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The answer, predictably, will have to be "Yes and No'. Yes, if one takes the examples of Richard Rorty or Stanley Cavell. "No', if one rejects their efforts as those of philosophical turncoats. We can give an affirmative reply also if we read Umberto Eco's Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language as an attempt at a broad umbrella for discussion rather than as a rejection of analyticity. The answer will probably have to be "No' if we think of the notorious "exchange' between Searle and Derrida. After all, their encounter exemplifies the refusal to accept one another's terms. Too much appeared to be at stake. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why literary theory is at the moment the most promising platform for a debate between the paradigms. No great philosophical reputations are being risked. Literary theorists can be excused for trying things out and getting long-established procedures wrong. No doubt we can construe also less superficial grounds why literary theory has increasingly turned to a range of philosophical inquiry. Suffice it to say here that the mediating role between matters literary and philosophical which literary theory has adopted has less to do with the recycling of philosophical offal (though this is there too) as with the more positive task of securing the intellectual legitimation of literary inquiry itself.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-21613-0_11

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