Cet article démontre que le spectre d’une « intermédialité » ou d’une « transversalité » esthétique entre les arts verbaux et les arts « silencieux » est la source d’une angoisse profonde et la cause d’une polémique tenace dans la poétique gréco-romaine. À la ressemblance du discours aux arts « spatiaux » est attribuée continûment la corruption de vérité référentielle dans la littérature. Néanmoins, comme les interventions canoniques sur la question du visuel de Plutarque, Démétrios et Quintilien dans la littérature (...) le révèleront, ce rejet témoigne d’une inquiétude déplacée. Dans la capacité d’assouvir le monde temporel à l’œil de l’esprit au moyen de l’artifice, les arts spatiaux forment le miroir où le poétique reconnaît et refoule l’inventivité ontologique au cœur de la discursivité. Le fait que le dix-neuvième siècle marque la fin de la polémique classique contre la transversalité esthétique n’est pas contingent : la modernité esthétique est déterminée non seulement par une conciliation entre les arts mais également par une prise de possession consciente du potentiel ontologique du discours. (shrink)

Since Plato’s Symposium, romantic, sexual love has been characterized as a movement in desire that seeks wholeness and identity since it is, at heart, broken.1 The yearning for sexual consummation is predicated upon the idea that love completes the self. Copulation provides lovers with a moment of rapture, relief, and oneness, but once satisfied it is again wanting in reawakening the desire to pledge and to make love again. Love operates much like a promise whose constant and insistent offerings seek (...) to recover again and again its inherent brokenness. The promise of love and the many promises of love are divided further by the dual possibility of being fulfilled or unfulfilled, sincere or insincere, true or false... (shrink)

This paper argues that Henry James’ treatment of balancing in The Golden Bowl—to which Putnam insightfully draws attention—calls for the attunement of philosophy and literary criticism. The process may undermine Putnam’s own reading of the novel, but it also finds new reasons to endorse what his reading was meant to deliver: the confidence that philosophy and thoughtful appreciation of literature have much to contribute to each other, and the conviction that morality can incorporate (Kantian) seriousness about rules alongside (Aristotelian) (...) sensitivity to character and situation. (shrink)

