Is it possible for postmodernism to offer viable, coherent accounts of ethics? Or are our social and intellectual worlds too fragmented for any broad consensus about the moral life? These issues have emerged as some of the most contentious in literary and philosophical studies. In Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Philosophy, and Theory a distinguished international gathering of philosophers and literary scholars address the reconceptualisations involved in this 'turn towards ethics'. An important feature of this has been a renewed (...) interest in the literary text as a focus for the exploration of ethical issues. Exponents of this trend include Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams, Iris Murdoch, Cora Diamond, Richard Rorty and Martha Nussbaum, the latter a contributor and a key figure in this volume. This book assesses the significance of this development for ethical and literary theory and attempts to articulate an alternative postmodern account of ethics which does not rely on earlier appeals to universal truths. (shrink)
This is a reply to Dan Clouser's philosophical commentary on the essays in this issue. Important assumptions that condition his perspective on the essays are identified and analyzed. Attention is drawn to his unhistorical emphasis on the exclusive importance of philosophy in ethical thought, and his resulting insistence that any discipline wishing to contribute to biomedical discourse must adopt the assumptions and methodologies of philosophy. Clouser's “three tenets” are examined, and then the question of what literature, considered (...) in terms of its own aims and methodologies, has to offer to medical ethics. Genuine dialogue about medical ethics between philosophers and literary scholars is both desirable and important, but becomes possible only if the methods and insights of each discipline are honored in the pursuit of the overall goals they hold in common. (shrink)
Offering a theory of imagination, and indirectly a defense of the humanities, this overly-rich and confusing work contains more literature than philosophy, and more philosophy than imagination. The author makes many suggestive comparisons: e.g., the literary equivalent of traditional positivism is the novels of Robbe-Grillet; the poetic equivalents of Peirce's firstness, secondness, and thirdness are the poems of Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot, respectively. While Levi's division of the imagination into its teleological, dramatic, literary, (...) and metaphysical forms is well taken, he fails to heed Plato's warning to define the essence and not to be satisfied with a list of its kinds. The printing is careless.--A. B. (shrink)
Absolute devaluation : Friedrich Nietzsche -- Homelessness : Martin Heidegger -- Fatal positivities : Theodor Adorno -- The naive calculation of the negative : Maurice Blanchot -- Bad violence : Jacques Derrida -- The fracture : Giorgio Agamben -- Distortions, or, Nihilism against itself : Gianni Vattimo -- The denial of (Greek) thought : Alain Badiou.
The essays in this collection fall into three groups: the first dealing with phenomenological methods and discussions, the second with applications in the field of literature, the third with applications in the social sciences. The quality and seriousness of the essays is quite uneven. The essays in the first group fail to go beyond a fairly uncritical reading of Husserl, especially in treating the reduction of the natural viewpoint. The crucial failures there effect the second and third sections. Especially (...) in the analyses of literature, the neglect of the context of meanings leads to questionable generalizations. Natanson's frequent criticisms of Sartre's rejection of the transcendental ego suffer from incomplete statement of Sartre's arguments. One wishes that Natanson had prepared a substantial statement of this discussion for the collection, rather than allow scattered brief remarks in several papers to stand alone. Elsewhere as well, brief suggestive passages could have profited from a thorough rewriting.—W. G. E. (shrink)
... he writes of the destruction of Mnemosyne's city and of the severing of the locks of the goddess herself: From her also, when God put off his cloak, ...
By exploring central issues in the philosophy of literature, illustrated by a wide range of novels, poems, and plays, _Philosophy of Literature_ gets to the heart of why literature matters to us and sheds new light on the nature and interpretation of literary works. Provides a comprehensive study, along with original insights, into the philosophy of literature Develops a unique point of view - from one of the field's leading exponents Offers examples of key issues (...) using excerpts from well-known novels, poems, and plays from different historical periods. (shrink)
In Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience, Eleanore Holveck presents Simone de Beauvoir's theory of literature and metaphysics, including its relationship to the philosophers Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre, with references to the literary tradition of Goethe, Maurice Barr_s, Arthur Rimbaud, AndrZ Breton, and Paul Nizan. The book provides a detailed philosophical analysis of Beauvoir's early short stories and several major novels, including The Mandarins and L'invitZe.
