ANTI-PSYCHOLOGISM

Frege's anti-psychologism

Frege's anti-psychologism

Introduction

This chapter initiates the project of exploring how it is possible, from within an analytic framework, to account adequately for the philosophical significance of a literary work of art. The first phase of this project is to examine some of the primary ways analytic philosophers have sought to do justice to an experience of literature as philosophically rich and powerful. The goal of the chapter is not to provide an exhaustive historical overview, but rather to examine some of the most promising approaches that have been developed. The point will be to bring out the rich diversity of these approaches but also to underscore the fundamental ways, in which they are united in their widespread resistance to tendencies within the analytic tradition that make it difficult to see literary works as vehicles of serious philosophical thought.

Frege's description of Psychology

Philosophers who seek to account adequately for the philosophical significance of literature (whether literature more or some particular literary text) work against the grain of an assumption that many analytic philosophers share the assumption that literary and philosophical concerns do not mix. The source of this assumption can be traced to the inception of the analytic tradition in Frege's thought. Starting with Frege, one way that tradition has defined itself is by distinguishing sharply between the “logical” (that, which pertains to, the expression, and, justification of truth-valuable content) and the “psychological” (that which pertains to effects on the psychological faculties of a reader or viewer, especially the feelings and imagination). Indeed, this tradition has understood one of its central tasks to be that of overcoming confusions of the “logical” with the “psychological”. This has created an obstacle to the possibility of seeing literary works as philosophically efficacious in any significant way because the force that literary works have for their readers has been associated, with a “merely psychological” capacity to powerfully engaged the feelings, and, imagination. To many, this obstacle continues to seem insurmountable; in other words, Fregean's contrast of 'aesthetic delight' with 'scientific investigation'” still strikes many as natural and justified. However, some important analytic interpreters have sought to overcome this obstacle by arguing that certain works of literature achieve something of genuine philosophical importance precisely in virtue of their aesthetic or literary quality, which is, in virtue of those characteristics such as a literary form and style that were taken to be of merely psychological significance (DePaul, 1988).

An obstacle in Frege Psychology

On Frege's conception, a central task of philosophy is that of disentangling the “logical”, that which is of interest from the perspective of a concern for truth, from the “psychological”, that which is of interest from the perspective of a concern with human cognitive faculties. As Frege conceives it, the “logical” and the “psychological” are “naturally intermingled”, and, with respect to most human activities and interests, this is as it should be. It is not his intent, he emphasizes, to “banish any trace of what is, psychological from thinking, as it naturally takes ...