Edwin L. Battistella
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195367126
- eISBN:
- 9780199867356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367126.003.0016
- Subject:
- Linguistics, English Language
Chapter 16 takes stock of Sherwin Cody as an entrepreneur, social critic, and educator, framing his legacy as silent mentor who encourage people to take responsibility for their own education through ...
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Chapter 16 takes stock of Sherwin Cody as an entrepreneur, social critic, and educator, framing his legacy as silent mentor who encourage people to take responsibility for their own education through on‐going study and reading.Less
Chapter 16 takes stock of Sherwin Cody as an entrepreneur, social critic, and educator, framing his legacy as silent mentor who encourage people to take responsibility for their own education through on‐going study and reading.
Adam Watt
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199566174
- eISBN:
- 9780191721519
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199566174.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, European Literature
This book, through close analysis of the scenes of reading in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, offers an invigorating new study of the novel and previously unacknowledged paths through it. ...
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This book, through close analysis of the scenes of reading in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, offers an invigorating new study of the novel and previously unacknowledged paths through it. After considering key childhood ‘Primal Scenes’ which mark the act of reading as revelatory and potentially traumatic, the book then examines the interwoven strands of the novel's narrative of reading: scenes where the narrator reads and where others provide ‘lessons in reading’ are shown to be intricately connected within the narrator's considerations of intelligence, sense experience, knowledge, and desire. These scenes offer us a phenomenology of reading, whose illuminations, wrong turns, and over-determinations often bewilder the narrator and lead us to interrogate our own understanding of the act we accomplish as we read A la recherche. This book emphasizes the complexities and contradictions with which reading is riven, and which connect it repeatedly to the experience of involuntary memory. Reading is shown to be frequently fraught with heady instability—‘délire’—of a highly revealing sort, from which narrator and readers alike have much to learn. The book's final chapter shows how the narrator's critical energies, turned contemplatively inwards in the Guermantes's library, are subsequently turned outwards for a final interpretive effort—the reading of his now aged acquaintances at the ‘Bal de têtes’—in a shift that provides the narrator not only the confidence to begin his work of art, through the translation of his impressions but also the humility to face, undeterred, the approach of death.Less
This book, through close analysis of the scenes of reading in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, offers an invigorating new study of the novel and previously unacknowledged paths through it. After considering key childhood ‘Primal Scenes’ which mark the act of reading as revelatory and potentially traumatic, the book then examines the interwoven strands of the novel's narrative of reading: scenes where the narrator reads and where others provide ‘lessons in reading’ are shown to be intricately connected within the narrator's considerations of intelligence, sense experience, knowledge, and desire. These scenes offer us a phenomenology of reading, whose illuminations, wrong turns, and over-determinations often bewilder the narrator and lead us to interrogate our own understanding of the act we accomplish as we read A la recherche. This book emphasizes the complexities and contradictions with which reading is riven, and which connect it repeatedly to the experience of involuntary memory. Reading is shown to be frequently fraught with heady instability—‘délire’—of a highly revealing sort, from which narrator and readers alike have much to learn. The book's final chapter shows how the narrator's critical energies, turned contemplatively inwards in the Guermantes's library, are subsequently turned outwards for a final interpretive effort—the reading of his now aged acquaintances at the ‘Bal de têtes’—in a shift that provides the narrator not only the confidence to begin his work of art, through the translation of his impressions but also the humility to face, undeterred, the approach of death.
P. J. E. Kail
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199229505
- eISBN:
- 9780191710728
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199229505.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter compares three key aspects of Hume's account of mind, sense reason, and imagination. Explanatory projection rests with a contrast with detective sources, and it is argued that the senses ...
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This chapter compares three key aspects of Hume's account of mind, sense reason, and imagination. Explanatory projection rests with a contrast with detective sources, and it is argued that the senses constitute a detective source of content and reason of belief. This is a discussion of Hume's alleged scepticism about probable reason and the historical background to Hume's account of the imagination.Less
This chapter compares three key aspects of Hume's account of mind, sense reason, and imagination. Explanatory projection rests with a contrast with detective sources, and it is argued that the senses constitute a detective source of content and reason of belief. This is a discussion of Hume's alleged scepticism about probable reason and the historical background to Hume's account of the imagination.
