Communion, Not Consilience: Protecting the Future of Interdisciplinary Literary Study

Literary Darwinists aspire to be white knights who rescue the humanities. By drawing literary studies under the methodologically and metaphysically naturalistic umbrella of consilience, they aim to transform it into a discipline that marks progress by accumulation of knowledge. This essay explains h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Philosophy and literature 2017-10, Vol.41 (2), p.290-303
Main Author:	Lake, Christina Bieber
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	evolutionary theory Gadamer, Hans-Georg History and criticism Humanities Interdisciplinary approach to knowledge Interdisciplinary aspects interdisciplinary studies Knowledge Literary theory literary theory and criticism Literature Naturalism Philosophy Scholars Science Social Darwinism in literature Studies
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Literary Darwinists aspire to be white knights who rescue the humanities. By drawing literary studies under the methodologically and metaphysically naturalistic umbrella of consilience, they aim to transform it into a discipline that marks progress by accumulation of knowledge. This essay explains how this scientistic agenda works against the new interdisciplinary energy between the sciences and humanities. Instead of consilience, literary scholars interested in interdisciplinary work with the sciences would be far better served by Gadamer’s account of the structure of human experience as that which progresses by way of a transformative communion between the I and the Thou.
ISSN:	0190-0013 1086-329X 1086-329X