From Karl Marx to Alexandre Kojève to Luce Irigaray, many writers have explored the implications of the famous master-slave dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.1 An interesting debate has developed out of the possible gender connotations of this dialectic—a debate that has centered largely on the theory that the master could represent man, with the slave consequently representing woman. A close analysis of the Phenomenology reveals that both the master and the slave are, in fact, supposed to be men. But (...) is it possible to preserve the core ideas of the Phenomenology while simultaneously recasting both the master and the slave as women? And what are the ramifications of this reconfiguration?These questions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Henry James—Aristotle's Ally, An Exclusive Pact?Jane SingletonIMany claims are advanced for the importance of narrative art works in philosophy. This paper will concentrate on one specific thesis put forward by Martha Nussbaum about the relationship between certain works of literature and moral philosophy. Although Nussbaum explores many roles for narrative artworks in philosophy,1 I shall concentrate on those works where she argues for a close connection between the (...) novels of Henry James and Aristotle's ethics. These are Love's Knowledge,2 where other authors other than James are also considered, and "Exactly and Responsibly: A Defense of Ethical Criticism," an article that formed part of a debate with Richard Posner and Wayne Booth in 1997 and 1998 in Philosophy and Literature.3 It is this latter work that provides the central thesis to be considered.I argue that there are least four possible attributes or combinations of them that Nussbaum might be suggesting are present in James's novels when she claims that James is an ally of Aristotle. My claim will be that James can only be regarded as an ally of Aristotle with respect to some of these attributes. It is a second question to determine precisely how the legitimate attributes isolated in James's novels are to be used to provide an ally for Aristotle's ethics. I shall claim that in any sense in which it is legitimate to regard James as an ally of Aristotle, he could also be regarded as an ally of a generalist theory. This is an important point to emphasise since Nussbaum explicitly enlists James as an ally of Aristotle because of the normative primacy that he gives to the particular. I shall use Kant's theory as an example of a generalist theory. Henry [End Page 61] James, I argue, can be an ally of both Aristotle and Kant but both can adopt an isolationist policy.IIThe specific thesis put forward by Nussbaum in 1998 is as follows:My claim is that in order to investigate this Aristotelian ethical view fully and fairly, we need to turn to texts in which the case for that sort of rationality is made out in a powerful and convincing way—and this cannot be done if we confine ourselves to works written in the abstract style characteristic of most contemporary theory... Aristotle's conception is much more dependent on "allies" who will make out the force of such obscure claims as the claim that "the discernment rests with perception," and that correct action "lies in a mean." Because Aristotle's conception leaves so much to particularized contextual judgment, one cannot well assess the conception without studying complex examples of such particularized judgment; and of course Aristotle's text does not supply such material. I claim that Henry James is a powerful ally of Aristotle, and one whom Aristotle badly needs if he is to convince us of his claims.("ER," pp. 347–48)It is the clarification and discussion of this that provides my point of departure. I shall then consider the four possible characteristics of James's novels that I have isolated. These are: exemplars of good choice, illustrations of the direction of thought to follow for the discernment of the particular, vehicles for developing imagination and sources that enable us to develop an understanding of and engagement of emotions. In each case I shall consider how, if at all, these characteristics enable James to be an ally of either Aristotle or Kant.IIINussbaum's thesis is limited to the late novels of James. "I assert that there is a distinctive type of ethical view... that requires literary works of a very specific type, primarily exemplified by the late novels of James, for its complete investigation" ("ER," p. 348). These include The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). I shall use examples from each of these although, as Posner notes, The Wings of The Dove, is one book that Nussbaum does not discuss in the article.4 [End Page 62]What attributes or characteristics do these late novels of James possess? They all have in common... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:American Memory in Henry James: Void and ValueMartin WarnerAmerican Memory in Henry James: Void and Value, by William Righter, edited by Rosemary Righter ; xi & 220 pp. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2004. $79.95.The perennial debate about what Arnold termed "culture and anarchy" was both enriched and rendered more subtle by the work of Henry James. The late William Righter's fine and discriminating intelligence helps us (...) to think this through. This is no standard monograph on Henry James. While well-aware of the critical traditions of Jamesian scholarship (and the knowledgeable will be able to detect in his sensitive and often enlightening readings of the texts his engagement with those traditions), Righter sits lightly to this scholarship, ploughing his own furrow, using the later work of Henry James as a lens to question "void and value" in twentieth-century and, by extension, contemporary culture. American Memory in Henry James is elegantly, and indeed sometimes elusively, written, as befits a work on a man whose own stylistic stringency is, alas, so often not emulated by academic writings on his work. The flipside of this, of course, is that a reasonably educated background, including some acquaintance with James's texts, is assumed.Righter is concerned to explore the capacity of the novel form as represented by James to apprehend, through formal arrangement, the apparent incommensurability of the forces that drive history, culture, and human psychology on the one hand, and the frameworks of intelligibility and value within which we seek to live and by means of which we seek to exercise some control over them, on the other. James is apt for this purpose since he focuses on cultural dislocations, between America and Europe, and between past and present. America, for James, represents the overcoming of a late nineteenth-century tradition of civility (primarily, in his case, transcendentalist and Unitarian) by big business and the criteria of capitalism. This precipitates a split between "wasp" culture and an alienated, urban culture, both in danger of losing touch with their roots. Europe, of course, stands for continuity, in this specifically cultural sense, rather than rupture, and the project of importing European culture into America through museums (The Golden Bowl is very much in point here) is one of the ambiguities to which the text recurs.The first part, "America Deconstructed," sets the stage, using James's The [End Page 447] American Scene to analyze his notions of historical change and progression, and their implications for a sense of stable American identity. How is a society so committed to change and progress to honor its past creatively? Part two, "The Note of Europe," engages with The Ambassadors, seeing the victory of Wollett as an indication of the insubstantiality of a certain type of expatriate community, of Americans seeking to take on European culture. The main weight of the text is taken by the engagement with The Golden Bowl, to which the next two parts are dedicated. "Amerigo in American Nowhere" explores the way in which the central characters operate in a sort of void, with social context stripped away to reveal the dynamics of their failed equilibrium. In this, "America" and "England" have become virtually typological symbols. In the light of this reading of the text, Part four, "A Dark Fable of Love and Power," explores the implications for our shaping intelligence, especially ethical intelligence. In suggestive dialogue with Putnam and Nussbaum, Righter points to the difficulty of seeing the relevance of anything like the Categorical Imperative to The Golden Bowl. Rather, in this novel "the language of morality has been examined, picked up, turned over, taken to pieces. But this very process has in the end indicated its unsuitability as an ultimate explanatory scheme." He argues that James poses the possibility that the novel "adds up to a total story which is intelligible beyond the possibilities of a conceptual sorting out" (pp. 154-55).But this raises the question of what the criteria for intelligibility could be in such a case, if beyond the conceptual lies the imaginative. The final part, "Form and Contingency," engages with this issue. James's difficulty here, it is argued with respect to the late... (shrink)