Edwin L. Battistella
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195367126
- eISBN:
- 9780199867356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367126.003.0008
- Subject:
- Linguistics, English Language
Chapter Eight begins a survey of other popular self‐improvements products that drew on the same advertising themes and social anxieties as Cody's course.
Chapter Eight begins a survey of other popular self‐improvements products that drew on the same advertising themes and social anxieties as Cody's course.
Erica Ehrenberg
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263907
- eISBN:
- 9780191734687
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263907.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines the impact of the relation between the Persian conquerors and the local Babylonians on the cultural continuity in Babylonia during the mid-first millennium BCE. It suggests that ...
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This chapter examines the impact of the relation between the Persian conquerors and the local Babylonians on the cultural continuity in Babylonia during the mid-first millennium BCE. It suggests that the evidence of Persian adoption of Babylonian traditions is manifest not only in administrative and social systems, but also in the visual arts and iconography. The analysis of corpora of seal impressions from Babylonian and Achaemenid archives reveal a complex and slowly evolving relationship between the two traditions, reflecting, but not temporally correlative with, political developments.Less
This chapter examines the impact of the relation between the Persian conquerors and the local Babylonians on the cultural continuity in Babylonia during the mid-first millennium BCE. It suggests that the evidence of Persian adoption of Babylonian traditions is manifest not only in administrative and social systems, but also in the visual arts and iconography. The analysis of corpora of seal impressions from Babylonian and Achaemenid archives reveal a complex and slowly evolving relationship between the two traditions, reflecting, but not temporally correlative with, political developments.
Christopher Prendergast
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691155203
- eISBN:
- 9781400846313
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691155203.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines a question, the most important of the skeptic's questions, not only in but for Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu: is poetic seeing also true seeing, and how can it ...
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This chapter examines a question, the most important of the skeptic's questions, not only in but for Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu: is poetic seeing also true seeing, and how can it be if poetic seeing is the seeing of a mirage? It analyzes Proust's use of comma in the sentence “those infrequent moments when we perceive nature as it is, poetically, were what Elstir's work was made of.” It also considers Proust's identification of Elstir's way of seeing as based on an “optical illusion” or a “mirage” and looks at signs of a mercurial and probing intelligence that are to be found almost everywhere at work in the Recherche. Finally, the chapter describes the sparring contest of intellect and impression that it argues runs deeper into a question of “truth.”Less
This chapter examines a question, the most important of the skeptic's questions, not only in but for Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu: is poetic seeing also true seeing, and how can it be if poetic seeing is the seeing of a mirage? It analyzes Proust's use of comma in the sentence “those infrequent moments when we perceive nature as it is, poetically, were what Elstir's work was made of.” It also considers Proust's identification of Elstir's way of seeing as based on an “optical illusion” or a “mirage” and looks at signs of a mercurial and probing intelligence that are to be found almost everywhere at work in the Recherche. Finally, the chapter describes the sparring contest of intellect and impression that it argues runs deeper into a question of “truth.”
Mark R. Leary
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195172423
- eISBN:
- 9780199786756
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195172423.003.0006
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
Many of the risks that people take with their safety and health can be traced to the self. In particular, the desire to be perceived in particular ways by others often promotes risk-taking, leading ...
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Many of the risks that people take with their safety and health can be traced to the self. In particular, the desire to be perceived in particular ways by others often promotes risk-taking, leading people to do things that are dangerous to themselves or others. When people drive dangerously, show off with dangerous stunts, or succumb to peer pressure to engage in risky behaviors, they are often engaging in impression management (or self-presentation), trying to convey a particular impression of themselves to others. Similarly, when people engage in excessive suntanning, fail to practice safe sex, or drastically undereat (as in the case of anorexia), their concerns about how they appear to others may result in disease or death. Furthermore, self-reflection is often so aversive that people seek ways to escape it, engaging not only in relatively harmless escapism (such as napping, TV watching, and shopping) but in more extreme and detrimental forms of escape (including alcohol and drug use, masochism, and suicide). None of the dangerous and maladaptive behaviors examined in this chapter would be possible without the self.Less
Many of the risks that people take with their safety and health can be traced to the self. In particular, the desire to be perceived in particular ways by others often promotes risk-taking, leading people to do things that are dangerous to themselves or others. When people drive dangerously, show off with dangerous stunts, or succumb to peer pressure to engage in risky behaviors, they are often engaging in impression management (or self-presentation), trying to convey a particular impression of themselves to others. Similarly, when people engage in excessive suntanning, fail to practice safe sex, or drastically undereat (as in the case of anorexia), their concerns about how they appear to others may result in disease or death. Furthermore, self-reflection is often so aversive that people seek ways to escape it, engaging not only in relatively harmless escapism (such as napping, TV watching, and shopping) but in more extreme and detrimental forms of escape (including alcohol and drug use, masochism, and suicide). None of the dangerous and maladaptive behaviors examined in this chapter would be possible without the self.
