Philosopher sailors and landed pessimists: The philosopher as character type in Melville's major fiction (Herman Melville)

This dissertation, entitled “Philosopher-Sailors and Landed Pessimists: The Philosopher as Character Type in Melville's Major Fiction,” focuses on the philosopher as a recurring character type in four of Herman Melville's novels (Mardi, Moby-Dick, Pierre, and The Confidence-Man ). Melville's major novels explore the limits of philosophical fiction, and the recurrence of the pondering or philosophizing character is essential in constituting the formally philosophical aspect of these novels. Ultimately, I argue Melville philosophers represent an aesthetic idealization of the speculative urge inherent in the human person. By relying on the philosopher as an explicit or implicit figure in his fiction, Melville is less interested in producing a coherent system of thought than he is in representing and exploring the limitless human urge to return to the first things (in the philosophical sense) and to ask the most universal and fundamental questions.; This study selectively follows Melville's development as a novelist from 1849 through 1857. During this period, the philosopher character plays a prominent role in his most significant novels; these characters also exhibit a corruption of the philosophical metaphor in Melville's fiction, suggesting Melville's own disillusionment with the limits of human reason. In Mardi, the figures of Babbalanja and Taji explore the boundaries of philosophical idealism through textual representation of Socratic dialogue and philosophical soliloquy. In Moby-Dick, I examine the philosophical activity of Ishmael and Ahab through the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, as they both struggle epistemologically to make sense of a paradoxical universe. In Pierre, Melville's dark urban romance, the narrator, the young author Pierre, and the mysterious philosopher Plotinus Plinlimmon embody a sense of philosophical futility, implying the search for truth, while being a noble venture, is one shrouded in obscurity and characterized by futility. Finally, in The Confidence-Man, the pondering philosopher character has been replaced and usurped by the rhetorically gifted sophist. As Melville's final novel, The Confidence-Man represents his closest brush with nihilism; the philosophical enterprise is rendered absurd by a novel filled with sophists bent on spreading deceit instead of pursuing wisdom.