PHILOSOPHY 6225, Language, Truth, and Literature  NEW SEMINAR
 

Justin Leiber

Philosophy 6225: Language, Truth, and Literature (Wednesdays 2:30; Werkmeister Rm) got in the Fall 
Schedule too late for early Fall Registration. The title is the same as A. J. Ayer’s book except that I 
replaced “Logic” with my last word, “Literature.” We’ll ask, Can literature usefully express or even
discover practical, philosophic or scientific truth? -- or must we abandon literature to “Continental 
philosophy”? Ayer said that literature consisted of literal but false sentences and not the windy nonsense 
of “metaphysics.”  We start with Aristotle and Plato’s views, read some of Kant’s Critique of Judgment 
and examine samples from Jorge Borges, the quintessential literary figure whose work is infused with 
analytic philosophy.   E.g., in his Darwin’s Dangerous Idea Dennett makes extensive use of Borges’ 
“The Library of Babel” while several philosophers and anthropologists refer one to his “Funes, His 
Memory” as well as “Borges and I.” Aristotle himself considered the Platonic dialogue to be as much 
literature as philosophy and modern philosophers such as Berkeley and Hume have found the form an 
appropriate venue. In the 20th Century, while French philosophers took to writing novels, we also find in 
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus a strikingly original work of art and in his ground-breaking Investigations
several voices contend in vignettes so striking that Wittgenstein thought the very sentences were indelibly 
marked as his own. Quine, J. L. Austin, Donald Davidson, Jerry Fodor, and Daniel Dennett provide 
notable examples of original, trade-marked prose styles doing conceptual narrations (as opposed to the 
expositions of empirical science). 

Literary narrations, like attempts to answer the question What is it like to be a bat?, require a

personal “point of view.” Syntactically, they may be first person (as were the first novels in English) but

grammatical third person with a semantic simulation of a (or several) first person point of view has

become more common since Jane Austen, who brought the form to maturity (roughly, narrated as if you

are looking and hearing over the shoulder of a character, getting that character’s point of view while at

the same time being able to notice things that the character may not. Moreover, actual human individuals

rarely have an interior monologue, putting into words what they see, hear, smell, etc., what particular

motoric actions they contemplate or actually under take, etc. Rather, most of the time we see, hear, sense,

etc. various things, hear what others or even our-selves may say or do (by contrast, an operating surgeon,

a radio reporter, or deep sea diver may actually give, out loud, such a running report of their current

experiences and actions for their distant audiences).

A reportorial or literary narration is redolent of action, of problems, puzzles, purposes (teleology),

and decisions, what a Kantian would understand as practical reason, presupposing human freedom with

all its ambiguities: the interaction of categorical, pragmatical, and hypothetical imperatives with the

murky, veiled, and always changing and unexpected realities of the surrounding personal and physical

world, always personed, tensed and time-structured, and individual –what is it like to be a very particular,

properly named and uniquely situated, individual actor.

It is, thus, no wonder that Kant’s Critique of Judgment is concerned with judgments of humanly-

created dramatic and artistic productions and with natural teleological judgments. Aristotle, in

his Physics and in his Poetics, comments that natural animals including humans, through growth and

development, are most comparable to theatrical and narrative productions.

In “Two Dogmas,” Quine claims that “the unit of empirical significance is the whole of

science.” Perhaps this is so for science as a timeless, tense-less, collective enterprise of pure reason, this

view from nowhere and nowhen. However, no human individual can read through, let alone remember

or understand, this whole-of-science, almost infinitely long, unitary sentence (recently pure mathematics

has faced this problem head on; the “proof” that four colors suffice has too many steps for a human

mathematician to effectively read through, so the “proof” rests on the physical reliability of the

electromechanical computing machinery). C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” seems to contrast the objective,

rational, exact, progressive, value-free, essential, and universal scientific enterprise with a subjective,

irrational, imprecise, unprogressive, value-ridden, inessential, and parochial enterprise. The background

model contrasts the scientific method of observation and experiment gradually accumulating data from

which generalizations, and more and more general theories, cumulatively derive, with the subjective,

unquantifiable, confabulated anecdotal individual stories.