Roger Keys
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151609
- eISBN:
- 9780191672767
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151609.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
This chapter examines the philosophy of Schopenhauer with respect to art synthesis, particularly the way in which music and poetry may interact. According to Schopenhauer, music was the highest ...
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This chapter examines the philosophy of Schopenhauer with respect to art synthesis, particularly the way in which music and poetry may interact. According to Schopenhauer, music was the highest art-form and had no need of support from any of the others. Programme music or ‘painting in sounds’ was particularly condemned, as was grand opera. His objections to opera were based on the premise that the individual's aesthetic awareness should not be blunted through the mechanical accumulation of different kinds of sense impression.Less
This chapter examines the philosophy of Schopenhauer with respect to art synthesis, particularly the way in which music and poetry may interact. According to Schopenhauer, music was the highest art-form and had no need of support from any of the others. Programme music or ‘painting in sounds’ was particularly condemned, as was grand opera. His objections to opera were based on the premise that the individual's aesthetic awareness should not be blunted through the mechanical accumulation of different kinds of sense impression.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety ...
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This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety of fake diaries, journals, biographies, and autobiographies. It takes a different approach to most of the other chapters, consisting of brief accounts of many works rather than sustained readings of a few. A taxonomy of modern engagements with life‐writing is proposed. The chapter moves on to discuss Galton's notion of ‘composite portraiture’ as a way of thinking about the surprisingly pervasive form of the portrait‐collection. The main examples are from Ford, Stefan Zweig, George Eliot, Hesketh Pearson, Gertrude Stein, Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons; Isherwood and Joyce's Dubliners also figure. Where Chapters 3 and Chapter 4 focused on books with a single central subjectivity, this chapter looks at texts of multiple subjectivities. It concludes with a discussion of the argument that multiple works — an entire oeuvre — should be read as autobiography.Less
This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety of fake diaries, journals, biographies, and autobiographies. It takes a different approach to most of the other chapters, consisting of brief accounts of many works rather than sustained readings of a few. A taxonomy of modern engagements with life‐writing is proposed. The chapter moves on to discuss Galton's notion of ‘composite portraiture’ as a way of thinking about the surprisingly pervasive form of the portrait‐collection. The main examples are from Ford, Stefan Zweig, George Eliot, Hesketh Pearson, Gertrude Stein, Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons; Isherwood and Joyce's Dubliners also figure. Where Chapters 3 and Chapter 4 focused on books with a single central subjectivity, this chapter looks at texts of multiple subjectivities. It concludes with a discussion of the argument that multiple works — an entire oeuvre — should be read as autobiography.
Henry E. Allison
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199532889
- eISBN:
- 9780191714450
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199532889.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter examines Hume's thesis that perceptions, which is his generic term for mental contents, must be divided into two species: impressions and ideas. The basic issue posed by this division is ...
