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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