Labyrinths of Exemplarity

Irene E. Harvey

Description

Labyrinths of Exemplarity presents the first comprehensive, in-depth study of the problem of exemplarity—or how we move between the general and the particular in order to try to understand our world. The author's focus ranges from the most basic and fundamental issues of what examples are and where they come from to the complex key issues of how examples function in the discourses they inhabit and what this functioning tells us about the nature of examples or exemplarity itself. The problem is treated especially in connection to Rousseau and Aristotle, with reference to deconstruction (especially Derrida) and the range of Western metaphysics. Ultimately, a new theory of examples is offered, one not drawn from the assumptions made by earlier philosophers but rather from the usage and functioning of examples in philosophical discourse.
Preface: Dimensions of Exemplarity

Introduction: Exemplarity As the Elixir of Thinking

PART 1. Threads of Exemplarity

1. For Emile

Emile's "Own" Experience
Emile's Experience of "The Others"

2. For Sophie

Self-Image As Self-Misunderstanding
Sophie's Relations to Others

3. For Us

Reading Emile
Reading Sophie/Women
Reading Male/Female Relations

PART 2. Theories of Exemplarity

4. Thematized: Exemplarity in Pedagogy

For the Tutor
Rousseau’s Method: For Us

5. The Unthematized Theories of Exemplarity

Methodologies
Within the Thematized: Rousseau’s "Theory" and Theories

PART 3. Exemplarity and Deconstructibility

6. Derrida's Rousseau

Introduction
Derrida's Rousseau
Example, Exemplar, Exemplarity
Between Use and Usage: The "Lens of Differance"
Excesses and Exemplarity

PART 4. The Rhetorics of Exemplarity

7. Theories of Rhetorics and the Places of Example

Introduction
Theories of Rhetorics and the Places of Example
Aristotle's Rhetorical Discourse
Articulations of Exemplarity: Thematics
The Rhetorical Discourse of Exemplarity

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Métaphysique
• Metaphysics

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791488126
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Labyrinths of Exemplarity

SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor

Labyrinths of Exemplarity

At the Limits of Deconstruction

Irene E. Harvey

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2002 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Harvey, Irene E., 1953– Labyrinths of exemplarity : at the limits of deconstruction / Irene E. Harvey. p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5463-0 (acid-free) — ISBN 0-7914-5464-9 (pbk. : acid-free) 1. Example. 2. Paradigm (Theory of knowledge) 3. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778. 4. Derrida, Jacques. I. Title. II. Series.

BD225 .H37 2002 110—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2002022790

Contents

Preface: Dimensions of Exemplarity

Introduction: Exemplarity As the Elixir of Thinking

1

2

3

4

5

PART 1. Threads of Exemplarity

For Emile Emile’s “Own” Experience Emile’s Experience of “The Others”

For Sophie Self-Image As Self-Misunderstanding Sophie’s Relations to Others

For Us Reading Emile Reading Sophie/Women Reading Male/Female Relations

PART 2. Theories of Exemplarity

Thematized: Exemplarity in Pedagogy For the Tutor Rousseau’s Method: For Us

The Unthematized Theories of Exemplarity Methodologies Within the Thematized: Rousseau’s “Theory” and Theories

v

vii

1

13 16 41

73 73 79

83 85 97 107

121 122 132

147 147 151

vi

6

7

C ONTENTS

PART 3. Exemplarity and Deconstructibility

Derrida’s Rousseau Introduction Derrida’s Rousseau Example, Exemplar, Exemplarity Between Use and Usage: The “Lens of Differance” Excesses and Exemplarity

PART 4. The Rhetorics of Exemplarity

Theories of Rhetorics and the Places of Example Introduction Theories of Rhetorics and the Places of Example Aristotle’s Rhetorical Discourse Articulations of Exemplarity: Thematics The Rhetorical Discourse of Exemplarity

Notes

Index

179 179 181 182 196 200

209 209 214 219 226 246

263

279

Preface: Dimensions of Exemplarity

In asking the question of exemplarity, we are asking a number of related ques- tions from a number of standpoints. First we are seeking to articulate the issue of what makes examples possible. From a Kantian point of view, this entails the framework of inquiry, which insists that examples and their conditions of possibility must be seen as two distinct levels of analysis and explication. In short, the conditions of the possibility of examples cannot itself be an exam- ple, from a Kantian point of view. We also are asking the more Platonic ques- tion, which can be formulated in the following manner: What is an example? As this articulation implies, what is sought here is framed in the manner of an essence, an unchanging, atemporal, decontextualized structure that would be found in all empirical instances of exemplarity (or the manifestation of same). Thus exemplarity would take the shape of a concept to be clarified via its empirical, actual manifestation as examples. Far from assuming that the issues of exemplarity can be adequately dealt with by the above formulations, we will suggest that the limits of both a Kant- ian and a Platonic understanding of this issue must be articulated here. In addi- tion, we seek to examine, through a Heideggerian framework, the thematized “nature” of exemplarity—how examples are thought to function, clarify, and illustrate things other than themselves—and in turn the unthematized usage of examples within particular texts. Rather than opening the ontological Pan- dora’s box here, we seek to again reveal the limitations of such a formulation for an adequate description of the functioning and structures of exemplarity. This process leads naturally enough to the work of Derrida, following and expanding upon Heidegger’s restricted economy, at least inBeing and Time,to an extended or a more general economy that appears under the sign of decon- struction. In his own work, exemplarity has taken a central and problematic place inasmuch as Derrida has sought to begin an articulation of the non-Pla- tonic, non-Kantian and, precisely, non-Heideggerian manifestations of exem- plarity. However, we will seek to show here the limits of Derrida’s reworking of

