Názov (CZ): Výjimka pravidlem: Viktor Šklovskij, Carl Schmitt a Karl Popper
Názov (ENG): The Exception as the Rule: Viktor Shklovsky, Carl Schmitt, and Karl Popper
Autor: Petr Steiner (Department of Russian and East European Studies
University of Pennsylvania)
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1076-2626
Jazyk: čeština
Bibliografické údaje: Litikon, 2020, roč. 5, č. 1, s. 18 – 32
Bibliografické údaje (ENG): Litikon, 2020, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 18-32
Abstrakt (ENG):
Why has the concept of “defamiliarization” enjoyed, despite its obvious unoriginality and vagueness, long-lasting fame? Because, I argue, it fits well into the modernist paradigm of thought which in early 20th century began to displace the methods of positivism. The most important among them, for my topic, was the bottom up inductive reasoning that based on regular repetition of phenomenal data strove to establish universal laws for all experience and knowledge. Stimulated by the anti-positivistic spirit, Viktor Shklovsky and Carl Schmitt radically reversed the time-honored understanding of art and law in terms of fulfilment of expectations and postulated the exception (perceptual
strangeness, suspension of the legal order) as their defining quality. Curiously enough, the theoretical pronouncements of the two scholars have a distinct theological ring to them. According to Schmitt, “the exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle,” while for Shklovsky, the Futurist poet is a Christ-like figure whose mission is to resurrect the dead word. To explain this, I employ Karl Popper’s understanding of exception as the touchstone for differentiating science from metaphysics. If the empirical status of, say, Newton’s law of universal gravitation is predicated on its potential falsifiability – the
possibility of a thaumaturgic gravity-defying levitation – then, I conclude, even science is inconceivable without miracles.
Keywords:
Viktor Shklovsky, Carl Schmitt, Karl Popper, defamiliarization, state
of emergency, falsifiability
DOI: