Jean-Jacques Lecercle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638000
- eISBN:
- 9780748652648
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638000.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Why do philosophers read literature? How do they read it? And to what extent does their philosophy derive from their reading of literature? Anyone who has read contemporary European philosophers has ...
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Why do philosophers read literature? How do they read it? And to what extent does their philosophy derive from their reading of literature? Anyone who has read contemporary European philosophers has had to ask such questions. This book is an attempt to answer them, by considering the ‘strong readings’ Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze impose on the texts they read. The author demonstrates that philosophers need literature as much as literary critics need philosophy: it is an exercise not in the philosophy of literature (where literature is a mere object of analysis), but in philosophy and literature, a heady and unusual mix.Less
Why do philosophers read literature? How do they read it? And to what extent does their philosophy derive from their reading of literature? Anyone who has read contemporary European philosophers has had to ask such questions. This book is an attempt to answer them, by considering the ‘strong readings’ Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze impose on the texts they read. The author demonstrates that philosophers need literature as much as literary critics need philosophy: it is an exercise not in the philosophy of literature (where literature is a mere object of analysis), but in philosophy and literature, a heady and unusual mix.
Paul hurh
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780804791144
- eISBN:
- 9780804794510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804791144.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
The afterword briefly summarizes the major conclusions of the book and gestures at how they shift wider discussions about philosophy and literature in general and American philosophy and American ...
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The afterword briefly summarizes the major conclusions of the book and gestures at how they shift wider discussions about philosophy and literature in general and American philosophy and American literature more particularly. It hypothesizes that the focus on literary terror opens up a new thread of intellectual history that parallels and contrasts with several recent studies linking American literature and pragmatism. In this possible new history, the dark strain in American literature leads, not to pragmatism, but rather to its darker cousin, poststructuralism.Less
The afterword briefly summarizes the major conclusions of the book and gestures at how they shift wider discussions about philosophy and literature in general and American philosophy and American literature more particularly. It hypothesizes that the focus on literary terror opens up a new thread of intellectual history that parallels and contrasts with several recent studies linking American literature and pragmatism. In this possible new history, the dark strain in American literature leads, not to pragmatism, but rather to its darker cousin, poststructuralism.
Raimond Gaita
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199592814
- eISBN:
- 9780191729034
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592814.003.0008
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
Most philosophers believe that art, perhaps literature especially, has something to offer moral philosophy, imaginative examples most importantly. Fewer philosophers believe that it has much to ...
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Most philosophers believe that art, perhaps literature especially, has something to offer moral philosophy, imaginative examples most importantly. Fewer philosophers believe that it has much to contribute to the philosophy of law. That is in part because writers are rooted in a natural language (not necessarily their own) with historical resonances, depth, allusions, aliveness to tone, that has shaped and is shaped by the lives of particular peoples. But the judge who rebukes a witness given to literary flourishes wants plain speech, suited to establishing facts, and the philosopher of international law, one is inclined to think, must strive for the high abstraction necessary to formulate principles and their justifications to all of human kind in a language that appeals to what we have in common rather than what divides us as natural languages and anything that is necessarily rooted in them appears to do. This chapter explores whether these are irreconcilable perspectives one necessarily local, the other necessarily universal. It argues that they are not. Taking the concept of genocide and the writings of novelist and legal philosopher, Bernhard Schlink as examples, the chapter argues that literature can provide even the philosophy of law with a richer understanding of the forms of universality and the form of philosophical thought suited to understanding some of the big categories on international law, than philosophers commonly assume.Less
Most philosophers believe that art, perhaps literature especially, has something to offer moral philosophy, imaginative examples most importantly. Fewer philosophers believe that it has much to contribute to the philosophy of law. That is in part because writers are rooted in a natural language (not necessarily their own) with historical resonances, depth, allusions, aliveness to tone, that has shaped and is shaped by the lives of particular peoples. But the judge who rebukes a witness given to literary flourishes wants plain speech, suited to establishing facts, and the philosopher of international law, one is inclined to think, must strive for the high abstraction necessary to formulate principles and their justifications to all of human kind in a language that appeals to what we have in common rather than what divides us as natural languages and anything that is necessarily rooted in them appears to do. This chapter explores whether these are irreconcilable perspectives one necessarily local, the other necessarily universal. It argues that they are not. Taking the concept of genocide and the writings of novelist and legal philosopher, Bernhard Schlink as examples, the chapter argues that literature can provide even the philosophy of law with a richer understanding of the forms of universality and the form of philosophical thought suited to understanding some of the big categories on international law, than philosophers commonly assume.
