[公告] Professor John McGowan學術演講
※ [本文轉錄自 NTU06DFLL 看板]
作者: sophia0603 (sophia) 看板: NTU06DFLL
標題: [公告] Professor John McGowan學術演講
時間: Thu May 17 21:14:54 2007
國立臺灣大學外國語文學系學術演講
American Pragmatism, Literary Studies, and Liberalism
演講人：John McGowan教授
北卡羅萊那大學人文學院講座教授兼院長（Ruel W. Tyson, Jr. Distinguished
Professor of Humanities and Director, Institute for the Arts and Humanities,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill）、英文系暨比較文學系合聘教授（
Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill）
(1) Lecture One: A Philosophy of the Possible
主持人：劉亮雅教授（臺灣大學外文系教授兼系主任）
時間：2007年5月28日週一下午3:00-5:00
地點：臺大文學院二樓院會議室
Abstract
Pragmatism is the one significant contribution to Western philosophy made by
American writers. The first group of pragmatists—notably Charles Sanders
Peirce, William James, and John Dewey—wrote their major works between 1875
and 1935. The revival of pragmatism in our own time can be dated to the
publication of Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in 1979.
Rorty, Louis Menand, and Robert Brandom are key figures writing in the
pragmatist tradition today.
Pragmatism is best characterized as a philosophy of the possible, one
that focuses on neither the necessary (what must be) nor the impossible (what
cannot be). In emphasizing what might be, pragmatists call attention to what
human action can make happen in the world. Several important consequences
follow from this interest in the possible: a movement away from epistemology
and truth as central philosophical concerns; an acceptance of probability and
fallibilism in place of certainty; an insistence on a dynamic world instead
of a static one, and on the creation and re-creation of identities through
relational ties to other entities rather than through intrinsic qualities.
I will take the time to unpack these philosophical ideas carefully—and
use concrete examples so that they will be clear. (I will also invite
questions as I am proceeding in order to aid understanding.) Once I have
laid out the basic philosophical commitments of pragmatism, I will devote the
last part of the lecture to considering how pragmatism is, in many ways, a
position more suited to a literary sensibility than to traditional Western
philosophical concerns. Pragmatism is part of the literary challenge to
traditional philosophy that has characterized literary theory since 1965.
(2) Lecture Two: Liberalism as Secular Comedy
主持人：廖咸浩教授（臺灣大學外文系教授)
時間：2007年5月30日週三下午3:00-5:00
地點：臺大文學院二樓院會議室
Abstract
This lecture will focus on pragmatism’s political vision of liberal
democracy. In many ways, pragmatism’s philosophical positions are adopted
in order to justify and promote a certain vision of a good society rather
than on the basis of technical philosophical arguments. This is what Rorty
has called “the priority of democracy to philosophy.” This pragmatist
politics emphasizes collective deliberation and action, the development of
individuals within a communal context, a plural and diverse public sphere
protected by civil liberties, and a robust notion of social justice. In that
respect, pragmatism’s politics are fairly closely aligned with the
left-of-center views of “social democrats” in Europe today, even though
there are some distinctively American elements to the pragmatist vision.
I will devote the last third of the lecture to exploring the ways in
which this vision is recognizably comic. Working from the definitions of
comedy as a literary genre found in literary critics C. L. Barber, Kenneth
Burke, and Northrop Frye, I will consider the attempt to develop social
harmony in a secular modern world in the work of Dewey and Rorty. Is there
described ideal attainable? How can what literary critics know about comedy—
in its many variations—help us to assess attempts to achieve comic ideals in
a nonliterary world?
Person: Hsiu-ting Jian; Tel: 3366-3212
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