In the first part of this lecture I aim to characterize the moral dimensions of Henry James's novel The Golden Bowl ; in the second part, and for the purposes of comparison with my interpretation as well as for their intrinsic interest, I outline some of James's theoretical reflections about novels and the nature of experience, supplementing them with quotations from the work of William James.

This chapter explores the significance that Wittgenstein’s work in the philosophy of mind holds for self-understanding, looking into issues of the dualist-introspectionist model of the mind, its antithesis in behaviorism, and the role of language as what Wittgenstein called “the vehicle of thought”, where these considerations are all brought together as a way of investigating how we think of the contents of consciousness. It then takes these Wittgensteinian reflections into a discussion of the way in which Henry James illuminates (...) both the contents and the nature of consciousness in The Golden Bowl. The self-understanding that Maggie Verver achieves is here seen not as a result of inner reflection on private pure or pre-linguistic thought within a metaphysically-sealed mental interior, but rather as the result of becoming ever more aware of the network of relations through which she moves and ever more aware of the power of the words and the subtly-developing narrative that gives shape to who she is and that determines what she will become. (shrink)

When literary texts are included in a course on moral philosophy they tend to be classical tragedies or existentialist novels: texts filled with major moral transgressions and agonized debates over rights, wrongs, and relativism. Recently, however, the focus of much discussion on literature and moral philosophy has been Henry James’s last novel, The Golden Bowl. This ought to seem surprising. For The Golden Bowl is a quintessential Jamesian novel. Almost nothing happens. In the course of more than five hundred (...) pages there are two marriages, one affair, and a single act of violence, the smashing of the golden bowl. The rest is reflection, nuance, detail: the creation and preservation of a “‘brilliant, perfect surface,’” one “scarcely more meant to be breathed upon, it would seem, than the cheek of royalty.”1 There are no extreme actions or high-flown speculations. The moral issues among the four central characters either go unspoken or are raised expressly to be suppressed, banished from articulation. And what counts as the expression of the moral maturity and insight of the heroine, Maggie Verver, is her extraordinary ability to keep the truth silen00to put it precisely, to lie. If even there was a novel in which the protagonists shied away from moral debate, it is The Golden Bowl.The challenge for the philosophical critic, it seems to me, is to argue that it is just this stress on surface and silence that makes this novel of interest to moral philosophers, that makes it exemplary for how literature can do something philosophically important that philosophy cannot. 1. Henry James, The Golden Bowl , pp. 445, 172; hereafter cited by page number. Daniel Brudney is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

