Estetyka I Krytyka the Polish Journal of Aesthetics
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Estetyka The Polish Journal i Krytyka of Aesthetics Estetyka The Polish Journal i Krytyka of Aesthetics 43 (4/2016) Jagiellonian University in Kraków Estetyka i Krytyka | The Polish Journal of Aesthetics Editor-in-Chief: Leszek Sosnowski Editorial Board: Natalia Anna Michna (Deputy Editor), Dominika Czakon (Deputy Editor), Anna Kuchta (Secretary), Iwona M. Malec, Marcin Lubecki Advisory Board: Władysław Stróżewski, Tiziana Andino, Franciszek Chmielowski, Nigel Dower, Akiko Kasuya, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Teresa Kostyrko, Diana Tietjens Meyers, Carla Milani Damião, Grzegorz Dziamski, Bogdan Dziemidok, Tadeusz Gadacz, Jean Grondin, Carl Humphries, Andrzej J. Nowak, Elżbieta Paczkowska-Łagowska, Mauro Perani, Zofia Rosińska, Beata Szymańska, Józef Tarnowski, Kiyomitsu Yui, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska, BogusławContact: Żyłko Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University 52 Grodzka Street, 31-004 Kraków, Poland [email protected], www.estetykaikrytyka.plPublished by: Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University 52 Grodzka Street, 31-004 Kraków,Co-publisher: Poland Wydawnictwo Biblioteka, wydawnictwo-biblioteka.pl Proofreading: Richard Erickson Mateusz Poradecki Editorial Layout and Typesetting: Mateusz Poradecki Cover Design: First Edition: 150 copies © Copyright by Jagiellonian University e-ISSN 2353-723X / p-ISSN 1643-1243 All rights reserved Hermeneutics and Art Editors of the Volume: Jean Grondin Dominika Czakon Contents Noelle Leslie dela Cruz Surviving Hiroshima: An Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa 9 Dominika Czakon Is the Hermeneutic Interpretation of Art Erotic? A Reader of Gadamer Responds to Sontag’s Challenge 45 Magdalena Filipczuk “Epistemological Reading”: Stanley Cavell’s Method of Reading Literature 65 Jean Grondin L’art comme présentation chez Gadamer. Portée et limites d’un concept 85 Cynthia R. Nielsen Harsh Poetry and Art’s Address: Romare Bearden and Hans‑Georg Gadamer in Conversation 101 Rafał Solewski Metaphysical cognition in hermeneutic interpretation: remarks on Grzegorz Sztabiński’s The Writing of Nature – Transcendence III 123 Tomasz Szczepanek The Work of Art in the Times of Late Modernity by Gianni Vattimo 143 Daniel L. Tate Hermeneutics and Poetics: Gadamer on the Poetic Word 155 Katarzyna Weichert The hermeneutics of the image – sensual appearance of sense 187 About the Contributors 203 Estetyka The Polish Journal i Krytyka of Aesthetics 43 (4/2016), DOI: 10.19205/43.16.1 Noelle Leslie dela Cruz* Surviving Hiroshima: An Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa1 Abstract In this paper, I present a philosophical analysis of the famous manga series, Bare‑ foot Gen (Hadashi no Gen memoir of his childhood as an atom bomb survivor in Hiroshima, Japan. Against the backdrop of larger issues) of by war Keiji and Nakazawa, peace, Gen’s which family is the struggles author’s with quasi‑fictional his father’s ideological rebellion against the nation’s militaristic rule, leading to the family’s persecution. The story then chronicles the cataclysmic effects of the bomb, and the fates of Gen and other survivors as they live through the aftermath of the detona‑ tion and the hardships of the American occupation. My framework for critique fol‑ lows Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology, which applies the descriptive method of phenomenology to cultural texts. Key words Paul Ricoeur, manga, graphic memoirs, comics, sequential art, hermeneutical phenomenology, Barefoot Gen, Hiroshima, Keiji Nakazawa, autobiography * PhilosophyEmail: [email protected] Department PaperDe La presentedSalle University, at the 2015Philippines national conference of the Philosophical Associa‑ 1 pertainingtion of the Philippines, to Ricoeur’s “Doing hermeneutical Philosophy phenomenology in the Philippines,” and the held formal at Casa elements, San Pablo is‑ sues,in San and Pablo theories City, Laguna, related Philippines,to comics have on May been 8 ‑excerpted10, 2015. The from sections my unpublished of this paper re‑ search project sponsored by the University Research and Coordination Office of De La Salle University. 