Here the Ancient Greeks helpfully remind us that logic is common to both cultures, providing a

common foundation both pure, what-is reasoning and practical, how-to-do reasoning. A practical

syllogism is just as rational as a theoretical (or pure) syllogism. The Greeks also, surely wisely, did not

have our notion of “fine arts,” which ambiguously means excellence, inspiration, and genius but also

useless, unprofitable, and upper class; and also variously contrasts with useful technology, precision,

craftsmanship but also with popular, vulgar, “unfine,” formulaic amusements. For Aristotle, medicine,

engineering, stagecraft, like animal husbandry, architecture, and agriculture, were practical productive

arts, aiming at: curatives and health, bridges and transport, drama and emotional release, attractive

building and shelter, productive farming, etc. All of these are governed by imperatives, by practical

reason, by how-to-do-nesses.

(For Aristotle, of course, politics (statecraft), ethics, and household management are also

practical, and indeed their imperatives govern productive practices in a hierarchy of command. How to

build the bridge is an engineer’s dominium, when and where, political, etc. As Aristotle notably

comments in Nicomachean Ethica, we must acknowledge the degree of exactitude that the subject matter

allows and hence inexactly, but by default, ethically and politically regulate more exact, productive

specializations. Similarly, we should remind ourselves that the apodictic form of Kant’s categorical

imperative is to reason as a universal legislator to all rational beings, while perhaps also allowing that

Kant may have been blind to the lack of rigor and precision in ethics and statescraft). Kant also provides

us the most trenchant characterization of originality and genius in literature

Apostolos Doxiadis recently claimed that mathematical proofs are like literary narratives;

both are “arm chair” quests, pursuing goals and taking its travelers on an instructive trip through

possible story space.  I want to consider the possibility that “arm chair,” natural language

arguments, which are analogous to mathematical proofs and literary narratives, are both the subject

matter and tools of philosophizing. “A life unexamined is not worth living” invites us to

the question “What is it like to be a human being?” whose most accessible, appropriate, and attractive

answers are anecdotal individual narratives – personal accountings

Arm-chairedly speaking, it is characteristic that philosopher’s journal publications, like those of

pure mathematicians, and the novelist’s and dramatist’s productions, are single authored, while

empirical scientific publications have several if not scores of authors. If you look at the Philosophical

Lexicon (also on the Gourmet), you will find scores of prominent philosophers each jokingly caricatured

by their unique writing and argumentative style.  So this seminar is concerned with truth in literature but

also with the particular kind of truth characteristic of the philosophical enterprise.

Partial draft of the syllabus.

Readings will be available through the course links on my home page. You might want to order

some through Amazon.com but this is not necessary. You should expect to write three short papers

(roughly 3,000 words each) or one long one.  You should discuss your intended paper with me before

the actual writing.

Tentative schedule for fourteen meetings proceeds (as much as possible readings with be available on

the web or my home page. You might order Borges’ Collected Works from Amazon.

I  Introduction. Read “Borges and I” and the syllabus and course characterization.

II Aristotle’s Poetics. Oedipus Rex. Lysistrada.. McKee’s Story: Style, Structure, Substance..

III. Continued. Plato’s Symposium. Leiber, Language, Truth, and Literature. “Silver Blaze” and A

Study in Scarlet. One Law.

IV. Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Teleology; Beauty & Sublimity. Disinterest, universality, subjectivity.

V. Kant. Practical reason and literature. Originality and genius. The various arts.

VI. Jorge Borges. “Everyone and No One,” “Library of Babel,” “Tlon, Ukbar, and OrbusTertius.”

The Library of Mendel, Library of Borges, Library of Stories. 

VII. Originality in Art and in Science/Math/History. “M’s Don Quixote” 

VIII. “Funes, His Memory.”  Franz Kafka. “The Great Wall of China,” “A Report to the Academy”

IX. Ted Chiang. Tower of Babylon. Liking What You See: A Documentary. The Evolution of

Human Science. Division By Zero.  Stories of Your Life, 2002 TOR /

X. William Butler Yeats. A. E. Housman “Terrence, This is stupid stuff…” Dylan Thomas.

XI. Family stuff.  Arlynn Presser, “The Archivist”; Fritz Leiber, “Catch that Zeppelin,” “Change

War” “Space Time for Springers”; Ryoange.

XII. Lewis Carroll.  Ian McEwan.

XIII. David Foster Wallace. Interviews with Hideous Men. Selections from Infinite Jest.

XIV. Apostopolos Doxsiadis, “Proofs and Stories”