Paul Hurh
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780804791144
- eISBN:
- 9780804794510
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804791144.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
American Terror interrogates the origins, contexts, and significance of the distinctive tone of terror within a major strain of early and nineteenth-century American literature. Contrary to critical ...
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American Terror interrogates the origins, contexts, and significance of the distinctive tone of terror within a major strain of early and nineteenth-century American literature. Contrary to critical tendencies to literary terror as a rejection or contrary reaction to Enlightenment thought, this book draws upon new work in affect theory and the refreshed interest in American intellectual history to argue that American authors sought through it to produce the peculiar affect of scientific objectivity: the feeling of thinking. As what counts as knowledge comes to be aligned with a set of abstract universal rules and processes—the scientific method, propositional logic, geometric models of analysis—literary terror does not reject such progress as unfeeling, but rather sets out to describe it in feeling. Employing close reading in concert with original historical research, this book threads the story of terror’s relation to philosophy through three American writers who not only write terror, but write about terror. It begins with Jonathan Edwards’s theoretical defense of terror as a sensation of truth, develops through Edgar Allan Poe’s refinement of terror’s sensation of truth within an aesthetics of analytical methodology, and culminates in Herman Melville’s dramatization of the consequences exacted by this terrific perspective: a radically unknowable universe that everywhere refuses to relax its demands to be known. Through this critical repositioning of literary terror, American Terror charts how the dark strain of American literature carves a previously unaccounted for affective curve in the route of philosophy from Enlightenment idealism to poststructuralism.Less
American Terror interrogates the origins, contexts, and significance of the distinctive tone of terror within a major strain of early and nineteenth-century American literature. Contrary to critical tendencies to literary terror as a rejection or contrary reaction to Enlightenment thought, this book draws upon new work in affect theory and the refreshed interest in American intellectual history to argue that American authors sought through it to produce the peculiar affect of scientific objectivity: the feeling of thinking. As what counts as knowledge comes to be aligned with a set of abstract universal rules and processes—the scientific method, propositional logic, geometric models of analysis—literary terror does not reject such progress as unfeeling, but rather sets out to describe it in feeling. Employing close reading in concert with original historical research, this book threads the story of terror’s relation to philosophy through three American writers who not only write terror, but write about terror. It begins with Jonathan Edwards’s theoretical defense of terror as a sensation of truth, develops through Edgar Allan Poe’s refinement of terror’s sensation of truth within an aesthetics of analytical methodology, and culminates in Herman Melville’s dramatization of the consequences exacted by this terrific perspective: a radically unknowable universe that everywhere refuses to relax its demands to be known. Through this critical repositioning of literary terror, American Terror charts how the dark strain of American literature carves a previously unaccounted for affective curve in the route of philosophy from Enlightenment idealism to poststructuralism.
Brady Bowman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199976201
- eISBN:
- 9780199395507
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199976201.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Identifying cognition in general with propositional knowledge exposes the cognitive value of literature to abiding skepticism. This chapter argues that German romanticism has generated two competing ...
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Identifying cognition in general with propositional knowledge exposes the cognitive value of literature to abiding skepticism. This chapter argues that German romanticism has generated two competing views of the relation between literature and the overtly truth-seeking disciplines. One is a legacy of skepticism and antirealism that is powerless to give a positive account of literary value. The other is a complementarist legacy emphasizing literature’s cognitive priority to and its role as the cognitive fulfillment of discursive knowledge. This tradition offers important resources to aesthetic cognitivism for articulating and defending the value of literature and the institutions that support it.Less
Identifying cognition in general with propositional knowledge exposes the cognitive value of literature to abiding skepticism. This chapter argues that German romanticism has generated two competing views of the relation between literature and the overtly truth-seeking disciplines. One is a legacy of skepticism and antirealism that is powerless to give a positive account of literary value. The other is a complementarist legacy emphasizing literature’s cognitive priority to and its role as the cognitive fulfillment of discursive knowledge. This tradition offers important resources to aesthetic cognitivism for articulating and defending the value of literature and the institutions that support it.
