proto-letter" is substantiated with the help of a "philosophical and fiction argument in favor of the unity and interconnection of philosophy and art, philosophy and literature, the unity of forms of self-realization of creative intelligence in all possible areas human activity"(N. S. Avtonomova).
Accordingly, the philosopher of literature is no longer free to simply separate the philosophical content from the literary form. Rather, the types of literary expression themselves make it necessary for the philosopher to reconsider the foundations of his own work. "Philosophers' confusion about the truth value of fictional statements is an example of the type of problems that the study of literature can create for philosophical experience" (R. Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, 1982). For example, literary mimesis (especially in the work of postmodern authors) raises questions about the possibility and supposed normativity of the representation of facts and threatens to undermine the traditional hierarchy of values, in which "fact" is higher than fiction.
Believing that philosophy does not have its own subject, that its claims to reflect reality are unfounded, the well-known representative of American pragmatism R. Rorty is convinced that literature contributes to the liberation of philosophy from this delusion, from groundless claims to specific knowledge. Self-awareness of philosophy as a "literary genre" will free it from obsolete canons, imposed traditions and will contribute to the "interested conversation" of researchers, strengthening their commonality and bringing them closer to the needs of the majority. Contrasting literature with traditional metaphysics, the thinker believes that the former is more effective in two respects: in achieving "solidarity", that is, literature, exposing shortcomings traditional society, contributes to the implementation of various kinds of reforms, primarily moral ones; and in achieving "private autonomy" of the individual, in setting a space within which the individual is free to satisfy his desires and fantasies, including those unsanctioned by society. According to these functions of literature, Rorty, in Chance, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), proposes a distinction between "books to help you be less violent" and "books to help you become autonomous." Among the first, Rorty, in turn, identifies "those that help us see the impact on others of social practices and institutions" and "those that help us see the impact on others of our private idiosyncrasies." In the analysis by the thinker of the work of a number of writers (Dickens, Dreiser, Orwell and Nabokov in "Accidentality ...", Dickens and Kundera in "Essays on Heidegter and others"), the overtones of approval of the social usefulness of literature, its criticism of social injustice, are well known to the Russian reader, promoting the search for a just social order.
The merit of R. Rorty, X. Arendt, P. Ricker, X. White, A. McIntyre, M. Nasbaum, as well as the heremeneutic tradition, was, from our point of view, drawing attention to the moment of "narratological" (see. " Narratology", "Narrative"), which combines philosophy and literature. Although a special, "narrative" type of rationality, singled out by the cogitologist J. Bruner, along with the traditional formal-logical type, is not found in all philosophical texts, nevertheless, many models of understanding that are involved in philosophy are "literary" in the sense that which are close to how narratives are understood. According to the fair remark of X. Arendt, "although we know much less about Socrates, who did not write a single line and did not leave a single work behind him, than about Plato or Aristotle, we know better and more intimately who Socrates was, because we we know his history than we know who Aristotle was, although we are much better informed about his opinions. In other words, in order to understand what wisdom means, we tell the story of Socrates.
The self-reflexivity of modern literary texts leads philosophers to a critical reflection on professional paradigms, and, in the case when literature is not considered only as another, attractive, but inevitably superficial source philosophical ideas, it poses serious epistemological, metaphysical and methodological problems for philosophy.
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