Mirages of the Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe

Timothy J. Reiss

Published by Stanford University Press 2003

Mirages of the Selfe

Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe

Timothy J. Reiss

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503620322

Overview
Contents

About this book

Through extensive readings in philosophical, legal, medical, and imaginative writing, this book explores notions and experiences of being a person from European antiquity to Descartes. It offers quite new interpretations of what it was to be a person—to experience who-ness—in other times and places, involving new understandings of knowing, willing, and acting, as well as of political and material life, the play of public and private, passions and emotions. The trajectory the author reveals reaches from the ancient sense of personhood as set in a totality of surroundings inseparable from the person, to an increasing sense of impermeability to the world, in which anger has replaced love in affirming a sense of self. The author develops his analysis through an impressive range of authors, languages, and texts: from Cicero, Seneca, and Galen; through Avicenna, Hildegard of Bingen, and Heloise and Abelard; to Petrarch, Montaigne, and Descartes.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
A Note on the Text Publicly Available Download PDF	xix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter one. Essences of Glass, Histories of Humans Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
PART ONE Assays and Arguments in Antiquity
Chapter two. A Cock for Asclepius: Plato, the Hippocratics and Aristotle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
Chapter three. Excursus on Will and Passibility Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
Chapter four. Cicero’s Person, Passible Minds and Real Worlds Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
Chapter five. Senecan Surroundings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
Chapter six. How Were Slaves Persons? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
Chapter seven. How Was Personhood Gendered? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
Chapter eight. The Public Materiality of Being Human Galen and Medical Traditions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	212
Chapter nine. Two-Timed Ipseities and Speaking Their Mind: Augustine Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Excursus on the Middle Ages
Chapter ten. Measuring Tensions in the Medieval Microcosm Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
PART TWO Petrarch through Descartes
Chapter eleven. “Multum a me ipso differre compulsus sum” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Chapter twelve. “Sparsa anime fragmenta recolligam” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
Chapter thirteen. Surrounded Selves and Public Being Sixteenth-Century Strains Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	353
Chapter fourteen. Persons, Passions, Pictures Loyola with Alberti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	381
Chapter fifteen. Hélisenne’s Story Collective Love, Singular Anger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	404
Chapter sixteen. Public Subject, Personal Passion Montaigne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	440
Chapter seventeen. Descartes, Collective Tradition and Personal Agency Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	469
Chapter eighteen. Selfehood, Political Community and a “Cartesian” Future? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	488
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	519
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	529
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	585

Language: English
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 640
Illustrations
- Other: 16 illustrations

eBook

Published: January 21, 2022
ISBN: 9781503620322