Narratives of degeneration: Polemical history and the critique of modern philosophy

Timothy Charles Lord, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation examines the function of narrative in a future-oriented genre of the history of modern philosophy that I call "polemical history." A polemical history argues for a revisionist thesis by narrating a philosophical tradition from an interested perspective, it is critical of the directions modernity has taken, construing the history of a particular tradition of modern philosophy--e.g., epistemology, ethics, or aesthetics--as one of degeneration. Oriented toward the future, a polemical history's narrative proffers new arguments about the most desirable direction for philosophy. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first formulates polemical history as a revisionist genre of interpreting and writing--i.e., narrating--the history of a modern philosophical tradition. Here I (1) critically examine the historiography of philosophy as it has been theorized by analytic philosophers who reject traditional notions of "disinterested" and "problematic" history of philosophy; (2) characterize polemical history and evaluate it in relation to Michel Foucault's genealogical history; and (3) extend Hayden White's account of modes of emplotment to show that polemical history is narrated in both comic and tragic modes, which are ultimately driven by argumentative and ideological concerns. In the second part of the dissertation I provide case studies of key contemporary philosophical texts, demonstrating the manner in which each functions as a polemical history that criticizes modernity by narrating its degeneration in a comic or tragic mode. The texts include Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Alasdair Maclntyre's After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Terry Eagleton's The Ideology of the Aesthetic. I show that each history contains a certain argumentative stance, a particular ideological perspective, and an implicit historiography of philosophy, all of which are interconnected. I conclude by arguing that Dominick LaCapra's concept of projective reprocessing offers an effective way to explain--and to some extent prevent--the problematic interpretations engendered by polemical history. Despite its shortcomings, I maintain the importance of polemical history as a contemporary genre of philosophy. It rightly implies that the historian of philosophy cannot avoid an interested perspective and thus should adopt a future-oriented position. In its historicist interpretations of the philosophical "problems" of modernity, polemical history usefully posits philosophy as a Phoenix that must periodically revitalize itself by rejecting the worn-out canons and conceptions of the past.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Leitch, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Philosophy|History|Rhetoric|Composition

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