The Importance of Negativan junak for Literary Theory: Nikola Milošević and Karl Popper

Abstract

Considering Nikola Milošević never wrote about the connection between his own literary-theoretical methodology and Karl Popper’s theory of knowledge, this paper aims to investigate the explicitly subtle but implicitly strong concurrence between the two.
Milošević’s study Negativan junak [A Negative Hero] appeared when structuralism was blooming, and was itself written in a mostly empirical vein. This makes it a suitable candidate for investigating the extent to which the philosophical epistemology of Karl Popper, who believed in empirical foundations of both sciences and humanities, could be implemented into literary theory.
Milošević first considers pros and cons of various theoretical approaches and schools of thought when it comes to investigating the paradoxical nature of the negative hero. Milošević then offers a hypothesis that a somewhat modified structuralist method would be the most suitable, which he follows with a set of methodological instructions, in a Popperian vein. Using a deductive starting point, itself inspired by Popper’s scientific epistemology, we conclude that this thesis withstands empirical testing and requires only minimal correction. We also touch upon the issue of whether the liberal political philosophy, espoused by both Popper and Milošević for the better part of their respective careers, was necessarily linked to their scientific methodologies, or their being against dogmatism and totalitarianism in general and for finesse in every hermeneutic operation. Supporting the claim that there was indeed a link is the fact that both thinkers pointed to the positive role of the “spirit of criticism”, which provides a corrective for hypotheses that tend towards dogmatism and totalitarianism. This spirit acts as a feedback loop, “airing out” both Popper’s and Milošević’s epistemologies, making them rationally conceivable as well as institutionally applicable.