Various philosophers have already written articles about what might be called the philosophical lessons to be derived from James’s tales and novels. Showing a close acquaintance with those articles as well as with recent literary studies of James’s work, Pippin, the author of several earlier books concerned with modernity or with modern philosophical texts, has here produced a book which is at once a detailed and subtle interpretation of several of James’s most famous fictional works and also the presentation of (...) an explicit philosophical view about “modern moral life” that appears to be adumbrated in those fictions. That view is that in the modern world, where fluid relationships based ultimately upon money or the lack of it have undermined traditional authority, the possibility of a meaningful life for oneself turns out to require appropriate recognition of others in what amounts to a continuing dialogue, one in which the meaning of one’s own intentions, desires, and attitudes is dependent, in large part, on what others “make” of them and on how they respond, while at the same time one’s response to others is importantly determinative of who they are and of what they mean or meant. Expressed differently, the view is that there are, at least in the modern world, no social—and, indeed, no moral or psychological— facts, but only at best mutually supportive interpretations, each the product of a person’s self-reflections and of one’s responses to the reflections of that person in others. Pippin, however, is not directly concerned to defend the latter view, although it seems clear that he regards it as at least fundamentally correct. His principal concern, rather, is to defend, through his careful readings of various of James’s works, the thesis that that view is implicit in such great works of James’s as The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. In a related way, Pippin takes James’s wonderful stories about ghosts or about secret truths to be concerned with modern persons who, despite their modernity, are committed, even if not in a wholly conscious way, to the existence of real social or moral facts of the matter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary KnowledgeWilliam FleschMeaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary Knowledge, by G. L. Hagberg; xi & 178 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, $27.50.The idea of studying Henry James and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein together is attractive, although there is very little stylistic similarity between them. Wittgenstein writes like a novelist, James like a philosopher. Wittgenstein is (...) intensely interested in the real language of real people; most of James’s dialogues bristle with a peculiarly Jamesian stiltedness. But both writers focus on the exquisite, extensive subtleties of language and of linguistic interaction, subtleties that tend to make uselessly crude such notional entities as facts, meanings, or ideas, and so of an epistemology based on such entities. The extremely fine grain of James’s analyses of his characters and of their analyses of each other already commits him philosophically to agreeing with Wittgenstein’s central insight that “to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life”: to James’s characters life consists in interpretation of each other’s language. Those characters have the deepest lives who come to the greatest subtlety in their investigations of what determines the deeply overdetermined linguistic moves made by other minds.Hagberg’s book is disappointing, however. The exposition of Wittgenstein is unexceptionable but hardly novel, and as for James, Hagberg has confined himself to four stories, considerable to be sure, but hardly the novels. Hagberg gives creditable readings of these stories, especially “The Lesson of the Master” and “The Figure in the Carpet.” But he treats James’s stories more as demonstrations of his philosophical point—that there is an analogy between language games and works of art, also an analogy between our attitude towards a person and our attitude towards a work of art—than as works of art themselves. This would be fine if he didn’t keep asserting that they are examples of what they address: perhaps they are, but Hagberg makes them out primarily as didactic. Thus in “Figure” he finds a clear and direct argument that one ought not look for some propositional content as the point or secret of a work of art and thus a fortiori of a story like the one under consideration. [End Page 373] Hagberg is right, of course, but he reduces the story to a moral in just the way he claims it warns us to avoid.In his treatment of “Lesson,” he writes with real insight about the ambiguities of the master’s motivation in that story, and argues convincingly that the motivation may be opaque to the master himself, but then retreats from the insight thus won by treating ambiguity itself rather literal-mindedly, as a sort of resultant of several unambiguous vectors. Although the comparison of ambiguity to seeing aspects is fascinating, Hagberg’s analysis would be inevitably enriched by treating The Golden Bowl, where Adam Verver remains essentially ambiguous. Hagberg’s readings falter because his sense of language-games is too flat: he doesn’t take into account (although he claims to) their genuine variety. For Hagberg, unlike for Wittgenstein, games always have well-defined moves, and so ambiguity becomes a move. But what if it’s ambiguous whether it’s a move or not?Perhaps Hagberg’s account of “The Tree of Knowledge” is least in the spirit of Wittgenstein. In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein writes, “I can know what someone else is thinking, not what I am thinking” (Part II, section xi). But Hagberg, in a taxonomy of kinds of knowing, takes it for granted that I can know what I am thinking (pp. 153, 169): again, this is a way of reducing ambiguity to a question of the intent of a “move,” and not grappling with its fundamental elusiveness.Meaning and Interpretation is a learned and helpfully provocative book, often written with great verve, but its value is more in the questions that it broaches than in the answers it offers. Raising questions is the proper Wittgensteinian and Jamesian activity: the book demonstrates by its own examples that offering definite answers may neutralize the power of the questions.William FleschBrandeis UniversityCopyright... (shrink)

In his new book the eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison provides an innovative and comprehensive interpretation of Kant's concept of freedom. The author analyzes the concept and discusses the role it plays in Kant's moral philosophy and psychology. He also considers in full detail the critical literature on the subject from Kant's own time to the present day. In the first part Professor Allison argues that at the centre of the Critique of Pure Reason there is the foundation for (...) a coherent general theory of rational agency. The second part employs this account of rational agency as a key to understanding Kant's concept of moral agency and associated moral psychology. The third part focuses on Kant's attempt to ground both moral law and freedom in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This is a major contribution to the interpretation of Kant which will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

Henry Allison is one of the foremost interpreters of the philosophy of Kant. This new volume collects all his recent essays on Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. All the essays postdate Allison's two major books on Kant, and together they constitute an attempt to respond to critics and to clarify, develop and apply some of the central theses of those books. Two are published here for the first time. Special features of the collection are: a detailed defence of the (...) author's interpretation of transcendental idealism; a consideration of the Transcendental Deduction and some other recent interpretations thereof; further elaborations of the tensions between various aspects of Kant's conception of freedom and of the complex role of this conception within Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

