Search results

Citation: Houghton, Winifred A. Ninteenth century criticism. Senior thesis, Kansas State Agricultural College, 1897. ; Morse Department of Special Collections ; Introduction: Criticism does not flourish in great creative epochs, neither do great works come during any great critical epoch; but rather they alternate. In Greece, all the creative force was spent before anything like criticism, in the shape of Aristotle's definitions and canons for tragedy appeared. Upon the Greek works or a basis was founded the first epoch of systematic criticism which the world had seen—the Alexandrian era, as it is called. From this period with the advancing ages criticism has grown and flourished until now it is one of the most important factors in the literary world. Matthew Arnold says that "Real criticism is essentially the exercise of curiosity as to ideas on all subjects, for their own sakes, apart from any practical interest they may serve, it obeys an instinct prompting it to try to know the best that is known and thought in the world, irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the kind, and to value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, without the intrusion of any other considerations whatever." This is true of all criticism whether of poetry or of other forms of literature and science.

"When we follow the threads of political argument dominant in the new millennium back to their root assumptions, we sooner or later encounter claims about "human dignity" and the "respect" it is supposed to command. These categories are now the dominant vehicle for expressing a commitment to humanitarian improvement, pretending to a significance at once universal and foundational for late modern politics and its avowed project of civilization. Social criticism and protest, democratic deliberation, as well as our efforts to manage our deepest ethical disagreements now all seem unthinkable apart from these categories. Our very consciousness of ourselves as enjoying legal, moral, and civic standing today speaks the language of respect and human dignity. Few would find it easy to explain the significance of other key political concepts - justice, freedom, autonomy, impartiality, reciprocity, equality, rights, property, cruelty, tolerance, civility - without at some point speaking of the "equal respect due to all," the "dignity of the human person," the importance of "mutual respect," and so forth. Today, it seems, no social and political practice can vindicate itself except before the tribunal of human dignity"

The starting points of this article are the ?victims? of the violence of
social critique and their perceptions of wounds it inflicted. It is found
that one could recognize and articulate three theoretical groups of enemy of
social critique who, in the name of protecting the values they believe the
critique challenges, get up against it: traditionalists, ?uncritically? or
?post-critically?, grooved in this or that unquestionable world;
?Politophiles?, advocating autonomy of the art of politics in front of the
superior court of reason; researchers of the ?irrational? who, searching for
the truth or accompishment, test the boundaries of rationality. It is
concluded, however, that the three strategies of refuting social criticism
have no equal theoretical range: only the last formation remains loyal to the
gesture of critique even when it turns against the reason as a ground of its
own validity and, in this way, rehabilitate both reason and critique. Unlike
the other two types of denial of critique that reject it from the standpoint
of social undesirability, early German romanticists and heirs of their
?aesthetic? orientation do not abandon rationality, but reconfigurate it.
They criticize the rationality with rational means in a clear awareness of
its limits: theoretically and socially critical reason consequently turns
itself against its own foundations.