Fish's Copernican Revolution

Abstract

Any new theory will prove its worth by the number of problems it solves. The more convincingly it solves particular problems the more people it converts, until finally it isn't new anymore. Yet the curious fact about most change is that the new theory by solving other people's problems creates problems of its own. It has been said, for example, that Kant solved Hume's problem but failed to solve his own. In this paper I would like to discuss how Fish solved Wimsatt/Beardsley's problem but failed likewise to solve his own. For it seems to me that the two examples are intimately related. Fish did for literary criticism what Kant did for philosophy, i.e. put the subject at the center of the universe. It is my contention that in doing this, both Kant and Fish are faced with the same problem, namely the disappearance of the universe both seek to explain. The heart of Kant's (and Fish's) problem is the nature of the Ding an sich (or the text) and the possibility of change. For Kant the Ding an sich was the basis of our sense perceptions vet did not partake of form and was therefore unknowable. It was essential for Kant's system, yet his system was ultimately unable to explain it. This contradiction was noticed and led to the conclusion taken by Fichte and Schelling that if the Ding an sich was unknowable, then it didn't (or