Although a good deal has been written about Kant's conception of free will in recent years, there has been no serious attempt to examine in detail the development of his views on the topic. This book endeavours to remedy the situation by tracing Kant's thoughts on free will from his earliest discussions of it in the 1750s through to his last accounts in the 1790s. This developmental approach is of interest for at least two reasons. First, it shows that the (...) path that led Kant to view freedom as a transcendental power that is both radically distinct from and compatible with the causality of nature was a winding one. Second, it indicates that, despite the variety of views of free will that Kant held at various times, the concept occupied a central place in his thought, because it was the point of union between his theoretical and practical philosophy. (shrink)

Heartbreaking stories and pictures documenting the phenomenon of populations displaced by climate change—homes, neighborhoods, livelihoods, and cultures lost. "Our job is to tell stories we have heard and to bear witness to what we have seen. The science was already there when we started in 2004, but we wanted to emphasize the human dimension, especially for those most vulnerable." —Guy-Pierre Chomette, Collectif Argos We have all seen photographs of neighborhoods wrecked and abandoned after a hurricane, of dry, cracked terrain that (...) was once fertile farmland, of islands wiped out by a tsunami. But what happens to the people who live in these areas? According to the United Nations, some 150 million people will become climate refugees by 2050. The journalists and photographers of Collectif Argos have spent four years seeking out the first wave of people displaced by the consequences of climate change. Using the massive 2,500-page report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as their guide, these photographers and writers pinpointed nine locales around the world in which global warming has had a measureable impact. In Climate Refugees, they take us to these places—from the dust bowl that was once Lake Chad to the melting permafrost in Alaska—offering a first-hand look in words and photographs at the devastating effects of rising global temperatures on the daily lives of ordinary people. Climate Refugees shows us damage wrought to homes and livelihoods by rapid warming near the Arctic; rising sea levels that threaten the island nations of Tuvulu, the Maldives, and Halligen; farmers displaced by the desert's advance in Chad and China; floods that wash away life in Bangladesh; and Hurricane Katrina evacuees in shelters far away from their New Orleans neighborhoods. Added to the devastating environmental effect of climate change is the immeasurable and irretrievable loss of ethnic and cultural diversity that occurs when vulnerable local cultures disperse. It is this often forgotten and tragic consequence of global warming that Collectif Argos painstakingly documents. Collectif Argos Guy-Pierre Chomette Guillaume Collanges Hélène David Jérômine Derigny Cédric Faimali Donatien Garnier Eléonore Henry de Frahan Aude Raux Laurent Weyl Jacques Windenberger. (shrink)

Christof Koch and Klaus Hepp, in a recent essay in this journal1, issued a challenge to “those who call upon consciousness to carry the burden of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.” Lest absence of a response be construed as admission of a failure of the idea that consciousness can play, via quantum measurement effects, a crucial role in neurodynamics, or that this idea has been in any rational way damaged by the arguments put forth in the cited article, I (...) respond here to that challenge. (shrink)

Quantum theory can be regarded as a rationally coherent theory of the interaction of mind and matter and it allows our conscious thoughts to play a causally e cacious and necessary role in brain dynamics It therefore provides a natural basis created by scientists for the science of consciousness As an illustration it is explained how the interaction of brain and consciousness can speed up brain processing and thereby enhance the survival prospects of conscious organisms as compared to similar organisms (...) that lack consciousness As a second illustration it is explained how within the quantum framework the consciously experi enced I directs the actions of a human being It is concluded that contemporary science already has an adequate framework for incorporat ing causally e cacious experiential events into the physical universe in a manner that puts the neural correlates of consciousness into the theory in a well de ned way explains in principle how the e ects of consciousness per se can enhance the survival prospects of organisms that possess it allows this survival e ect to feed into phylogenetic de velopment and explains how the consciously experienced I can direct human behaviour.. (shrink)

Norbert Wiener and J.B.S. Haldane suggested during the early thirties that the profound changes in our conception of matter entailed by quantum theory opens the way for our thoughts, and other experiential or mind-like qualities, to play a role in nature that is causally interactive and effective, rather than purely epiphenomenal, as required by classical mechanics. The mathematical basis of this suggestion is described here, and it is then shown how, by giving mind this efficacious role in natural process, the (...) classical character of our perceptions of the quantum universe can be seen to be a consequence of evolutionary pressures for the survival of the species. (shrink)