10 Noelle Leslie dela Cruz In this paper, I present a philosophical analysis of the famous manga se‑ ries, Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) by Keiji Nakazawa, which is the au‑ ‑ vor in Hiroshima, Japan. Against the backdrop of larger issues of war andthor’s peace, quasi‑fictional Gen’s family memoir struggles of his with childhood his father’s as an ideological atom bomb rebellion survi against the nation’s militaristic rule, leading to the family’s persecu‑ tion. The story then chronicles the cataclysmic effects of the bomb, and the fates of Gen and other survivors as they live through the aftermath of the detonation and the hardships of the American occupation. My framework for critique follows Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology, which applies the descriptive method of phenomenol‑ ogy to cultural texts. In particular, I adopt a Ricoeurian way of read‑ ing sequential art or comics, in order to bring out the existential issues that uniquely arise from Nakazawa’s account and the medium he chose to use. Indeed, comics has come a long way from its initial association, in the public mind, with humor or lowbrow entertainment. The rise ‑ ‑ passesof the “graphic a number novel” of scholarly over the anthologies, past several respected decades journals, is proof conferencof the ma‑ es,turity and of academic the form. courses. Today, the burgeoning field of comics studies encom Academic approaches to works of sequential art include literary crit‑ icism, linguistic analysis, and semiotics. Philosophers have also taken a stab at issues pertaining to the form of comics, or its ethical or ontologi‑ cal contents. What I intend to do is offer a way of reading comics through Ricoeur’s synthesis of phenomenological description and hermeneutic interpretation. I aim to show the relevance of this approach to reading or interpreting comics, i.e. to the problem of how comics makes meaning and its implications for the nature of consciousness. For Ricoeur, and con‑ tra Edmund Husserl, we can only aim for an interpretation, rather than meaning of the world thus entails understanding the meaning of one’s life ina pure one’s description, cultural and of historical the objects contexts. of consciousness. Through a Ricoeurian Understanding approach the toward comics, using Barefoot Gen as a source text, the paper aims to en‑ gage with the peculiar amalgamation of the visual and the verbal so often found in cultural texts – and which is most evident in comics. 11 Surviving Hiroshima… Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology ‑ Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) was one of the early French translators and‑ leau‑Ponty,scholars of EdmundRicoeur doesHusserl. not enjoyCompared quite theto Husserl’s same stature other or existential following. ist critics such as Martin Heidegger, Jean‑Paul Sartre, and Maurice Mer eclipsed by that of Hans Georg Gadamer. In the area of phenomenological hermeneutics, his influence is similarly be the dialectic progression of his thought. He was not given to a dra‑ maticOne uncompromising reason for the relativestance neglecttoward ofpolarizing Ricoeur’s issues, rich insights but tended may to make the best of both worlds, so to speak. As Ihde2 (1971, 14) notes in his prescient summation of Ricoeur’s methodology, written in the middle of the philosopher’s career, “The general strategy of opposing two sides of a polarity leading to a limit concept becomes a major tactic ‑ enologicalof Ricoeur’s epoché thought.” in exposing the errors of the natural attitude, or of ob‑ On one hand, Ricoeur acknowledges the importance of the phenom limitations of extreme subjectivism in Husserl’s stance, introducing her‑ meneuticsjectivist or asscientific a corrective paradigms. to phenomenology. On the other hand,The result he also is pointsa hybrid to theap‑ proach that lends itself not so much to other philosophers’ critique as to extra‑philosophical applications. Another reason why Ricoeur seems to be less popular than other hermeneutical phenomenologists is that his major projects tend to be open‑ended, and he would move from one topic to another not so much 3 was the philosophy of the will, to which he applied his teacher Mer‑ leau‑Ponty’sby logical necessity work on as the by phenomenology“infamous” detours of perception.. His first Thenmajor in concern his re‑ lated study of the nature of evil, he took a linguistic turn and investigat‑ ed the role of symbols in the making of meaning. Thereafter he pursued issues concerning time and narrative, memory, intersubjectivity, justice, political philosophy, and ethics4 Hermeneutic Phenomenology:. Consequently The perhaps,Philosophy Ricoeur’s of Paul Ricoeur ideas. 2 D. Pellauer,Ihde, 1986. Ricoeur: A Guide for the Perplexed, New York 2007, p. 42. USA: Northwestern University Press. 3 G. Madison, “The Interpretive Turn in Phenomenology: A Philosophical Histo‑ D. 4 Between Description and Interpretation: The Hermeneutic Turn in Phenom‑ enology ry”, [in:] , ed. A. Wiercinski, Toronto 2005, pp. 32–33. 12 Noelle Leslie dela Cruz have a wide applicability, not the least of which is in the analysis and in‑ terpretation of sequential art. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on his hermeneutical phenomenology, a method of interpretation that takes off from a critique of Husserl’s idealism. Ricoeur tempers Husserl’s premise that essences could be directly in‑ ‑ tempts to bring phenomenology and hermeneutics together (hermeneu‑ tics,tuited,