Nancy Glazener
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199390137
- eISBN:
- 9780199390151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199390137.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter examines literary studies, starting with the ways in which the constitution of literature made study an important outgrowth of literary reading. It offers a map of Shakespeare studies in ...
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This chapter examines literary studies, starting with the ways in which the constitution of literature made study an important outgrowth of literary reading. It offers a map of Shakespeare studies in U.S. literary culture and examines some of the ideological investments that the United States brought to Shakespeare. The legacies of rhetoric and philology, two other important predecessors of literature, are especially important to literary studies. Taking up the vexed question of why rhetoric, so prominent in academic culture at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was barely visible in the research university model at the end, the chapter argues that the cultural dependence on print and fears of cultural manipulation that had gathered around oratory had moved rhetoric out of prominence before the research university model took hold. The fears of oratorical manipulation were not really justified but point to the tremendous anxieties about autonomy at stake in both oratory and literature, which open the self to outside influences; theories of the sublime also navigated these anxieties. The chapter ends by profiling Coleridge’s and Emerson’s competing models of literary authority and literary reading, which in broad strokes count as modern and antimodern.Less
This chapter examines literary studies, starting with the ways in which the constitution of literature made study an important outgrowth of literary reading. It offers a map of Shakespeare studies in U.S. literary culture and examines some of the ideological investments that the United States brought to Shakespeare. The legacies of rhetoric and philology, two other important predecessors of literature, are especially important to literary studies. Taking up the vexed question of why rhetoric, so prominent in academic culture at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was barely visible in the research university model at the end, the chapter argues that the cultural dependence on print and fears of cultural manipulation that had gathered around oratory had moved rhetoric out of prominence before the research university model took hold. The fears of oratorical manipulation were not really justified but point to the tremendous anxieties about autonomy at stake in both oratory and literature, which open the self to outside influences; theories of the sublime also navigated these anxieties. The chapter ends by profiling Coleridge’s and Emerson’s competing models of literary authority and literary reading, which in broad strokes count as modern and antimodern.
Jean-Michel Rabaté
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823270859
- eISBN:
- 9780823270903
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823270859.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book offers a new interpretation of the links between literature, ethics, and philosophy in Beckett’s works. It surveys the entire corpus with a focus on the post-war period, when Beckett found ...
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This book offers a new interpretation of the links between literature, ethics, and philosophy in Beckett’s works. It surveys the entire corpus with a focus on the post-war period, when Beckett found a wider audience and broke from his mentors Joyce and Proust. Beckett’s decision to write in French, and his subsequent bilingualism, were no accidents but followed a program placing him among post-war writers who rejected Sartre and developed a “writing degree zero” as offering a post-Holocaust literary expression. Two philosophers examined in this historical context are Adorno and Badiou. If they often contradict each other, they converge on many points: Adorno sees that one can be a poet after Auschwitz; Badiou grasps how one can combine beautiful forms and a reduction of life to its generic essentials. For both, Beckett offers a lesson in courage, showing that life is worth living in spite of innumerable reasons to despair. The theme of animals permits a further exploration of life reduced to survival. A red thread comes from Beckett’s friendship with Bataille and their fascination with the Marquis de Sade. Both debunk post-war humanism. Bataille’s philosophy of the Impossible, of excess and transgression, was rephrased in a muted manner by Beckett who preferred Dante, Descartes, Geulincx, Kant and Freud to sketch an ethics of humility. All the while, his works are marked by an inimitable sense of metaphysical comedy that creates an infectious and enduring laughter.Less
This book offers a new interpretation of the links between literature, ethics, and philosophy in Beckett’s works. It surveys the entire corpus with a focus on the post-war period, when Beckett found a wider audience and broke from his mentors Joyce and Proust. Beckett’s decision to write in French, and his subsequent bilingualism, were no accidents but followed a program placing him among post-war writers who rejected Sartre and developed a “writing degree zero” as offering a post-Holocaust literary expression. Two philosophers examined in this historical context are Adorno and Badiou. If they often contradict each other, they converge on many points: Adorno sees that one can be a poet after Auschwitz; Badiou grasps how one can combine beautiful forms and a reduction of life to its generic essentials. For both, Beckett offers a lesson in courage, showing that life is worth living in spite of innumerable reasons to despair. The theme of animals permits a further exploration of life reduced to survival. A red thread comes from Beckett’s friendship with Bataille and their fascination with the Marquis de Sade. Both debunk post-war humanism. Bataille’s philosophy of the Impossible, of excess and transgression, was rephrased in a muted manner by Beckett who preferred Dante, Descartes, Geulincx, Kant and Freud to sketch an ethics of humility. All the while, his works are marked by an inimitable sense of metaphysical comedy that creates an infectious and enduring laughter.
