505
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_54
Chapter 54
The Unfettered Gaze
54.1 Dualistic Centralities
In his discussion of paradox, Hugh Bredin writes, “philosophers tend to give the
name ‘paradox’ to any statement which on the surface seems straightforward and
innocuous but which turns out, on further examination, to have consequences
which undermine some fundamental laws of logic, thought, or language” and he
goes on to examine the “New Criticism” school of mid-twentieth-century American
writing, particularly the esthetic deliberations of Cleanth Brooks, author of The
Well Wrought Urn, with its first chapter titled “The Language of Paradox”.
1
Bredin
is interested to plumb paradoxical nuances of poetry, truth, relationships between
irony, contradiction, and what Friedrich Schlegel described as “the impossibility
… of total communication.” Bredin describes Brooks’ belief that there are “some
truths that cannot be stated, but which can be vaguely glimpsed or half-known
through our encounters with words”.
2
Actually, Brooks (1906–1994), who cofounded the Southern Review with Robert Penn Warren, and is most remembered
for his phrase, “the heresy of paraphrase,” believed in poetry—all art—in and for
itself, devoid of any external necessities, liberated by the very nature of itself from
the criticism that would deliberately or inadvertently alter the pure structure and
freedom of a poem. It did not require exegesis. It was alone and unfettered by that
which is irreducible (Fig. 54.1).
This dialectic which reduces to the irreducible, is crucial to ecological concerns—whether in the debate (linguistic, artistic, conceptual, and geopolitical)
1 Dobson Publishers, London, 1949, pp. 3–20.
2 Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum,” in Schlegel’s Dialogue on Poetry
and Literary Aphorisms, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania State
University Press, London PA, 1968, pp. 121–132, as cited by Bredin. Hugh Bredin, Philosophy
and Literature, Paideia, “Ironies and Paradoxes, https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lite/LiteBred.
htm, Paper Presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts,
August 10–15, 1998.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_54
Chapter 54
The Unfettered Gaze
54.1 Dualistic Centralities
In his discussion of paradox, Hugh Bredin writes, “philosophers tend to give the
name ‘paradox’ to any statement which on the surface seems straightforward and
innocuous but which turns out, on further examination, to have consequences
which undermine some fundamental laws of logic, thought, or language” and he
goes on to examine the “New Criticism” school of mid-twentieth-century American
writing, particularly the esthetic deliberations of Cleanth Brooks, author of The
Well Wrought Urn, with its first chapter titled “The Language of Paradox”.
1
Bredin
is interested to plumb paradoxical nuances of poetry, truth, relationships between
irony, contradiction, and what Friedrich Schlegel described as “the impossibility
… of total communication.” Bredin describes Brooks’ belief that there are “some
truths that cannot be stated, but which can be vaguely glimpsed or half-known
through our encounters with words”.
2
Actually, Brooks (1906–1994), who cofounded the Southern Review with Robert Penn Warren, and is most remembered
for his phrase, “the heresy of paraphrase,” believed in poetry—all art—in and for
itself, devoid of any external necessities, liberated by the very nature of itself from
the criticism that would deliberately or inadvertently alter the pure structure and
freedom of a poem. It did not require exegesis. It was alone and unfettered by that
which is irreducible (Fig. 54.1).
This dialectic which reduces to the irreducible, is crucial to ecological concerns—whether in the debate (linguistic, artistic, conceptual, and geopolitical)
1 Dobson Publishers, London, 1949, pp. 3–20.
2 Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum,” in Schlegel’s Dialogue on Poetry
and Literary Aphorisms, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania State
University Press, London PA, 1968, pp. 121–132, as cited by Bredin. Hugh Bredin, Philosophy
and Literature, Paideia, “Ironies and Paradoxes, https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lite/LiteBred.
htm, Paper Presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts,
August 10–15, 1998.