FOREWORD

 

In this book, the author, who is a First Class graduate of Philosophy, brings his ingenuity and philosophical savvy to bear in trying to establish the concatenation among philosophy, literature, and art, thereby re-echoing a similar effort by Aristotle in his poetics. For him, Aesthetics/Philosophy of Art, which is a traditional branch of philosophy, and which is roughly defined as a philosophical and critical study which attempts to define the concept of beauty and taste, clearly exposes the nexus between philosophy and literature.

As a matter of fact, Aesthetics play a crucial role in literature or literary arts. Encompassing poetry, short stories, novels, and non-fiction, literary authors employ a variety of techniques to appeal to our aesthetics values. Depending on the type of writing, an author may choose to employ any of the following styles or techniques: rhythm, imagery, fantasy, dualism, juxtaposition, structure, illustrations, analysis, suspense, humour/cynicism, and thinking aloud, to drive home his message.

In my humble opinion, I make bold to say that this young and vibrant author has delved into an area, which known authors of Aesthetics have simply downplayed or ignored, thus filling a lacuna.

I, therefore, appreciate the effort of this ebullient author, and the time taken to put together this work made it easy for students and a reminder to the experienced philosophers. I strongly recommend it to philosophy students, lecturers of Aesthetics, and to all and sundry.

 

Prof. Andrew F. Uduigwomen

(Former Dean, Faculty of Arts)

Dept. of Philosophy

University of Calabar, Nigeria

 

PREFACE

 

There is a fundamental relationship between philosophy and literature in their attempt to interpret and reflect reality. Both philosophy and literature are arts or at least aspects of art. Aesthetics otherwise known as the philosophy of art exposes very clearly the link between philosophy and literature. On the other hand, through its major genres namely, drama, prose, and poetry, the link between literature and philosophy is made bare.

Moreover, philosophy in playing its second-order role, delves into the literary world or the discipline of literature with its philosophical paraphernalia of criticality, reflectivity, analyticity, and rigour among others, to investigate activities of literary professionals, especially as they relate to interpretation and understanding of the nature of the reality of human existential experience.

It is, on the basis of this that this book proposes and exposes the relationship between philosophy and the literary arts. This it does by using aesthetics as an aspect of philosophy to elucidate the nature and function of philosophy in literary art as well as their relationship with each other. It also uses drama, poetry, and prose as genres of literature to enunciate the nature and function of literary art.

The argument here is that both philosophical al aesthetics and literature (drama, poetry, and prose) are geared toward interpretation and reflection of a people’s worldview, man’s existential experience, the nature of human society, and by extension the nature of reality in general. Thus, to succeed in its avowed aim; the book is divided into seven (7) chapters. The first and second chapters clarify the meaning of philosophy, literature, and philosophy of literature. The third and fourth chapters are concerned with aesthetics as philosophy of art, the nature of art where prose, drama, and poetry are examined as literary arts. The fifth chapter examines the role of philosophy and literary arts in understanding reality. The sixth chapter examines the nature and role of intention and analogy in the arts. The last chapter is a conclusion of all that has been discussed.

The motivation for compiling this book is to fill the obvious gap found in textbooks on Aesthetics or Philosophy of arts. No textbook written on this subject has dealt with the relationship between aesthetics and literary art and the role of literature and aesthetics in understanding and interpreting reality.

It is my sincere hope, that this book will not only fill this gap but also serve as useful material for students and lecturers of the philosophy of literature and philosophy of art. (aesthetics).

 

Enyimba, Maduka Ph.D

Department of Philosophy

November 2020

 

CHAPTER ONE THE IDEA OF PHILOSOPHY

 

1. Etymological Meaning

The word etymology has to do with origin or source. In other words, the etymology of any word implied the root, origin, or source of the word. The root meaning of a word is most times drawn from a different language other than the language of the word in question. Most root words are from Latin, Greek, German or French language. One significant thing about etymological definitions is that it seems to be more generally accepted by all, and tend to form a springboard for other definitions by professionals of that discipline.

 As we shall see, philosophers by virtue of their various inclinations, schools, and systems of philosophy to which they belong, approach the meaning of philosophy from different perspectives. Even though the different definitions of philosophy as given by diverse philosophers expose the various aspects of the nature and essence of the discipline of philosophy, the etymological definition remains more generally acceptable.

Hence, philosophy is drawn from two Greek words – “philein” and “Sophia”. The word philein is sometimes written as “philos” and is interpreted as “love”, whereas “Sophie” is sometimes written as “Sophia” and is interpreted as “wisdom”. To have a love for wisdom is to be passionate in one’s pursuit of wisdom, and to pursue wisdom passionately is to enthusiastically seek wisdom for wisdom’s sake with no strings attached. This reminds one of the “Agape” kind of love which Christianity advocates and propagates” (Mclain 2). This kind of love has no attachment or ulterior motive. It is simply transparent and sincere. This is the kind of love that philosophers have for wisdom.

The preacher, philosopher, and author of the book of proverbs, in chapters eight and nine painted a succinct picture of wisdom crying with a loud voice for the simple to seek her earnestly in order to obtain understanding and be wise. The implication of this is that wisdom is to be sought in order that we may have a good understanding and be wise in our thoughts, speeches, and actions. But what exactly is the nature of the wisdom, the philosopher seeks and encourages us to seek after?

