Project	philological play

	philology: conceptual literary studies gary e. davis	January 11, 2019

I want to think of such inquiry in a mixed way: conceptual, psychacentric (not egoistic!), discursive group theory, and as artistic engagement with sciences, altogether idealizing a kind of scientific artistry. I don’t regard that as concepualist, i.e., as if idealizing (or hoping to clarify) an ultimate conceptuality (which echoes ontologism). Conceptual inquiry, engagement, and theory belongs to every doman of humanities, of course. Standard “criticism” involves enstancing and enframing themes and topics, finding and enabling plays and interplays—free tendencies toward and away from kindredness (consonance), complementarity, congruence, difference, contrast, and dissonance. One might shape that into something aptly named conceptual group theory: prospecting meta-discursive play and interplay of conceptualities. The academic industry of “interdisciplinary studies” might be conceptualized congruently. Yet, what coheres many domains in their interdomainity belongs to no domain and to all. Inquiring into and prospecting all of this as such might best be called philological, in a 21st century sense of conceptual literary studies, especially in light of recent inquiry into conceptuality—even beyond. Let’s have a philological philosophy, born of philogenic engagements with conceptuality: poiesis (prospected as philogeny), logos (prospected as philology), and ethos (prospected as philo-sophy: teaching sophistication of conceptual creativity, comprehensiveness, and generative promise). Now, I recognize that this may seem to be an idiosyncratic and nebulous (if not obscure) sense of what philosophy already is. But I’ll argue that a detailing of evidence-based 3-fold isomorphisms across the humanities and human sciences involves (and clarifies, I hope) an evolutionist process philology that (a) antedates historical “Process Philosophy” and (b) relativizes historical philosophy to evolving interdomainity, in terms of its leading conceptual work (my selectivity, to be sure, but with no more pretense than an exemplarity of engagement). The bricolagic nature of evolving humanity calls for conceptuality that is kindredly (isomorphically) manifold—adventures in philology of cultural (humanistic) virtue?— which can be fruitfully appropriated for the Good of intergenerational life (gladly implying a mystery of “the” “Good”—better than “begging the question”). —> Area page

 

 

Be fair. © 2019, gary e. davis