Dissertation Abstract
American Metaphorologies:
The Rhetoric Of Poesis
In Emerson, Thoreau,
Peirce, And Rorty
by
Thomas Anthony Reynolds
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1999
Pages: 00227
Institution:
Advisor: Adviser ANSELM HAVERKAMP
Source: DAI, 60, no. 05A (1999): p. 1545
This dissertation represents a metaphorological
analysis of American pragmatism, focusing on the centrality of production or
poesis in both the literary tradition of American transcendentalism and the
philosophical tradition of American pragmatism. I begin with the thesis that
the literary poetics which is developed by Emerson and Thoreau represents a
rhetorical appropriation of a metaphysical model of creativity. In its emphasis
on productivity, this Romantic theory of literature conditions the emergence of
American pragmatism as a philosophical poetics. Accordingly, pragmatism
represents a philosophical continuation of the project of literary Romanticism.
This dissertation retraces
the path of a genealogy of pragmatism as a philosophical poetics emerging in
the wake of American transcendentalism, from an examination of the metaphysical
foundation of the theory of literary poetics or poesis in the transcendentalism
of Emerson and Thoreau to the methodological appropriation of this poetic
method within the method of pragmatism in the works of Peirce, James, and
Rorty. Yet this dissertation represents a metaphorological analysis of this
genealogy as well, an attempt to expose the implicit rhetorical substructure
which enables such a genealogical reconstruction of pragmatism. It seeks to
bring to light the rhetorical substructure of the metaphysics upon which the
literary poetics of American transcendentalism and the philosophical poetics of
American pragmatism are founded. Because, as "pragmatists" from Vico
and Nietzsche to Blumenberg and Rorty suggest, the idealist metaphysics
enabling the emergence of these traditions is itself a pragmatic, rhetorical
construct, this series of literary and methodological appropriations that
collectively form a genealogy of pragmatism constitutes a gradual recuperation
of the original pragmatic processes underlying this metaphysical paradigm.
Following Hans Blumenberg's
metaphorological project, I argue that pragmatism represents the methodological
return of rhetorical processes which had been projected into the sphere of
metaphysics in order to achieve articulation. I conclude by considering the
influence of Blumenberg's metaphorology on Rorty's neopragmatism and the
theoretical difficulties associated with the thesis that neopragmatism
represents a conscious methodological recuperation of rhetoric from its detour
through metaphysics.
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: LITERATURE, COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE,
AMERICAN
PHILOSOPHY
Accession
No: AAG9930245
Provider: OCLC
Database: Dissertations