Narrative Dimensions of Philosophy
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Narrative Dimensions of Philosophy A Semiotic Exploration in the Work of Merleau-Ponty, Kierkegaard and Austin Sky Marsen Victoria University of Wellington
Sky Marsen 2006 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-0-230-00532-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28204-3 ISBN 978-0-230-59934-5 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230599345 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marsen, Sky. Narrative dimensions of philosophy : a semiotic exploration in the work of Merleau-Ponty, Kierkegaard, and Austin/Sky Marsen. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-28204-3 1. Philosophical literature History and criticism. 2. Semiotics. 3. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908 1961. Phénoménologie de la perception. 4. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813 1855. Enten-eller. 5. Austin, J. L. (John Langshaw), 1911 1960. How to do things with words. I. Title. B72.M355 2006 121.68 dc22 2006046446 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
Contents List of Figures and Tables Preface vii viii 1 Language, Knowledge and Reality 1 2 The Narrative Framework 23 3 Textual Dimensions and Narrator Roles 60 4 The Meaning in Existence: Freedom through Action in Merleau-Ponty s World 95 5 Presupposed Worlds 123 6 The Return of the Hero: Embodied Identity in Kierkegaard s World 143 7 The Winner s Game: Out and About in Austin s World 163 References and Bibliography 178 Index 190
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List of Figures and Tables Figure 2.1 Propp s narrative sequences 43 Figure 2.2 Actantial model 44 Figure 2.3 Actantial mode of utilitarianism 46 Figure 2.4 Narrative trajectory 46 Figure 2.5 Actantial model for opening of The Seducer s Diary 48 Figure 2.6 Narrative structure of porosity 54 Figure 2.7 Actantial model for porosity 55 Figure 2.8 Actantial models of Phantom 56 Figure 2.9 Actantial model of Tokyo nuclear plants 58 Figure 3.1 Textual dimensions 65 Figure 3.2 Semiotic square of narratorial participation 70 Figure 3.3 Semiotic square of enunciator roles 75 Figure 4.1 Aphonic girl model one 116 Figure 4.2 Aphonic girl model two 117 Figure 4.3 Aphonic girl model three 117 Figure 7.1 Actantial model of Words 168 Table 2.1 Semiotic modalities 47 vii
Preface This book proposes a narrative-semiotic reading of philosophical writing, explains how this can be done and what its significance is for the textual construction of meaning, and analyses three philosophical texts to illustrate this kind of reading. It is not a book on philosophy as a system and method of knowledge, but rather on the ways in which language, and in particular written language, enables the body of texts known as philosophy to exist. Its main guiding hypothesis is that the philosopher-writer, in order to communicate meaning about such concepts as truth, reality and knowledge, uses language to create an order of things where these concepts can function semiotically, that is, as signs, through their interrelational positions. The extra-textual, real or phenomenal, world that the text describes is thus filtered by the strategic manipulation of the verbal signs that created the intra-textual world. Semiotics is the systematic analysis of the constitution of signs and of the ways these signs interact to form a text. Meaning is a semiotic concern inasmuch as it is generated by the representations that are formed by different sign combinations and oppositions. To my knowledge, there is no detailed semiotic analysis of a book-length philosophical text. In fact, much of the work of narrative semioticians has focused on simple narratives, such as fairy tales and short fiction, or on propositional utterances extracted from theoreticalscientific texts. Therefore, an aim of this book is to test the analytical tools devised in narrative semiotics by applying them to complex and multi-layered texts. At the same time, approaches to philosophy in terms of its textual nature, that is, in terms of the stylistic and story-telling techniques through which philosophical knowledge is presented, do not have a strong presence in theoretical literature. So, a parallel aim of the book is to suggest a new way of understanding the means available to writers to theorize and discuss humans relationship to the world. My approach to the philosophical texts analysed here requires some clarification. My perspective as a narrative semiotician motivated me to approach the texts on their own terms, as self-contained
Preface ix entities, instead of placing them in a tradition of thought and comparing them with other philosophical schools or movements like a more conventional interpretation would be expected to do. In this respect I engaged with the texts from an outsider s perspective, and therefore as an innocent to expert opinion. The result is a reading of the selected texts in terms of the world that they construct through their stylistic structure and writing strategy more than in terms of their intertextual references to other philosophical texts. Following the advice of Maurice Blanchot (1988), who wrote that to truly understand a book one has to give oneself to it, I attempted to blend my voice with that of the writers and to reach an understanding of the texts by following their movement. This makes my orientation towards the texts less critical and argumentative, and more analytically interpretative and descriptive. In other words, and this is an axiomatic point, in order to undertake my analysis of these texts, I first had to believe them and place trust in their value. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, the book is likely to interest several audiences. It expands the scope of semioticians and literary theorists, by demonstrating how analytical concepts formulated primarily for fictional narratives can be applied to other texts. Also, narrative theorists and narratologists are presented with a revised, eclectic definition of narrative. Finally, scholars in the philosophy of Merleau- Ponty, Kierkegaard and Austin will find here what may perhaps seem to them an unorthodox, but at the same time also, I hope, interesting and innovative, approach to the work of these philosophers. The texts analysed are Maurice Merleau-Ponty s Phenomenology of Perception (French edition, Gallimard, 1945), Søren Kierkegaard s Either/Or Parts I and II (translated by H. Hong and E. Hong, Princeton University Press, 1987, originally published in 1843), and John Austin s How to Do Things with Words (edited by J.O. Urmson, Oxford University Press, 1962, from lectures delivered in 1955). The book should guide readers through these works, regardless of how informed they are about them to begin with. So, it is expected that those with no, or little, knowledge of phenomenology, existentialism and speech act theory will gain some understanding of these philosophies from the book s discussion. Those with a deeper knowledge of the texts, and the philosophies they espouse, will obviously be able to engage with the ideas presented here on a different, possibly more critical, level. In any case, readers are advised to have at least access
x Preface to the texts analysed, in order to better context the discussion in light of their own objectives. A note on translation would be useful at this point. For both Phenomenology of Perception and Either/Or, I have compared the extracts used here with the respective French and Danish versions, and in the case of Phenomenology of Perception the extracts are my own translations. Although the use of translation in the analysis of text is often considered problematic, the semiotic approach outlined here focuses on the world constructive aspects of discourse and so does not suffer in the semantic transposition that occurs when signs are translated from one language into another. Most of the work presented here is original. However, some of it has appeared in different forms in published articles. A version of Chapter 3, Textual Dimensions and Narrator Roles, was published as To be an actor or to be an observer? A semiotic typology of narrator roles in written discourse in Semiotica 2004, 149-1/4. A version of Chapter 5, Presupposed Worlds, was published as How to mean without saying: Presupposition and implication revisited in Semiotica 2006, 160-1/4. Finally, a version of Chapter 6, The Return of the Hero: Embodied Identity in Kierkegaard s World was published as Who if not he? A narrative semiotic reading of Kierkegaard s Either/Or in Philosophy Today 2004, 48.