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

support or clean-cut answers for the problems of daily existence. Both try to interrogate, to help through defining questions in our chaotic world that from time to time seems to lack any sufficient and reliable value system. The power and merit of both the writer and the philosopher can be the courage to question our preconceptions and convictions concerning the way we live and think, or the sense or senselessness of our life. The difference between the attitude of philosophers and writers is to be examined later on. However, in the following I am to epitomize those significant philosophical ideas that I consider essential in the study of recent literature. Philosophers like Schopenhauer observed that in an aesthetic sense the world became a dream or rather a nightmare with a universe is falling apart. Heidegger applied the term 'Age of the World Picture' to describe the state when "everything is enframed, made into material either for manipulation or for aesthetic declaration (Rorty 69)." A form of this aesthetic declaration is Postmodernism, when Western man living in some kind of self-deception is reminded of his being 'forgetful of Being,' applying Heidegger's term, and he is called to reject the outside entropic forces that tend to kill individuality and personality. Having accepted the Many Worlds Theory, we should also assent to the existence of many truths—an idea completely inconceivable before modernism. America and American philosophers, especially the pragmatists are liberal when applying the 'live and let live' concept to truth as well. Following Richard Rorty, William James and Max Schelet's Absolute Pluralism, Mihály Vajda argues that our truth cannot damage others' freedom anymore. But how can truth be so tolerant? The pragmatist answer is that there are universal truths of existence, as Vajda claims. In my understanding these universal truths create their own paradigms that can become fields of interpretation in the case of each artifact. The complexity and relativity of postmodern novels reflect the anti-rationality of present reality. In their common effort to overcome the tradition of Western metaphysics and the One True Description idea, philosophers and writers try to seize existence not from a theoretical viewpoint but in narration instead. The latter has been pointed out by Vajda, examining the diverting points between Heidegger, Rorty and Kundéra. Heidegger declared that Western culture had exhausted its possibilities, but he was the one who became a so-called 'aesthetic 44