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This chapter examines Hume's thesis that perceptions, which is his generic term for mental contents, must be divided into two species: impressions and ideas. The basic issue posed by this division is that, while on the one hand Hume seems to treat this as a distinction in kind, comparing it with the contrast between feeling and thinking; on the other hand, he insists that impressions and ideas share the same content, differing only in quantitative features such as force and vivacity. And since Hume thinks it obvious that impressions always precede in time their corresponding ideas, he affirms the so-called ‘Copy Principle’, which he regards as the first principle of his philosophy and uses as a tool for rejecting traditional metaphysical terms such as ‘substance’. In addition to analyzing this distinction, the chapter provides a discussion of Hume's closely related theory of abstract ideas.Less
This chapter examines Hume's thesis that perceptions, which is his generic term for mental contents, must be divided into two species: impressions and ideas. The basic issue posed by this division is that, while on the one hand Hume seems to treat this as a distinction in kind, comparing it with the contrast between feeling and thinking; on the other hand, he insists that impressions and ideas share the same content, differing only in quantitative features such as force and vivacity. And since Hume thinks it obvious that impressions always precede in time their corresponding ideas, he affirms the so-called ‘Copy Principle’, which he regards as the first principle of his philosophy and uses as a tool for rejecting traditional metaphysical terms such as ‘substance’. In addition to analyzing this distinction, the chapter provides a discussion of Hume's closely related theory of abstract ideas.
Tad Brennan
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199256266
- eISBN:
- 9780191603075
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199256268.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
This chapter examines the Stoics’ views on belief and knowledge. Stoics define belief as an assent of an impression. There are different kinds of beliefs; the most important ones follow from the fact ...
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This chapter examines the Stoics’ views on belief and knowledge. Stoics define belief as an assent of an impression. There are different kinds of beliefs; the most important ones follow from the fact that there are different kinds of assent, and different kinds of impressions to assent to. Stoics identify a special class impressions — called kataleptic impressions — that have a certain sort of vivid clarity, fidelity, and reliability. A kataleptic impression is one that comes from what is, is stamped and sealed and moulded in accordance with what is, and is of such as sort that it could not come from what is not. Knowledge is defined as a strong assent to a kataleptic impression.Less
This chapter examines the Stoics’ views on belief and knowledge. Stoics define belief as an assent of an impression. There are different kinds of beliefs; the most important ones follow from the fact that there are different kinds of assent, and different kinds of impressions to assent to. Stoics identify a special class impressions — called kataleptic impressions — that have a certain sort of vivid clarity, fidelity, and reliability. A kataleptic impression is one that comes from what is, is stamped and sealed and moulded in accordance with what is, and is of such as sort that it could not come from what is not. Knowledge is defined as a strong assent to a kataleptic impression.
Andrew Lawson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199828050
- eISBN:
- 9780199933334
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199828050.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter shows how James lacked a secure social position within the Northeastern bourgeoisie because his rentier father effectively spent his inheritance, forcing him carve out a career as a ...
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This chapter shows how James lacked a secure social position within the Northeastern bourgeoisie because his rentier father effectively spent his inheritance, forcing him carve out a career as a writer in the mass market. It shows how James was obsessed with preserving the relatively small hoard of capital jealously supervised by his parents, going on to explore the imprint of class and economics on James’s evolving realist aesthetic, through readings of the early magazine stories and the novels Roderick Hudson (1875) and Washington Square (1881). In these texts, a realist drive to anchor an inchoate and continually dissolving reality in sharp mimetic particulars is matched by an anxious hoarding of Paterian “impressions,” which are consistently imaged in financial terms.Less
This chapter shows how James lacked a secure social position within the Northeastern bourgeoisie because his rentier father effectively spent his inheritance, forcing him carve out a career as a writer in the mass market. It shows how James was obsessed with preserving the relatively small hoard of capital jealously supervised by his parents, going on to explore the imprint of class and economics on James’s evolving realist aesthetic, through readings of the early magazine stories and the novels Roderick Hudson (1875) and Washington Square (1881). In these texts, a realist drive to anchor an inchoate and continually dissolving reality in sharp mimetic particulars is matched by an anxious hoarding of Paterian “impressions,” which are consistently imaged in financial terms.
Adam Watt
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199566174
- eISBN:
- 9780191721519
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199566174.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, European Literature
This chapter focuses on the pivotal scene in the library in Le Temps retrouvé (IV, 445–96), examining the narrator's concerns with sensation, the impression, and the problematic interactions of the ...
