Abstract

Thomas Stark:
Narrativity and Discursivity
Two Modes of Recognising Meaning
(FKTh 2022-1, p. 15–29)

With the transition from myth to logos made by early Greek philosophy, the narrative mode of understanding meaning is replaced by the discursive mode of un­derstanding meaning as the foundation of the interpretation of reality. An analytical philosophy of history can show, however, that every narrative also implies theoretical patterns of interpretation that make it con­nectable to discursive structures. And finally - as Plato has shown - discursive systems of interpretation, insofar as they make a comprehensive, universal and fundamental metaphysical claim to validity, must in turn be based on narrative patterns of interpre­tation, which appear as basic exemplary narrations, to which - so to speak - poetic evidence can be ascribed.