Carlyle and Scottish Thought

Jessop, Ralph

doi:10.1057/9780230371477

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“…In the present collection, German Transcendental Idealism appears to haunt the nineteenth century alongside Hume. In addition to essays by Hao Li, Andrew Mangham and Debbie Harrison, which discuss the provocative ethics of Transcendental Idealism, Kit Andrews and Ralph Jessop expand our understanding of Transcendental Idealism’s influence during the period. In ‘Fichte, Carlyle, and the Nineteenth‐Century British Literary Reception of German Idealism’, Andrews looks at Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s influence on Thomas Carlyle, as manifested in Sartor Resartus (1833–4), suggesting that Fichte’s influence eclipsed that of Kant and became fundamental to the relationship between Romanticism and Idealism in the early nineteenth century, before Hegelianism came to dominate British conceptions of German Idealism.…”

Section: Literature and Philosophy In Nineteenth‐century Britainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In ‘Fichte, Carlyle, and the Nineteenth‐Century British Literary Reception of German Idealism’, Andrews looks at Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s influence on Thomas Carlyle, as manifested in Sartor Resartus (1833–4), suggesting that Fichte’s influence eclipsed that of Kant and became fundamental to the relationship between Romanticism and Idealism in the early nineteenth century, before Hegelianism came to dominate British conceptions of German Idealism. In his essay, ‘Coinage of the Term Environment: A Word Without Authority and Carlyle’s Displacement of the Mechanical Metaphor’, Ralph Jessop discusses how Thomas Carlyle coined the word ‘environment’ in dialogue with Goethe. At the same time though, and often intermixed with German Idealism, American Transcendentalism – particularly Emersonism Transcendentalism – took shape as transatlantically, as Dave Greenham’s Afterward illustrates, influencing writers from Carlyle to Morris.…”

Section: Literature and Philosophy In Nineteenth‐century Britainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 3 In recent years this has in part been addressed by the Journal of Scottish Philosophy and, in relation to literature, Carlyle and Scottish Thought by Ralph Jessop. …”

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Literary Form and Philosophical Thought in Nineteenth‐Century Britain

Hext

2012

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This introduction to the special issue on Philosophy and Literature in Nineteenth‐Century Britain intends to define the fundamental historical and theoretical contexts of the volume. There are three main parts to this contextualization. First, and most substantially, I explore the interests and evolution of philosophical ideas in nineteenth‐century Britain. Whilst giving an overview of the trends and movements in the period, I argue that literature was essential in the dissemination, interrogation and even the constitution of philosophical ideas. Secondly, I sketch the increasing anxieties surrounding ‘philosophy’ in the nineteenth century, and suggest that nineteenth‐century novelists, poets and literary critics participated significantly in rethinking the nature of abstract, systematized philosophical discourse. Thirdly, in framing this discussion, I address why philosophy and literature have been marginalized in nineteenth‐century studies, arguing that the relationship between literature and philosophy is fundamental to our understanding of the period. Looking ahead, I suggest how scholars in nineteenth‐century studies might enter into an interdisciplinary dialogue with philosophical studies of philosophy and literature.

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Section: Literature and Philosophy In Nineteenth‐century Britainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature and Philosophy In Nineteenth‐century Britainmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Literary Form and Philosophical Thought in Nineteenth‐Century Britain

Hext

2012

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“…Reid positions himself with ‘the vulgar’, contests the fallacious tendency of mere terminology, critiques and rejects what he calls ‘the way of analogy’, and establishes some of the bases of later contestations of mechanistic, instrumentalist psychology that can be traced in the American pragmatist tradition of the latter half of the 19th century, of which William James is just one example (James 10–20). Brought into relation with the Reidian philosophical tradition’s attempt to undermine the mechanical metaphor used in the construction of at least some versions of the theory of ideas (Jessop, Carlyle and Scottish Thought 63–70), the coinage of ‘environment’ becomes part of an unfolding narrative that sources its own authority within a rich and complex experiential diversity and stands against both theoretical opinions enforced by the authority of the few, and the mechanical metaphor as the product and prop of that authority.…”

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Coinage of the Term Environment: A Word Without Authority and Carlyle’s Displacement of the Mechanical Metaphor

Jessop

2012

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Translating the word ‘Umgebung’ in a work by Goethe, Carlyle coined the term ‘environment’ in the South of Scotland in 1828. Goethe’s usage involves reference to a Scottish subject, Macpherson’s Ossian. Referring to this, in 1942 Spitzer argued that the broader meaning of the word was misrepresented by Carlyle’s translation. However, after coining the term environment, Carlyle’s later work can be read as a significant realisation of this broader Goethean meaning, through his literary‐critical discussion of Robert Burns, literary‐philosophical Sartor Resartus, and his biography and historiography. The term needs to be seen partly as a response to a large number of intersecting social, political, economic, and agrarian changes associated with the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and in particular the modernising transformations of the Lowland Clearances. But, through the ways in which this examination of the term’s coinage brings into relation Goethe, Carlyle, the philosophy of Thomas Reid, and a theory of concepts by Sir William Hamilton, the hybridising processes involved in coining the term can also be seen as constituting a pivotal moment of transnational cultural exchange, an encapsulation of diversity, an interdisciplinary interrelation of literary, philosophical, and social critique, and a paradigm‐shifting challenge to the authority of mechanism. These intersecting elements are peculiarly apt with regard to certain radical dimensions of continuing relevance to the counter‐Enlightenment position of Adorno and Horkheimer, humanity’s relation with nature, our continuing struggles with the Enlightenment legacy, and to the expansive, plural, and potentially evolving character of the notion of environment – but also to the later emergence of environmentalism.

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“…Although it may seem paradoxical to derive the distinctive characteristics of Carlyle's 'sage discourse' from Scottish Common Sense philosophy, when his contemporaries were so struck by the ostensible 'Germanness' of Carlyle's thought, it is not unjustifiable to regard Carlyle's appeals to 'German philosophy' as being rhetorical rather than substantive, since Rosemary Ashton has established that Carlyle was not very deeply versed in German Idealism. 6 Common Sense philosophy got its name through its appeal, against Hume's radical scepticism, to fundamental 'principles of common sense', but this doesn't mean that the conclusions it came to were merely commonsensical: as Noel B. Jackson has argued in a recent article, this philosophical tradition is more accurately characterized as concerned with exploring the limits of what can count as 'common sense'. One of the ways in which the limits of 'common sense' were drawn by the founder of this tradition, the late eighteenth-century philosopher Thomas Reid, and by the influential popularizer of this position, the poet James Beattie, was by reference to the inherent grammatical structure of language.…”

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