Chapter 9 - Ubiquitous Form

Summary

What do we indicate when we invoke the notion of “form”? And what do we mean when we make reference to the many different forms of discourse that span literature and philosophy (novel, essay, dialogue, treatise, aphorism, etc.)? How does form stand in relation to content? To what extent is form a matter of convention, whose roots lie in history and in the particular modes of expression that exist at any given time, within any particular community? While there is a long and deep tradition of thinking about many questions associated with form, definitions of the term are no more stable and fixed than are definitions of truth or value. But definitive answers are not the object here. Our aim is rather to see how the many senses of form crisscross literature and philosophy, and to outline the principal questions raised in conjunction with it. In the process, we also want to understand how form is involved with the questions of truth and value taken up in the Parts I and II of this Introduction. Indeed, one can’t fully comprehend questions of truth or of value without also understanding form.

Yet form is surprisingly easy to miss. There is well-known line in Molière’s comedy The Bourgeois Gentleman (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) that can serve as a reminder of this fact. Molière’s protagonist, Monsieur Jourdain, comes to marvel at the fact that he has been speaking in prose for his entire life, thought without ever having realized this (“Par ma foi! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j’en susse rien”). The joke in the Molière play turns on the fact that M. Jourdain is naively enlightened – enlightened to something that should be obvious simply because he acquires a new name for the way he has always spoken. His naive sophistication notwithstanding, he does notice something true about his own speech: it has a form. He speaks in prose. The point can be extended broadly, and without the joke: form is ever-present, so ubiquitous in fact that we are apt to miss it unless we are obliged to notice it. Especially through language, form plays a vital role in the shaping of thought. It is at work everywhere in the domains of literature and philosophy.