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This chapter focuses on the pivotal scene in the library in Le Temps retrouvé (IV, 445–96), examining the narrator's concerns with sensation, the impression, and the problematic interactions of the intellect and the senses—concerns which also reflexively involve Proust's readers. Many of the preoccupations and motifs studied in earlier chapters re-emerge as the narrator takes stock of how he has arrived at this point. Emphasis is placed on how reading has primed narrator and readers alike for a more profound engagement with the self and a richer sensual apprehension of the material world. Reading is a process of creative translation, integral to the production of the narrator's future work of art and to our own self-understanding. Lastly, the chapter assesses how the narrator's reading of his acquaintances at the ‘Bal de têtes’ provides a final link between the worldly and the aesthetic.Less
This chapter focuses on the pivotal scene in the library in Le Temps retrouvé (IV, 445–96), examining the narrator's concerns with sensation, the impression, and the problematic interactions of the intellect and the senses—concerns which also reflexively involve Proust's readers. Many of the preoccupations and motifs studied in earlier chapters re-emerge as the narrator takes stock of how he has arrived at this point. Emphasis is placed on how reading has primed narrator and readers alike for a more profound engagement with the self and a richer sensual apprehension of the material world. Reading is a process of creative translation, integral to the production of the narrator's future work of art and to our own self-understanding. Lastly, the chapter assesses how the narrator's reading of his acquaintances at the ‘Bal de têtes’ provides a final link between the worldly and the aesthetic.
Michael Sheringham
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158431
- eISBN:
- 9780191673306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158431.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Autobiographies are backed up by varying motives: presenting an account of life, encouraging reform, taking the road to discovery, among others. Less explicit motives can be changing impressions, ...
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Autobiographies are backed up by varying motives: presenting an account of life, encouraging reform, taking the road to discovery, among others. Less explicit motives can be changing impressions, straightening false beliefs, or revealing a fantasy life. The motive somehow clears the public dimension of an autobiography and directs the autobiographer's relation to the reader. This chapter focuses on the relation to the reader in the works of Genet, Leduc, and Sarraute.Less
Autobiographies are backed up by varying motives: presenting an account of life, encouraging reform, taking the road to discovery, among others. Less explicit motives can be changing impressions, straightening false beliefs, or revealing a fantasy life. The motive somehow clears the public dimension of an autobiography and directs the autobiographer's relation to the reader. This chapter focuses on the relation to the reader in the works of Genet, Leduc, and Sarraute.
Lucy Newlyn
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199242597
- eISBN:
- 9780191697142
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199242597.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
Coleridge describes in literary terms, that the basis of his original attraction to Wordsworth was of a different kind. When he first encountered Descriptive Sketches at Cambridge in 1793, the ...
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Coleridge describes in literary terms, that the basis of his original attraction to Wordsworth was of a different kind. When he first encountered Descriptive Sketches at Cambridge in 1793, the consuming interest in his life was not academic but political. Wordsworth's republicanism, inspired in the summer of 1792 by his brief friendship with Michel Beaupuy, is given full expression here in his vision of Switzerland as an ideal Republic. Coleridge's first meeting with Wordsworth which took place in September 1795 was at a political Debating Society in Bristol. The Farington Diary of April 1810 records that ‘on one occasion Wordsworth spoke with so much force and eloquence that Coleridge was captivated by it, and sought to know him.’ Comparatively little is known about Wordsworth's early impressions of Coleridge.Less
Coleridge describes in literary terms, that the basis of his original attraction to Wordsworth was of a different kind. When he first encountered Descriptive Sketches at Cambridge in 1793, the consuming interest in his life was not academic but political. Wordsworth's republicanism, inspired in the summer of 1792 by his brief friendship with Michel Beaupuy, is given full expression here in his vision of Switzerland as an ideal Republic. Coleridge's first meeting with Wordsworth which took place in September 1795 was at a political Debating Society in Bristol. The Farington Diary of April 1810 records that ‘on one occasion Wordsworth spoke with so much force and eloquence that Coleridge was captivated by it, and sought to know him.’ Comparatively little is known about Wordsworth's early impressions of Coleridge.
Katerina Ierodiakonou
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199696482
- eISBN:
- 9780191738036
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696482.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
This paper sketches the development of the notion of enargeia from a term of ordinary language to a technical term in ancient epistemology, and in particular the shift that takes place in the ...