It is important to note that wisdom in the context being used here and in the sense in which the philosopher searches for it, connotes the following:

1. Wide knowledge and sound judgment about the values of different things in life (Ozuzu 5). What is clear here is that the acquisition of this form of wisdom makes one shrewd or clever at understanding and making decisions about practical issues.
2. Knowledge of fundamental principles and laws governing things in their genesis. In other words, the wisdom here involves being aware of that which is basic or primordial and stable as opposed to that which is ephemeral and changing.

Another important question which any thinking reader must be asking at this point is, is there no difference between wisdom and knowledge such that philosophy can be easily distinguished from other disciplines? Indeed, knowledge can be carefully distinguished from wisdom. We define knowledge here as the awareness of indubitable facts about reality. In other words, knowledge constitutes the ability to understand or comprehend a phenomenon. It is the acquisition of positive information by the exercise of some common capacities possessed by all men generally. This is why disciplines, such as physics, economics, education among others provide man with knowledge of a particular kind. Hence, we can say that a person is knowledgeable in a particular field or area.

Wisdom, on the other hand, is the careful, critical, systematic, and adequate application or use of the acquired knowledge. Thus, a person can be knowledgeable and yet lacks wisdom. Philosophy prevents this kind of situation by providing and guiding man into the needed wisdom. No wonder then, Uduma describes wisdom as “the capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct, soundness of judgment in the choice of means and ends’ (15). Wisdom is thus, the ability to make the right decisions or judgments by applying intelligent thought to a wider range of experience and knowledge.

(b)    General Meaning

By general meaning, we refer to the popular or layman’s conception of philosophy. It is most times described as a “common sense approach to philosophy” (Akinpelu 28). The ordinary man in the street has an idea of what philosophy is, the beginner who approaches the study of philosophy for the first time has a preconception of the meaning of philosophy. This is the reason why you hear people say “that is my philosophy in life”, “my philosophy is what will be will be”. These things are not really wrong. It is only that philosophy has as a result been personalized such that everyman becomes a philosopher in some sense.

Generally, philosophy can therefore be defined as the way an individual reacts to issues and events in life. It may mean the manner an individual perceives things around him. This kind of perception can shape his life and his world. Here, philosophy is seen as people’s attitudes, patterns of reaction to one’s life or peoples’ way of life. Still under the general or loose sense of the word philosophy; words of wisdom, proverbs, wise sayings’ and judgments constitute philosophy. This is why when an elder speaks with such, profundity in proverbs and wise sayings, his views are seen as philosophical and he a philosopher. Philosophy in this loose sense further connotes peoples’ worldview in relation to the natural world, supernatural events, beings, human nature, and society. Thus, any approach to the meaning of philosophy from any of the above three senses is termed popular, nonprofessional, or general conception of philosophy.

1. c) Professional Meaning

This is otherwise called the technical or specific meaning of philosophy. It involves the different definitions of philosophy by different professional philosophers of repute and of different epochs. To understand this sense of philosophy we shall chronicle some definitions from outstanding philosophers, and then conclude with our own view of the meaning of philosophy. In addition, this particular sense of philosophy overcomes the inadequacies inherent in the nonprofessional’s general view of the concept of philosophy.

According to Plato and Aristotle, philosophy is the search for truth. For Epicurus, philosophy is an activity that secures a happy life by means of discussion and argument. For William James, philosophy referred to thinking about generalities rather than particulars. Martin Heidegger is of the view that philosophy is the correspondence to the being of being. A. J. Ayer perceives philosophy as a wholly critical enterprise Wittgenstein, on the other hand, saw, philosophy as dealing with clarifications and language (quoted in Ozumba 16; Atta 1). Indeed, several definitions abound as there are several philosophers. As we had pointed out from the onset, none of these definitions is wrong, only that they point to one aspect of the nature of philosophy at the expense of the other.

Philosophy is for us a reflective, critical, and prescriptive discipline or enterprise that investigates, identifies, and analyses the nature of things, events, or reality as well as human predicaments in the universe and attempts to proffer solutions to them. It is in this sense of philosophy that philosophy is seen as the science of all sciences, as it seeks to determine what is ultimately real beyond the physical, unstable things. It is also in this sense, that philosophy is seen as a ratio-critical investigation into (and explanation of) nature, human existence, people’s worldviews, and the perennial problems attending his existence. It is in this professional sense that our discussion in this text shall centre.

 

CHAPTER TWO THE CONCEPT OF LITERATURE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LITERATURE

 

In the analysis of the concept of literature, effort must be made to elucidate the sense in which it is used in any given context. Hence, etymologically, it is derived from the Latin word “littera” which translates to the English word “literate”. Hence, literature can be used to refer to the ability of a person to read and write. Literature can also be seen as a set of both written and unwritten works done on a particular subject matter which informs, educates, and entertains. It is in this perspective that one can talk of oral and written kinds of literature. While referring to the informative and educative function of literature Jacob observes that:

Books and other written materials on different subjects are referred to as literature. Hence, we have science literature, religious literature, law literature, Yoruba literature, etc (3).

However, the above

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Text: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I return all glory to my Lord Jesus Christ the giver of life, wisdom and creativity. I also sincerely appreciate Dr. Jonas Akung of the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Calabar, Calabar. He devoted time to go
Images: Copyright Maduka Enyimba First Published 2020 +2348063966031 enyimbamauka@gmail.com All Rights Reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express permission of the author who is the copyright holder
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Publication Date: 12-08-2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-6772-5

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Dedication:
To my loving wife Mrs. Jane Okwuchi Maduka And Our lovely Angels Nathan Uchenna Maduka, Louis Osinachi Maduka, Success Nneka Maduka and Jovanni Chibuenyim Maduka