Incipit: Lire la littérature du dix-neuvième siècle avec la philosophie?

General:

For the next installment of this dialogic series, the journal asked Jacques-David Ebguy (Université Paris Cité) and Juliette Grange (Université de Tours) to reflect on literature and philosophy in the nineteenth century: how they engage with similar themes and how writers—then and now—can deploy an appropriate methodology for discussing them without impoverishing one with the other or reducing either to commonplaces. They composed their initial essays without knowing the content of their interlocutor’s essay; the ensuing exchange, by e-mail, took place in the order presented below.

Individual:

Writers and philosophers have never ceased to meet, to measure themselves, to approach each other or to put themselves (back) in each other’s place. When they don’t end in indifference or rejection, these tumultuous meetings can prove fruitful. Such is the impression left on the literary mind by the many authors who, since the early 1980s, have taken literature as their object or devoted substantial analyses to literary works. It’s as if a certain kind of philosophy sought in literature—and found—an energy necessary for the renewal of aesthetic, political, and metaphysical thought, and for overcoming the limits or impasses of philosophical discourse. Without attempting a full account of the meaning and forms of this examination and mobilization of literature by philosophy, I shall focus on the particular interest contemporary philosophy has shown in the nineteenth-century novel. (JDE; in French)

The fundamental questions that arose in France in the first half of the nineteenth century were addressed by philosophers on the one hand, and by hommes de lettres on the other. Yet literature and philosophy should not be confused. If the questions they raise are the same, not only do the answers diverge, but the ways in which the questions are posed and the nature of their answer(s) (or lack thereof) are diametrically opposed. How can we work together in philosophy and literature, without impoverishing one with the other or reducing them to common themes? What critical methodology is needed to bring these two sets of texts into synergy? Is there a unique aspect of French thought, already present in the eighteenth century, that fosters a particular link between literature and philosophy? (JG; in French)