Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Studies - Judit Ágnes Kádár: A Possible Application of Philosophy in the Study of Recent American Fiction
priest' in his attempt to make abstractions from reality and tiy to understand it with their help. At this point Rorty's opinion diverts from that of his predecessors and he seems to support Kundéra, who proclaimed that novelists who follow Dickens and Rabelaise are able to grasp the complexity and uniqueness of reality and "to revolt against the onthotheological treatise (Rorty 68)" much better. As opposed to Heidegger's cue word 'exhaustion', Kundéra and Rorty have found open-endedness to be the distinctive postmodernist attitude towards the general state of closure in Western culture. Here one can observe an interesting change in the concept of the role and method of philosophy. Contrary to the 'artistic priests' sterile, declarative and generalizing —consequently in most cases erroneous — stance, a new kind of philosophical approach has emerged: the interrogative one (see also Federman 11) which is able to examine details and fragments of reality (see also Rorty 80-1) without the claim of omnipotent answers, but with more hope of truthfulness and practical applicability. Before examining the difference in the attitude of philosophers' and novelists' approach to reality in detail, let me refer to another aspect that reveals the difference between the modern and postmodern mind. Among the critical studies dealing with this issue one of the most comprehensive one is Ihab Hassan's "Postface 1982: Towards the Concept of Postmodernism." The latter provides a sketch of schematic differences between what we call Modernism and Postmodernism, including philosophical perspectives among many, too. Postmodernism is characterized with attributes such as Chance (as opposed to Design); Anarchy (versus Hierarchy); Exhaustion/Silence (versus Mastery/Logos); Decreation/Deconstruction (versus Creation/ Totalization); Anti-thesis, Indeterminacy and Immanence, to mention a few (267-8). These notions signify aesthetic thinking in our age, at the same time they represent the final stage of the process where selfconsciousness and certainty still existing in realistic metaphysical and modern thinking gets lost. Vajda points out the change in the focus and basic concerns, too: whereas the aesthetic thinking of the previous ages took metaphysics and the spheres of rationality (i.e. economics, politics) as their starting-point, postmodern focuses on the spheres of freedom such as private and public life and culture (194). Consequently postmodern thinkers and critics should renounce their 45