Thomas Trezise
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823244485
- eISBN:
- 9780823252732
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823244485.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter approaches the relation between ethics and aesthetics from the perspective of Emmanuel Levinas. It examines the form of Levinas’s discourse in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than ...
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This chapter approaches the relation between ethics and aesthetics from the perspective of Emmanuel Levinas. It examines the form of Levinas’s discourse in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, works that privilege the interlocutory relation that frames witnessing but whose orientation toward the other is largely articulated in a philosophical idiom indebted to sameness. The challenge to philosophy is pursued by turning to a literary “other,” Jorge Semprun’s testimonial memoir, Literature or Life, where questions of form are inseparable from ethical considerations in a witnessing focused on the addressee. This emphasis on the addressee, analogous to Levinas’s insistence on a self constituted by an appeal from the other, leads to a concluding consideration of his work as a response to victims of the Holocaust and a philosophical allegory of posttraumatic memory.Less
This chapter approaches the relation between ethics and aesthetics from the perspective of Emmanuel Levinas. It examines the form of Levinas’s discourse in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, works that privilege the interlocutory relation that frames witnessing but whose orientation toward the other is largely articulated in a philosophical idiom indebted to sameness. The challenge to philosophy is pursued by turning to a literary “other,” Jorge Semprun’s testimonial memoir, Literature or Life, where questions of form are inseparable from ethical considerations in a witnessing focused on the addressee. This emphasis on the addressee, analogous to Levinas’s insistence on a self constituted by an appeal from the other, leads to a concluding consideration of his work as a response to victims of the Holocaust and a philosophical allegory of posttraumatic memory.
Rick Anthony Furtak, Jonathan Ellsworth, and James D. Reid
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823239306
- eISBN:
- 9780823239344
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823239306.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
Henry David Thoreau's best-known book, Walden, has not been widely recognized as an important philosophical text. Indeed, most academic philosophers would be reluctant to grant Thoreau a place within ...
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Henry David Thoreau's best-known book, Walden, has not been widely recognized as an important philosophical text. Indeed, most academic philosophers would be reluctant to grant Thoreau a place within the philosophical canon at all. The goal of this volume is to remedy this neglect, to explain Thoreau's philosophical significance, and to argue for the lasting value of his polemical conception of how philosophy ought to be lived, practiced, and written. Thoreau sought to establish philosophy as a way of life and to root our philosophical, conceptual affairs in more practical or existential concerns. His work provides us with a sustained meditation on the importance of leading our lives with integrity, avoiding what he calls “quiet desperation.” The contributors to this volume approach Thoreau's multifaceted writings from various angles. They explore his aesthetic views, his naturalism, his theory of self, his ethical principles, and his political stances. Most importantly, they show how Thoreau returns philosophy to its roots as the love of wisdom.Less
Henry David Thoreau's best-known book, Walden, has not been widely recognized as an important philosophical text. Indeed, most academic philosophers would be reluctant to grant Thoreau a place within the philosophical canon at all. The goal of this volume is to remedy this neglect, to explain Thoreau's philosophical significance, and to argue for the lasting value of his polemical conception of how philosophy ought to be lived, practiced, and written. Thoreau sought to establish philosophy as a way of life and to root our philosophical, conceptual affairs in more practical or existential concerns. His work provides us with a sustained meditation on the importance of leading our lives with integrity, avoiding what he calls “quiet desperation.” The contributors to this volume approach Thoreau's multifaceted writings from various angles. They explore his aesthetic views, his naturalism, his theory of self, his ethical principles, and his political stances. Most importantly, they show how Thoreau returns philosophy to its roots as the love of wisdom.
Edward Harcourt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198713227
- eISBN:
- 9780191781650
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198713227.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This chapter is focused on three claims about literature and the moral life made by Cora Diamond, Martha Nussbaum, and Alice Crary. The first, ‘expansionism’, is that there’s more to moral thinking ...