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P REFACE

the issue here via “parergonality” and to reveal in addition the excess that his articulation does not and cannot account for. Through this labyrinth of approaches we are aiming toward the plurality of structures, functions, and manifestations of exemplarity as they exceed all previous formulations and assumptions made within the philosophical tradi- tion. In turn, the most common, indeed, almost colloquial understanding or misunderstanding of examples and hence exemplarity as simply thetranslata- bilityof generality into particularity, and vice versa, as if each is commensurate in some manner with the other, will beoverturned.That this notion was born with the Platonic–Aristotelian tradition of philosophy one can little doubt, but that the issue itself of exemplarity—or what makes examples possible (in a non-Kantian sense)—has never until the work of Derrida been made into a thematic issue for investigation is equally clear. The assumptions of the tradi- tion as well as the colloquial “understanding” of exemplarity will thus be prob- lematized and thematically described in what follows, as well as precisely where and why this formulation cannot account for what it purports to explain away merely by assumption. As Heidegger might put it, the issue of exemplarity has been concealed by a tradition that has made unclarified and unexamined assumptions and presuppositions concerning the matter. This burial of the issue before it has ever become an issue will be our focus here, insofar as we aim to unearth what has in effect not yet seen the light of day: the issue of exemplarity. In so doing, we seek not only to examine what exemplarity in itself—as a plurality of structures—entails, but also how the recognition of these structures may perhaps reorient the nature of philosophic inquiry itself, which without exception operates upon the assumption of precisely the translatability (between general and particular) that we seek to question and problematize. That the translation has always already occured—in its most violent and paradoxically most pure form with Hegel—cannot be doubted, but that the translation can be warranted, legitimized, and comprehended is as yet an open question. Far from assuming with the tradition that an example is sim- ply a mere particular or general model (Exemplar), we will bracket out this ready-made reception and concealment of the issue and begin to examine what isoccurringas examples are manifest. What “takes place” in the usage of examples? What function is the example performing, aside from concealing its own performance and structure in the name of what it always already “exemplifies”? That there is a hermeneutical frame around each and every example can be doubted as little as the assumption of the general/particular matrix that philosophy has insisted on misunderstanding exemplarity within. But how this hermeneutical frame is operating, how it relates to the example “framed,” as a way of reading the exampleas(something else) will be exam- ined here for the first time. That a traditional hermeneutical framework will

Preface

ix

not and cannot exhaust the performance of exemplarity also will be shown. Examples always exceed whatever frame one seeks to place around them, or whatever cage one strives to capture them within. Such is the necessary dan- ger of the use of exemplarity. Outstripping any argument oras-structure placed around, in front of them, or behind them, examples retain a secret of their own. It is this secret, this excess from every theory to date, that we seek to explicate, analyze, and formulate here. Our focus will not be an example in the traditional sense, though it will necessarily appear as such. Thus we must resist the given preunderstanding that will paradoxically allow access to our investigation—as an example—yet thereby also conceal the actual detail of what we seek to analyze, namely, the excess that such a ready access conceals and cannot account for. Our “exam- ple” thus must be justified in advance insofar as the choice itself, as part of our investigation here in general, will come under scrutiny. The texts of Rousseau, in particular,Emile, a central subject of this book, rely on a multiplicity of notions of exemplarity and at the same time they thematize the issue itself as being central to the constitution of the political, social, historical, pedagogi- cal, theological, and psychological domains, to name just a few. Rousseau focused more directly on the exemplarity issue than any other thinker before or since, with the notable exception of Derrida, yet nonetheless he did not reach the level of an actual thematization of exemplarity itself. His work revolves around the sun of exemplarity, one might argue, without ever facing it directly. It is precisely this mode ofindirection, therefore, that we seek to articulate in what follows, in particular within the text of Rousseau, which most nearly focused on the thing itself:Emile.On every single page of this extensive work of pedagogical theory, Rousseau frames his approach explicitly and implicitly by examples. This is the method that he espouses for Emile, and for us, all would-be teachers and raisers of children. Thus we can justify, in a certain way, the choice of Rousseau and, in particular,Emile, as a result of the omnipresence of this issue in his work, and his having reached the brink of the cave in attempting to formulate precisely how and why exemplarity operates in the ways that it does, and how and why it is seen by him as the most effective, useful, profound, and memorable mode of pedagogy and, therefore, of philosophizing itself. He is obsessed with the issue in short, and it is this obsession—its insight and its blindness—that we seek to address in what follows. In effect, we will be asking: What did Rousseau see without see- ing it, what did he know without being able to express it, what could he not know from within the assumptions he was making, and what exceeds his own understanding of exemplarity in his precise usage and reliance on the same? This examination ofEmilewill thus be akin to De Man’s reading and that of Derrida but will have the following important differences. Nothing in what follows will be restricted to theDopplegangerhinges that both De Man and