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This paper sketches the development of the notion of enargeia from a term of ordinary language to a technical term in ancient epistemology, and in particular the shift that takes place in the understanding of this notion in Hellenistic philosophy. According to the Epicureans and the Stoics, enargeia is not a matter of subjective feeling nor conviction; it rather describes a feature of certain impressions, which by their nature are infallibly indicative of a fact about the world. Evident impressions, therefore, are reliable criteria of truth which allow us to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to safeguard the possibility of knowledge. Moreover, the Stoics go beyond the Epicureans in assuming that the enargeia of impressions is reflected by a distinctive intrinsic character of those impressions which are objectively evident. The Sceptics, on the other hand, try to show that there are no evident impressions in the sense in which the Epicureans and the Stoics suggest. Nevertheless, they do not dispense with the notion of enargeia altogether; they introduce a subjective notion of enargeia which does not guarantee truth but is restricted to what appears to be true and is convincing.Less
This paper sketches the development of the notion of enargeia from a term of ordinary language to a technical term in ancient epistemology, and in particular the shift that takes place in the understanding of this notion in Hellenistic philosophy. According to the Epicureans and the Stoics, enargeia is not a matter of subjective feeling nor conviction; it rather describes a feature of certain impressions, which by their nature are infallibly indicative of a fact about the world. Evident impressions, therefore, are reliable criteria of truth which allow us to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to safeguard the possibility of knowledge. Moreover, the Stoics go beyond the Epicureans in assuming that the enargeia of impressions is reflected by a distinctive intrinsic character of those impressions which are objectively evident. The Sceptics, on the other hand, try to show that there are no evident impressions in the sense in which the Epicureans and the Stoics suggest. Nevertheless, they do not dispense with the notion of enargeia altogether; they introduce a subjective notion of enargeia which does not guarantee truth but is restricted to what appears to be true and is convincing.
Alfred P. Smyth
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198229896
- eISBN:
- 9780191678936
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198229896.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Medieval History
This chapter examines the earliest extant biography of an English king in Asser's Life of King Alfred. It notes that the immediacy of this extraordinary source is heightened by Asser's claim to be ...
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This chapter examines the earliest extant biography of an English king in Asser's Life of King Alfred. It notes that the immediacy of this extraordinary source is heightened by Asser's claim to be writing this biography while the king was still living — in Alfred's forty-fifth year in AD 893. It further notes that the debate over the authenticity or otherwise of Asser's Life of King Alfred developed into a battle between linguists constrained, in this particular case, by the limited value of their textual evidence and historians whose lines of enquiry arose in — Galbraith's words — ‘from subjective impression’ in the first instance. It assails that Galbraith' study of Asser's Life, in spite of its dependence on the work of earlier scholars, ranks as one of the most important pieces of historical writing in Great Britain of that century.Less
This chapter examines the earliest extant biography of an English king in Asser's Life of King Alfred. It notes that the immediacy of this extraordinary source is heightened by Asser's claim to be writing this biography while the king was still living — in Alfred's forty-fifth year in AD 893. It further notes that the debate over the authenticity or otherwise of Asser's Life of King Alfred developed into a battle between linguists constrained, in this particular case, by the limited value of their textual evidence and historians whose lines of enquiry arose in — Galbraith's words — ‘from subjective impression’ in the first instance. It assails that Galbraith' study of Asser's Life, in spite of its dependence on the work of earlier scholars, ranks as one of the most important pieces of historical writing in Great Britain of that century.
Storrs McCall
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198236221
- eISBN:
- 9780191679209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198236221.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology, Philosophy of Science
This chapter focuses on the notion of cause in scientific philosophy and discusses David Hume's doctrine of ideas. Instead of finding the original of the idea of efficacy, power, or necessary ...