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This chapter is focused on three claims about literature and the moral life made by Cora Diamond, Martha Nussbaum, and Alice Crary. The first, ‘expansionism’, is that there’s more to moral thinking than certain conventional conceptions allow. This the chapter simply accepts as a starting point, going on to argue with the aid of an extended literary example for the second claim, that literary texts—especially literary fiction—are instances of moral thinking. The third claim is that these same texts are (in part) instances of moral philosophy. Though this too may be true, the chapter argues that it’s a mistake to think it follows—as Nussbaum in particular has suggested—from the truth of the first two.Less
This chapter is focused on three claims about literature and the moral life made by Cora Diamond, Martha Nussbaum, and Alice Crary. The first, ‘expansionism’, is that there’s more to moral thinking than certain conventional conceptions allow. This the chapter simply accepts as a starting point, going on to argue with the aid of an extended literary example for the second claim, that literary texts—especially literary fiction—are instances of moral thinking. The third claim is that these same texts are (in part) instances of moral philosophy. Though this too may be true, the chapter argues that it’s a mistake to think it follows—as Nussbaum in particular has suggested—from the truth of the first two.
Kate Hext
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748646258
- eISBN:
- 9780748693849
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748646258.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Walter Pater: Individualism and Aesthetic Philosophy combines close readings with cultural and intellectual history and biography to reconsider individualism and philosophical thought in the ...
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Walter Pater: Individualism and Aesthetic Philosophy combines close readings with cultural and intellectual history and biography to reconsider individualism and philosophical thought in the Aesthetic 'Movement'. Repositioning Walter Pater at the philosophical nexus of Aestheticism and Decadence, it argues that Pater redefines Romantic Individualism through his engagements with modern philosophical discourses in the context of emerging modernity in Britain. This study has two main aims: i) to argue that 'late-Romantic Individualism' and not art is at the heart of Paterian Aestheticism and ii) to illustrate how Aestheticism understands itself in philosophical history, engaging with Romantic, Idealist and empiricist philosophies to redefine what philosophical thought can be under the conditions of modernity and to renegotiate the relationship between philosophy and literature. The way in which these interwoven discussions are focused through Pater simultaneously serves to reposition him in literary history. This is the first book-length study of how Pater was influenced by, variously appropriated, and challenged modern philosophies in Victorian Oxford. It is also the first exploration of how late nineteenth-century individualism developed through the reappropriation of philosophical discourses. In order to makes its case it engages substantially with Pater's unpublished manuscripts, which contain some of his most daring philosophical statements, and which have been seriously neglected by scholars working to the agenda of 'Pater as stylist' or 'Pater as purveyor of male-male desire' which has defined Pater studies for some time.Less
Walter Pater: Individualism and Aesthetic Philosophy combines close readings with cultural and intellectual history and biography to reconsider individualism and philosophical thought in the Aesthetic 'Movement'. Repositioning Walter Pater at the philosophical nexus of Aestheticism and Decadence, it argues that Pater redefines Romantic Individualism through his engagements with modern philosophical discourses in the context of emerging modernity in Britain. This study has two main aims: i) to argue that 'late-Romantic Individualism' and not art is at the heart of Paterian Aestheticism and ii) to illustrate how Aestheticism understands itself in philosophical history, engaging with Romantic, Idealist and empiricist philosophies to redefine what philosophical thought can be under the conditions of modernity and to renegotiate the relationship between philosophy and literature. The way in which these interwoven discussions are focused through Pater simultaneously serves to reposition him in literary history. This is the first book-length study of how Pater was influenced by, variously appropriated, and challenged modern philosophies in Victorian Oxford. It is also the first exploration of how late nineteenth-century individualism developed through the reappropriation of philosophical discourses. In order to makes its case it engages substantially with Pater's unpublished manuscripts, which contain some of his most daring philosophical statements, and which have been seriously neglected by scholars working to the agenda of 'Pater as stylist' or 'Pater as purveyor of male-male desire' which has defined Pater studies for some time.
Tzachi Zamir
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190695088
- eISBN:
- 9780190695118
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190695088.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
The introduction sets out the book’s main themes: a philosophical reading of Paradise Lost, in which the relationships between philosophy and literature, literature and religion, and religion and ...
