Davidius
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Today in class we were discussing various genres of literature in Medieval Germany. We had been given a text to read over the weekend and part of our assignment was to classify it based on a list of genres which we have put together throughout the course of the semester. A small debate arose between a few students over the correct classification and our professor informed us that it is difficult to create specific borders for literary genre and that arguments could be made on various sides of the question. My question has to do broadly with the definition of words and specifically with classification or the imposing of a "system" on phenomena. Is there a such thing as a "legend" or a "fable"? If so, who gets to decide what a legend is and what makes a legend? Or is it only possible for these words to be used conventionally since they have been created by us to impose a system on a set of data in order to "better understand" phenomena? This question could be extended to all sorts of contexts. What effect does the answer to the question have on the philosophy of language, our understanding of knowledge, etc.? The question brought me back to my class last semester on Plato and his doctrine of the forms/ideas.