Philosophy and Postwar American Criticism

Abstract

Rene Wellek, in this article, takes the history of Western philosophy, its main repesentatives and currents in their chronological order, and asks how far postwar american critics approach these currents, how they have dealt with them and how they have accepted them. He discusses the main types and trends, not all of them. He stresses how universal criticism is, and comments on how criticism has become philosophy, giving a lot of examples. He expresses his wishes that the main concern of criticism, namely literature, may be interpreted differently from other human activities and that it may be maintained.