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The introduction sets out the book’s main themes: a philosophical reading of Paradise Lost, in which the relationships between philosophy and literature, literature and religion, and religion and philosophy are examined. The book's guiding metaphor—an ascent—is explained. The introduction explains why previous routes by which philosophy and literature have been successfully connected before are less suitable for religious poetry. The book does not follow the “compensatory” model, in which literature overcomes limitations that hamper philosophy. Instead, the reading hopes to expose episodes of misalliance between philosophy and literature. Implications for interdisciplinarity are briefly discussed. The tensions between religion and literature in relation to beauty, knowledge, and the imagination are presented. Finally, some methodological clarifications are made.Less
The introduction sets out the book’s main themes: a philosophical reading of Paradise Lost, in which the relationships between philosophy and literature, literature and religion, and religion and philosophy are examined. The book's guiding metaphor—an ascent—is explained. The introduction explains why previous routes by which philosophy and literature have been successfully connected before are less suitable for religious poetry. The book does not follow the “compensatory” model, in which literature overcomes limitations that hamper philosophy. Instead, the reading hopes to expose episodes of misalliance between philosophy and literature. Implications for interdisciplinarity are briefly discussed. The tensions between religion and literature in relation to beauty, knowledge, and the imagination are presented. Finally, some methodological clarifications are made.
Carrol Clarkson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823254156
- eISBN:
- 9780823260898
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823254156.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter takes up a gauntlet thrown down by Lucy Lurie in J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace: it considers the plight of animals other than human even in the teeth of recognizing that South Africa’s ...
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This chapter takes up a gauntlet thrown down by Lucy Lurie in J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace: it considers the plight of animals other than human even in the teeth of recognizing that South Africa’s political priorities lie elsewhere. The chapter contributes to a larger exploration of the boundary between literature and philosophy and a questioning of the certainty with which the line between these disciplines is often drawn. The poets and the philosophers, in their different ways, have the capacity to call out to fellow humans in ways that may have positive ethical consequences for non-human creatures. Art is one way of expressing our humanity, but in its troubling of a presumed dividing line between the “human” and the “animal”, so the argument of this chapter goes, it serves as a reminder that the poets and the philosophers, too, are animals.Less
This chapter takes up a gauntlet thrown down by Lucy Lurie in J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace: it considers the plight of animals other than human even in the teeth of recognizing that South Africa’s political priorities lie elsewhere. The chapter contributes to a larger exploration of the boundary between literature and philosophy and a questioning of the certainty with which the line between these disciplines is often drawn. The poets and the philosophers, in their different ways, have the capacity to call out to fellow humans in ways that may have positive ethical consequences for non-human creatures. Art is one way of expressing our humanity, but in its troubling of a presumed dividing line between the “human” and the “animal”, so the argument of this chapter goes, it serves as a reminder that the poets and the philosophers, too, are animals.
Sarah V. Eldridge and Allen Speight (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190859268
- eISBN:
- 9780190859299
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190859268.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre served as a touchstone for major philosophical and literary figures of his age (including, among many others, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Schlegel, Schleiermacher, ...
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Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre served as a touchstone for major philosophical and literary figures of his age (including, among many others, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Schlegel, Schleiermacher, and Novalis). But it has received far less attention in both disciplines (especially in English-language scholarship) than either Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther or Elective Affinities. This volume takes up the question of what Goethe’s long and rather complicated novel is doing and how it engages with problems and themes of human life more generally, including issues of individuality, development, and authority; aesthetic formation and narrative (and human) contingency; gender, sexuality, and marriage; and power, institutions, and control.Less
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre served as a touchstone for major philosophical and literary figures of his age (including, among many others, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Schlegel, Schleiermacher, and Novalis). But it has received far less attention in both disciplines (especially in English-language scholarship) than either Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther or Elective Affinities. This volume takes up the question of what Goethe’s long and rather complicated novel is doing and how it engages with problems and themes of human life more generally, including issues of individuality, development, and authority; aesthetic formation and narrative (and human) contingency; gender, sexuality, and marriage; and power, institutions, and control.
C. Allen Speight
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190859268
- eISBN:
- 9780190859299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190859268.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter examines how the theme of Bildung so central to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship is bound up with a set of issues involving the relation between life and literature—the concerns ...
