Crossing the finite provinces of meaning

experience and metaphorizing of literature and arts

Gerd Sebald

pp. 117-127

in: Michael Barber, Jochen Dreher (eds), The interrelation of phenomenology, social sciences and the arts, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

Schutz's references to literature and arts in his theoretical works are manifold. But literature and the arts are both a certain kind of a finite province of meaning, that means they are not easily accessible from the paramount reality of everyday life. Now there is another kind of referring to literature: metaphorizing it. Metaphorizing in this view is then a specific kind of border-crossing between different provinces of meaning. That poses a question: What means finiteness of those provinces of meaning, what kind of border crossings are possible? What is the ground for metaphorizing meaning? These question will be answered with one example in view: Schutz' report to Kaufmann of his first visit of Husserl describing his experience as feeling like Wilhelm Meister at the Society of the Tower. In a first step this metaphor is presented together with some crumbs of metaphor theory. In a second step these crumbs will be connected to Husserl's concept of experience. After developing a short overview over Schutz' "finite provinces of meaning," the relation of experience, metaphors to the intersubjectivity of these provinces in their dependence from writing and printing is discussed.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Schütz Alfred