Remigius Bunia

Empirie. Zu Francis Bacon, zur Geschichte der mathematisierten Physik und der statistischen Methode sowie zur Hermeneutik als empirischer Wissenschaft

Empirical research is nowadays usually identified with statistical retrieval of data. Likewise the philosophical concept of empiricism, opposed to rationalism, stresses sensual information and observation. However, these notions do not sufficiently take into account how empirical research emerged by questioning what the unity of a phenomenon is and how it can be accessed by means of thought and communication. The article reassesses the history of empirical research, and it demonstrates that this history starts with Francis Bacon distrusting words and the power of verbal description. Empirical research challenges the equation of language and thought, but it does not attack rationalism or logic. The article eventually claims that this equation persists to be taken for valid in the humanities, which is the major obstacle to finding an adequate hermeneutical groundwork for philosophical and literary theory.

Fingierte Kunst. Der Fall Esra und die Schranken der Kunstfreiheit

Die bisherigen Entscheidungen der Gerichte zum ›Verbot‹ des Romans Esra gehen von einer Erkennbarkeit realer Personen im fiktionalen Roman aus. Oft wird bestritten, dass in Romanfiguren reale Menschen wiedererkannt werden können. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt jedoch, dass aus fiktionstheoretischer Perspektive eine solche Erkennbarkeit möglich ist. Fiktionale Texte können sogar akkurate Beschreibungen der realen Welt bilden. Daher sind mit Blick auf die Wirkungsweise von Fiktion die gerichtlichen Verbotsverfügungen richtig. – Eine genauere Bestimmung dessen, was Kunst ist, schließt sich dieser fiktionstheoretischen Beschreibung an und kommt zu dem Schluss, dass Esra zwar ein Kunstwerk, aber wegen der Erkennbarkeit realer Menschen in ihren intimsten Situationen kein gelungenes Werk ist. Court decisions to ›ban‹ the novel Esra have been based on the assumption that real persons can be recognised in a fictional novel. It is often argued that real people can be discerned in a novels characters. The present essay shows that such recognisability is possible from a fiction-theoretical perspective, and that fictional texts can even provide accurate descriptions of the real world. Thus, taking into consideration the effectiveness of fiction, the court rulings to ban the novel have been well-founded. – A more exact determination of the nature of art follows this fiction-theoretical description and arrives at the conclusion that Esra is indeed a work of art, but, because of the recognisability of real people in their most intimate situations, not a successful one.

Das Handwerk in der Theoriebildung. Zu Hermeneutik und Philologie

This article analyses the reasons for the near complete absence of standards in evaluating research in literary studies. It points out two shortcomings: First, literary studies employ an unclear distinction between concepts and phenomena. Concepts become independent and are being analyzed instead of phenomena. Debates about concepts cannot be decided in the light of concrete findings, and therefore scientific competition does not aim at providing proofs and findings, but is restricted to formulating ›arguments‹ that remain inside of language. The phenomena, which could be translated into clear cut questions about objects in the world, move out of focus. Literary studies have to be enabled to formulate questions. At the moment, literary scholars do not even debate which questions would be worthwhile, but make do without questions, and thus without an orientation towards phenomena in research. Second, literary scholars notoriously keep confusing theories and methods. Theories, which provide no guidelines on how to read a text or about questions of general rhetoric, are declared to be methods, although they do not yield concrete practices for testing results. This is how Kleist can be read ›with‹ Freud, or Joyce can be read ›with‹ Latour, without it being clarified what it is that such ›theory driven‹ readings do. The article shows that all phenomena that literary scholars are interested in circle around an understanding of understanding. This holds true for questions that point towards general (›generic‹) forms (like narratology), as well as for those that address unique, special (›idiosyncratic‹) forms (like when reading an unruly, ambitious text). Understanding the understanding is concerned with the analysis of rhetoric characteristics as well as with interpretation. This research interest, which is here called ›hermeneutical‹, has only been pursued marginally, despite attempts in philosophical hermeneutics, analytical philosophy, sociological communications theory and post-structuralism. It is suggested to develop a theory of literary studies in answering hermeneutical questions, which is outlined here as a pragmatic hermeneutics (gebrauchsbasierte Hermeneutik). However, it can be shown that such a theory would not lead to concrete practices with which to evaluate the analytic content of its results and thereby describe binding standards. Only the methods as crafts remain: processes that describe the concrete and detailed handling of texts, which can be termed ›philology‹.

Fiktion als Darstellung

Literary texts let events, people, and settings appear »before the eyes« of the reader. This capacity of producing an effect of evidentia, however, does not single out literature, but is characteristic of other representational media (such as painting or cartoon) and, moreover, of kinds of representation which are not specifically aesthetic (e.g. newspaper reports). This paper discusses a concept of representation which updates the scholarly tradition linked to this term; but most of all, it aims to enlarge the range of the concept’s applicability to the entire variety of »manifest« imaginations induced by signs. On the one hand, this proposal will prove useful in characterizing fictionality, which is not a phenomenon restricted to art, either. On the other hand, the present paper helps disentangle content from form by introducing the distinction between representation and mode of representation. This new distinction will turn out to be relevant for scholarly readings of literary texts.