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This chapter examines how the theme of Bildung so central to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship is bound up with a set of issues involving the relation between life and literature—the concerns philosophers and literary theorists have explored in light of famous problems of fictionality and theatricality, as well as more widely in terms of how artistic irony is engaged with the world itself and what sorts of strategies of narrative revision might be required for that engagement (as Goethe himself, attached to the themes and central character of his novel for more than five decades, clearly thought).Less
This chapter examines how the theme of Bildung so central to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship is bound up with a set of issues involving the relation between life and literature—the concerns philosophers and literary theorists have explored in light of famous problems of fictionality and theatricality, as well as more widely in terms of how artistic irony is engaged with the world itself and what sorts of strategies of narrative revision might be required for that engagement (as Goethe himself, attached to the themes and central character of his novel for more than five decades, clearly thought).
James D. Reid, Rick Anthony Furtak, and Jonathan Ellsworth
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823239306
- eISBN:
- 9780823239344
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823239306.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
Although the writings of Henry David Thoreau are regarded around the world as classics of American literature, Thoreau is seldom taken seriously as a philosopher. Examining why Thoreau might qualify ...
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Although the writings of Henry David Thoreau are regarded around the world as classics of American literature, Thoreau is seldom taken seriously as a philosopher. Examining why Thoreau might qualify as a philosophically significant author nonetheless requires that we reconsider our assumptions about the nature of philosophy, and recognize the challenges that he poses to the discipline. This chapter introduces and defends the project of situating Thoreau more centrally within the Western philosophical canon.Less
Although the writings of Henry David Thoreau are regarded around the world as classics of American literature, Thoreau is seldom taken seriously as a philosopher. Examining why Thoreau might qualify as a philosophically significant author nonetheless requires that we reconsider our assumptions about the nature of philosophy, and recognize the challenges that he poses to the discipline. This chapter introduces and defends the project of situating Thoreau more centrally within the Western philosophical canon.
Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge and C. Allen Speight (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190859268
- eISBN:
- 9780190859299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190859268.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This introductory chapter provides context for the volume’s subsequent contributions on Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship on a variety of levels. It begins by explaining its aims with regard ...
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This introductory chapter provides context for the volume’s subsequent contributions on Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship on a variety of levels. It begins by explaining its aims with regard to the relationship between philosophy and literature. It then locates Goethe’s novel within this set of aims in three ways: first, by providing a brief outline of Goethe’s career; second, by locating his novel in the literary-historical context of late eighteenth-century Europe; and third, by outlining the connections between the Goethe of Wilhelm Meister and specific philosophers and thinkers who influenced his thought and for whom his work was in turn influential.Less
This introductory chapter provides context for the volume’s subsequent contributions on Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship on a variety of levels. It begins by explaining its aims with regard to the relationship between philosophy and literature. It then locates Goethe’s novel within this set of aims in three ways: first, by providing a brief outline of Goethe’s career; second, by locating his novel in the literary-historical context of late eighteenth-century Europe; and third, by outlining the connections between the Goethe of Wilhelm Meister and specific philosophers and thinkers who influenced his thought and for whom his work was in turn influential.
Thomas Karshan and Kathryn Murphy (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198707868
- eISBN:
- 9780191779008
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198707868.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
What is an essay, and how did the essay emerge as a literary form? What are the continuities and surprising emergences across its history, from Montaigne’s 1580 Essais to the present? This volume ...
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What is an essay, and how did the essay emerge as a literary form? What are the continuities and surprising emergences across its history, from Montaigne’s 1580 Essais to the present? This volume assembles seventeen essays which address patterns and oddities in the history of the genre, paying attention both to the transformed legacies of the earliest essayists across the centuries, and to the form’s contemporary vibrancy. Contributors, both scholars and essayists, draw out paradoxes of what is considered the fourth genre, often overshadowed in literary history and criticism by fiction, poetry, and drama. The essay is at once a pedagogical tool, and a refusal of the technical languages of universities and professions; politically engaged but retired and independent; erudite and anti-pedantic; occasional and enduring; intimate and oratorical; allusive and idiosyncratic. The volume shows the essay as an ambassador between philosophy and public life, learnedness and experience. Since it is a form of writing against which academic work has defined itself, there has been surprisingly little scholarship on the history of the essay. On Essays addresses this dearth, not as a history or companion, but through a series of studies of major themes across the history of the genre.Less
What is an essay, and how did the essay emerge as a literary form? What are the continuities and surprising emergences across its history, from Montaigne’s 1580 Essais to the present? This volume assembles seventeen essays which address patterns and oddities in the history of the genre, paying attention both to the transformed legacies of the earliest essayists across the centuries, and to the form’s contemporary vibrancy. Contributors, both scholars and essayists, draw out paradoxes of what is considered the fourth genre, often overshadowed in literary history and criticism by fiction, poetry, and drama. The essay is at once a pedagogical tool, and a refusal of the technical languages of universities and professions; politically engaged but retired and independent; erudite and anti-pedantic; occasional and enduring; intimate and oratorical; allusive and idiosyncratic. The volume shows the essay as an ambassador between philosophy and public life, learnedness and experience. Since it is a form of writing against which academic work has defined itself, there has been surprisingly little scholarship on the history of the essay. On Essays addresses this dearth, not as a history or companion, but through a series of studies of major themes across the history of the genre.