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This chapter focuses on the notion of cause in scientific philosophy and discusses David Hume's doctrine of ideas. Instead of finding the original of the idea of efficacy, power, or necessary connection in the world, Hume found it not in an impression of sensation but in an impression of reflection. The idea of necessary connection derives from the easy transition that the mind makes from the idea of the cause to that of the effect, after it has experienced the constant conjunction of the corresponding impressions. If the world is looked upon as a single four-dimensional course of events, or for that matter as a three-dimensional state of affairs with only one successor-state, then Hume's conclusion seems justified.Less
This chapter focuses on the notion of cause in scientific philosophy and discusses David Hume's doctrine of ideas. Instead of finding the original of the idea of efficacy, power, or necessary connection in the world, Hume found it not in an impression of sensation but in an impression of reflection. The idea of necessary connection derives from the easy transition that the mind makes from the idea of the cause to that of the effect, after it has experienced the constant conjunction of the corresponding impressions. If the world is looked upon as a single four-dimensional course of events, or for that matter as a three-dimensional state of affairs with only one successor-state, then Hume's conclusion seems justified.
Austen Clark
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198236801
- eISBN:
- 9780191679360
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198236801.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This book has shown that some presentations of sensory qualities can be explained, and that those explanations survive the various philosophical objections raised against them. It argued that people ...
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This book has shown that some presentations of sensory qualities can be explained, and that those explanations survive the various philosophical objections raised against them. It argued that people initially adopt an attitude of methodological solipsism, concentrating on the sensory qualities presented in the experience of just one subject. Explanations of perceptual effects proceed by showing that the thing or distal stimulus presenting a particular sensory quality in a particular situation has the same physical effect on some stage of the sensory system as some paradigm object that has and is perceived to have that quality. This book has also addressed sense impressions, an ensemble in a channel subserving discriminations; differentiative properties; quality space or sensory order; relative similarity; companionship and imperfect community; and multidimensional scaling.Less
This book has shown that some presentations of sensory qualities can be explained, and that those explanations survive the various philosophical objections raised against them. It argued that people initially adopt an attitude of methodological solipsism, concentrating on the sensory qualities presented in the experience of just one subject. Explanations of perceptual effects proceed by showing that the thing or distal stimulus presenting a particular sensory quality in a particular situation has the same physical effect on some stage of the sensory system as some paradigm object that has and is perceived to have that quality. This book has also addressed sense impressions, an ensemble in a channel subserving discriminations; differentiative properties; quality space or sensory order; relative similarity; companionship and imperfect community; and multidimensional scaling.
Jerry A. Fodor
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199287338
- eISBN:
- 9780191700439
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199287338.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language
Hume thinks that there are two kinds of mental particulars, ‘impressions’ (roughly = sensations) and ‘ideas’ (roughly = concepts). This sensation/concept distinction does a lot of work for Hume. It ...
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Hume thinks that there are two kinds of mental particulars, ‘impressions’ (roughly = sensations) and ‘ideas’ (roughly = concepts). This sensation/concept distinction does a lot of work for Hume. It both explicates and underwrites his empiricism. Hume holds that simple ideas come from impressions, and that complex ideas reduce without residue to the simple ones that are their constituents. The claim that the concept/impression distinction is exhaustive thus implies that there is nothing at all in the (cognitive) mind except sensations and what is ‘derived’ from them. The empiricist consequences of these assumptions for both epistemology and semantics have, of course, been widely remarked; not least by Hume himself. This chapter focuses on how the derivation of concepts from impressions is supposed to work. All concepts have contents; complex concepts also have structures. So Hume needs a story about what the structure and content of concepts consists in, and about where the structure and content of concepts comes from. In particular, he needs a story about how they could be ‘copied’ from the structure and content of impressions.Less
Hume thinks that there are two kinds of mental particulars, ‘impressions’ (roughly = sensations) and ‘ideas’ (roughly = concepts). This sensation/concept distinction does a lot of work for Hume. It both explicates and underwrites his empiricism. Hume holds that simple ideas come from impressions, and that complex ideas reduce without residue to the simple ones that are their constituents. The claim that the concept/impression distinction is exhaustive thus implies that there is nothing at all in the (cognitive) mind except sensations and what is ‘derived’ from them. The empiricist consequences of these assumptions for both epistemology and semantics have, of course, been widely remarked; not least by Hume himself. This chapter focuses on how the derivation of concepts from impressions is supposed to work. All concepts have contents; complex concepts also have structures. So Hume needs a story about what the structure and content of concepts consists in, and about where the structure and content of concepts comes from. In particular, he needs a story about how they could be ‘copied’ from the structure and content of impressions.