Beyond the Ancient Quarrel brings together contributions from leading scholars to explore the boundaries between literature, philosophy, and literary criticism in the work of J.M. Coetzee.
In this essay, I explore the ways that Beauvoir’s description of philosophical novels reveals her understanding of consciousness as a particular sort of ambiguity: that which not only gives the world meaning, but which also, necessarily, finds meaning in the world through the values, ideas, and objects given to it by others. It is through the philosophical (metaphysical) novel that Beauvoir finds a medium for the philosophical communication of ambiguity – that is, a medium for writing human being. More specifically, (...) I consider the metaphysical stance Beauvoir is able to describe because of her commitment to philosophical literature. In writing, and in reading, fiction, what is manifest is both found and given, discovered and created; and the metaphysics of the novel offers a way to read philosophy as poeisis, poetry in the sense of bringing-forth or revealing worldly meaning, in ways that are ambiguously particular and universal. (shrink)
Applying ideas drawn from contemporary critical theory, this book historicizes psychoanalysis through a new and significant theorization of the Gothic. The central premise is that the nineteenth-century Gothic produced a radical critique of accounts of sublimity and Freudian psychoanalysis. This book makes a major contribution to an understanding of both the nineteenth century and the Gothic discourse which challenged the dominant ideas of that period. Writers explored include Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bram Stoker.
This Publication Contains The Papers Presented At The Seminar, Contribution Of Andhra Desa To Buddhism Organized By Birla Archaological And Cultural Research Institute, Hyderabad A Few Years Ago. The Purpose Of The Seminar Is To Bring To Light The New Discoveries And Throw Further Light On The Already Existing Information On Buddhism From Andhra Desa In Particular And India In General. Research Is A Never Ending Process And Results Of Research Will Always Be Wither Finding Out Something New Or Updating (...) The Existing Information With The New Discoveries. (shrink)
A collection of the author's most influential essays and short works includes her critique of existentialism, her two dialogues on art and religion, key texts on the continuing importance of the sublime, the concept of love, and more.
As a recent distinguished editor of British Journal of Aesthetics and a major contributor in his own right to recent debates on aesthetics and the philosophy of art – not least in the particular field with which this particular volume is concerned – Peter Lamarque is particularly well placed to author this survey of past and contemporary work on the philosophy of literature. Moreover, as those already familiar with Professor Lamarque's work will no doubt expect, this volume (...) offers remarkably clear and extensive coverage of a wide and complex philosophical field in its relatively short space of under 300 pages.Following a short preface, the work is divided into seven chapters. The first, entitled ‘Art’, generally explores the relationship between philosophy, literary theory, art …. (shrink)
How best to introduce philosophical ideas? Is the best and only way by studying the history of philosophy and its rational arguments and discussions? But can literature, usually hived off from philosophy, be used instead and can this be as effective as rational argument? This paper explores these questions. First it considers a text which introduces philosophy through the analysis of literature, in particular James Joyce's 'Araby', arguing that the traditional analytic approach employed by the (...) text, by concentrating on epistemology, obscures other philosophical insights offered by Joyce. It then turns to French philosophy and literature and suggests that Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus by 'blurring' the analytic distinction between philosophy and literature have much to offer to the grasping and understanding of philosophical ideas and principles. (shrink)
INTRODUCTION: THE NAME MADHYAMAKA The Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism goes back to Nagarjuna, the great Indian Buddhist philosopher who is placed ...