Henry S. Turner
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226363356
- eISBN:
- 9780226363493
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226363493.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter serves as an introduction to the book’s arguments about corporations, reading More’s Utopia alongside Calvin’s Case and the case of Sutton’s Hospital to argue for the importance of the ...
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This chapter serves as an introduction to the book’s arguments about corporations, reading More’s Utopia alongside Calvin’s Case and the case of Sutton’s Hospital to argue for the importance of the idea of fiction to political philosophy and the idea of a constitution. The chapter also surveys medieval and early modern definitions of corporations, describes the major arguments of pluralist political theory that guide the book, and formulates five major ontologies for corporations that were typical of the early modern period: mystical, mimetic, representational, material, and compositional. It concludes by offering a definition of the corporation that situates it among and across the domains of law, philosophy, and literature.Less
This chapter serves as an introduction to the book’s arguments about corporations, reading More’s Utopia alongside Calvin’s Case and the case of Sutton’s Hospital to argue for the importance of the idea of fiction to political philosophy and the idea of a constitution. The chapter also surveys medieval and early modern definitions of corporations, describes the major arguments of pluralist political theory that guide the book, and formulates five major ontologies for corporations that were typical of the early modern period: mystical, mimetic, representational, material, and compositional. It concludes by offering a definition of the corporation that situates it among and across the domains of law, philosophy, and literature.
Leonardo Lisi
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245321
- eISBN:
- 9780823252541
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245321.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book argues that two ways of understanding the aesthetic organization of literary works have been inherited from the late 18th century and dominate discussions of European modernism today: the ...
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This book argues that two ways of understanding the aesthetic organization of literary works have been inherited from the late 18th century and dominate discussions of European modernism today: the aesthetics of autonomy, associated with the self-sufficient work of art, and the aesthetics of fragmentation, practiced by the avant-gardes. Yet both of these models rest on assumptions about the nature of truth and existence that cannot be treated as exhaustive of modernist form. The present book accordingly traces an alternative aesthetics of dependency that provides a different formal structure, philosophical foundation, and historical condition for modernist texts. Taking Europe's Scandinavian periphery as its point of departure, the book examines how Søren Kierkegaard and Henrik Ibsen imagined a response to the changing conditions of modernity different from those at the European core, one that subsequently influenced Henry James, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke, and James Joyce. Combining close readings with a broader revision of the nature and genealogy of modernism, Marginal Modernity challenges what we understand by modernist aesthetics, their origins, and their implications for how we conceive of our relation to the modern world.Less
This book argues that two ways of understanding the aesthetic organization of literary works have been inherited from the late 18th century and dominate discussions of European modernism today: the aesthetics of autonomy, associated with the self-sufficient work of art, and the aesthetics of fragmentation, practiced by the avant-gardes. Yet both of these models rest on assumptions about the nature of truth and existence that cannot be treated as exhaustive of modernist form. The present book accordingly traces an alternative aesthetics of dependency that provides a different formal structure, philosophical foundation, and historical condition for modernist texts. Taking Europe's Scandinavian periphery as its point of departure, the book examines how Søren Kierkegaard and Henrik Ibsen imagined a response to the changing conditions of modernity different from those at the European core, one that subsequently influenced Henry James, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke, and James Joyce. Combining close readings with a broader revision of the nature and genealogy of modernism, Marginal Modernity challenges what we understand by modernist aesthetics, their origins, and their implications for how we conceive of our relation to the modern world.