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Aesthetics and Ethics in Gadamer, Levinas, and Romanticism: Problems of Phronesis and Techne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

David P. Haney
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Abstract

Aristotle's distinction between phronesis, or ethical knowledge, and techne, or productive knowledge, is relevant both to Romantic and to modern discussions of the relations between aesthetic and ethical experience. Wordsworth and Coleridge try in different ways to negotiate between the two kinds of knowledge, advocating the ethical force of poetry while acknowledging its status as techne; in contrast, modern criticism tends either to accept the ubiquity of techne or to revive phronesis while undervaluing the tension between the two. Hans-Georg Gadamer and Emmanuel Levinas provide a way to link phronesis to aesthetic autonomy through the means-end unity of phronesis and the ethical claim of the other, although Gadamer overemphasizes the autonomy of the artwork and Levinas under-emphasizes the ethical possibilities of the aesthetic. Wordsworth and Coleridge present the ethical encounter with the other as in tension with techne, but they also show that tension itself to be ethically significant.

Type
Special Topic: Ethics and Literary Study
Information
PMLA , Volume 114 , Issue 1: Special Topic Ethics and Literary Study Introduction by Lawrence Buell , January 1999 , pp. 32 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1999

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