The Beginnings of European Theorizing: Reflexivity in the Archaic Age: Logological Investigations: Volume Two

by Sandywell,Barry

• ISBN13: 9780415101691
• ISBN10: 0415101697
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-02-05
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

InReflexivity and the Crisis of Western ReasonBarry Sandywell outlined and defended a central place for reflexivity in the human sciences. In this second equally outstanding and challenging volume of Logological Investigations, he reconstructs the origins of "European" reflection. The author's central claim is that the world does not exist independently of us, but that it is constituted through the terms of our discursive categories. Rather than research being a triumphant exploration, it is more fully understood as agonized self-reflection on the grounds of knowledge production. Sandywell argues that this approach has been inherent throughout Western philosophy and in so doing, he shows that the reflexive character of human experience in Western Culture can be traced through the desire for intelligibility that animated Greek drama, poetry, philosophy and science as explorations of the cosmos, body-politics and the soul.

Author Biography

Barry Sandywell is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Towards a Sociological Poetics Abbreviations

Mythopoiesis: The Praxis of Myth

Introduction

Mythopoiesis in Oral Culture: Obscure Moons in the Firmament of Reason

Myth as the Matrix of Early Greek Thought and Philosophy

The Public and Political Nature of Greek Religion

The Dialectic of Myth and Philosophy: Early Institutions of Reflection

Myth - the Logos of the Lifeworld

Narrative Strategies in Greek Myth

Conclusion - Myth as the Matrix of Logos

Homeric Epic Reflexivity: Self and Self-Reflexivity in the Iliad and Odyssey

Introduction

The Logological Significance of the Homeric Texts

Epic Narrative Form(s)

The World of the Poem: the Homeric Lifeworld as a Videological Universe

Self and Self-Relexivity in the Homeric World

The Civilising Powers of Homeric Discourse

Conclusion: Thersites' Revenge

Hesiod and the Birth of the Gods

Introduction: Mythos-Logos

Theogonic Myth as Discourse and Prototheorising

The Discovery of the `I': Self-Reflexivity in Hesiod's Writing

The Poetic `I' and Divine Authorisation

Hesiodic Symbolism and the `Mythological World-View'

The Violence of Differentiation and the Appearance of the Gods

Hesiodic Ideology: the Valorisation of Justice and Work

Hesiodic Utopiansim

Lyric Reflexivities

The Genealogy of Individual Lyric Voices

Choral Lyric: From Collective to Individual Forms of Self-Reflection

From Choral Lyric to Monody: the Social Construction of the Individual Lyric Voice

Conclusion: the `concept' of Lyric Reflexivity

Pindar and the Age of Literary Consciousness

The Life-World as a Theatre of Reflexive Praxis

The Heroic Ethic in Reflexive Mimesis

Gods and Men

Death and the Elysian Fields

Death and the Poetic Logos

Conclusion: Pindar's World

Orphism

Introduction: the Appearance of Orphism in Greek culture

Orphic Cosmogomy as an Allegory of Cosmic Alienation

The Orphic Body or the Doctrine of Cathartic Reflexivity

The Tropes of Dionysus

The Orphic Background of the Logos

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.