According to what I call the ‘Discontinuity Thesis’, literature can never count as genuine philosophizing: there is an impermeable barrier separating it from philosophy. While philosophy presents logically valid arguments in favor of or against precisely formulated statements, literature gives neither precisely formulated theses nor arguments in favor of or against them. Hence, philosophers don’t lose out on anything if they don’t read literature. There are two obvious ways of questioning the Discontinuity Thesis. First, arguing (...) that literature can indeed do what philosophy is generally taken to do. Second, arguing that philosophy is not, in fact, the presentation of logically valid arguments in favor or against precisely formulated statements – what it does is closer to what literature is generally taken to do. I use a combination of these two strategies and argue that philosophy is not as intellectually straightforward as it is advertized to be and literature is not as intellectually impoverished as it is generally taken to be. (shrink)
Literature, like the visual arts, poses its own philosophical problems. While literary theorists have discussed the nature of literature intensively, analytic philosophers have usually dealt with literary problems either within the general framework of aesthetics or else in a way that is accessible only to a philosophical audience. The present book is unique in that it introduces the philosophy of literature from an analytic perspective accessible to both students of literature and students of philosophy. (...) Specifically, the book addresses: the definition of literature, the distinction between oral and written literature and the identity of literary works the nature of fiction and our emotional involvement with fictional characters the concept of imagination and its role in the apprehension of literary works theories of metaphor and postmodernist theory on the significance of the authors' intentions to the interpretationof their work an examination of the relevance of thruth and morality to literary appreciation Lucid and well organised and free from jargon, hilosophy of Literature: An Introduction offers fresh approaches to traditional problems and raises new issues in the philosophy of literature. (shrink)
Charting the origins of the modern ecology movement over more than two thousand years, this volume gives a voice to those hidden from history, revealing "green" themes within artistic and scientific thought. This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information . Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.
A recent focus of Philip Kitcher’s research has been, somewhat surprisingly in the light of his earlier work, the philosophical analyses of literary works and operas. Some may see a discontinuity in Kitcher’s oeuvre in this respect – it may be difficult to see how his earlier contributions to philosophy of science relate to this much less mainstream approach to philosophy. The aim of this paper is to show that there is no such discontinuity: Kitcher’s contributions to the (...)philosophy of science and his more recent endeavors into the philosophy of literature and of music are grounded in the same big picture attitude towards the human mind – an attitude that he would undoubtedly call ‘pragmatic’: one that emphasizes the importance of those mental processes that are not (or not entirely) rational. (shrink)
The next pandemic will erupt, not from the jungle, but from the disease factories of hospitals, refugee camps and cities. Wendy Orent, How Plagues Really Work,.
Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether (...) they agree or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)
This book moves toward building a new and more comprehensive theory of literature, philosophy, psychology, and art. The extremely popular work of Ken Wilber, unites the best of both western and eastern thought and affirms that the stages of consciousness, more refined than that of the reasoning mind, do exist.
Staying for an answer : the untidy process of groping for truth -- The same, only different -- The unity of truth and the plurality of truths -- Coherence, consistency, cogency, congruity, cohesiveness, &c. : remain calm! don't go overboard! -- Not cynicism, but synechism : lessons from classical pragmatism -- Science, economics, "vision" -- The integrity of science : what it means, why it matters -- Scientific secrecy and "spin" : the sad, sleazy story of the trials of remune (...) -- Truth and justice, inquiry and advocacy, science and law -- Trial and error : the Supreme Court's philosophy of science -- An epistemologist among the epidemiologists -- Fallibilism and faith, naturalism and the supernatural, science and religion -- The ideal of intellectual integrity, in life and literature -- After my own heart : Dorothy Sayers's feminism -- Worthwhile lives -- Why I am not an oxymoron -- Formal philosophy? : a plea for pluralism. (shrink)
This timely book argues that the institutionalisation of literary theory, particularly within American and British academic circles, has led to a sterility of thought which ignores the special character of literary art. Mark Edmundson traces the origins of this tendency to the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, in which Plato took the side of philosophy; and he shows how the work of modern theorists - Foucault, Derrida, de Man and Bloom - exhibits similar drives to subsume poetic (...) art into some 'higher' kind of thought. Challenging and controversial, this book should be read by all teachers of literature and of theory, and by anyone concerned about the future of institutionalised literary studies. (shrink)