THE Concluding Unscientific Postscript is generally regarded as the most philosophically significant of Kierkegaard's works. In terms of a subjectivistic orientation it seems to present both an elaborate critique of the pretensions of the Hegelian philosophy and an existential analysis which points to the Christian faith as the only solution to the "human predicament." Furthermore, on the basis of such a straightforward reading of the text, Kierkegaard has been both vilified as an irrationalist and praised as a profound existential thinker (...) who has uncovered the only legitimate starting point for a philosophical analysis of the religious life and a Christian apologetic. (shrink)

It is argued that the principles of classical physics are inimical to the development of a satisfactory science of consciousness The problem is that insofar as the classical principles are valid consciousness can have no e ect on the behavior and hence on the survival prospects of the organisms in which it inheres Thus within the classical framework it is not possible to explain in natural terms the development of consciousness to the high level form found in human beings In (...) quantum theory on the other hand consciousness can be dynamically e cacious quantum the ory does allows consciousness to in uence behavior and thence to evolve in accordance with the principles of natural selection However this evo lutionary requirement places important constraints upon the details of the formulation of the quantum dynamical principles.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martha Nussbaum and the Moral Life of MiddlemarchRohan MaitzenWe are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.George Eliot, MiddlemarchIAs is well known to readers of this journal, Martha Nussbaum emphasizes in her essays on fiction as moral philosophy that the philosophical significance of novels is found, not in whatever theories or principles they might overtly discuss or dramatize, (...) but in their literary form and their prose style. In particular, she finds in the late novels of Henry James an alternative to the reductive, pseudoscientific prose of contemporary analytic philosophy, which she argues inhibits the range of possible answers to the basic ethical question "How should one live?"1 James's prose shows "attention to particulars, a respect for the emotions, and a tentative and non-dogmatic attitude to the bewildering multiplicities of life" (LK, p. 27), and thus it exemplifies the Aristotelian ethical conception she advocates.In this essay I want to disentangle Nussbaum's theory of the ethical significance of fictional form—which I endorse—from her preoccupation [End Page 190] with James—which I do not. Far from being, as she believes, egalitarian, humane, and morally responsible, the Jamesian consciousness Nussbaum would have us emulate is elitist, exclusionary, and morally inert; further, in its commitment to indeterminacy, mystery, and obscurity, the Jamesian model is in fact profoundly anti-philosophical.2 I propose instead George Eliot's Middlemarch as exemplary of fiction's potential contribution to "the job of moral philosophy" (LK, p. 138). Nussbaum may admire the subtlety and density of The Golden Bowl, but I will argue that in its narrative strategies and its integration of novelistic perception and philosophic reflection, Middlemarch proves a better ethical guide and a better example of literature that is also philosophy.In making this argument, I will rely on the terms set by Nussbaum herself for the ethical evaluation of fiction. Unlike other philosophers who invoke literature only as a "rich source of examples awaiting illumination by philosophy," Nussbaum insists that analysis of a text's literary properties is the essential methodology of ethical criticism.3 Every aspect of form and style "expresses a sense of life and of value, a sense of what matters and what does not" (LK, p.5). We discover this "sense of life" through close reading; "our engaged experience line by line," as Wayne Booth says, reveals the character of the implied author, the would-be friend urging on us a particular "pattern of desires."4On Nussbaum's reading, James's prose is ethically exemplary because it is "the prose of Aristotelian perception":It depicts in its cadences the moral effort of straining to see correctly and to come up with the appropriate picture or description; its tensions, obliquities, and circumnavigations express the sheer difficulty of finding the right description or picture for what is there before one. If, as James says, to "put" is to "do," showing this is showing moral activity of a valuable kind.(LK, p. 88)But Nussbaum ends up at James because her alternative moral theory begins there, not because moral philosophy that is literary inevitably sounds like James or supports Aristotle.5 As Nussbaum's gestures towards a more general theory of the role of "the novel" in philosophy indicate, novels may share generic features which complement or correct conventional philosophical discourse, but investigating other novels in this way may also lead us to other, non-Aristotelian, non-Jamesian ethical conceptions. My commentary on Middlemarch presents one such alternative. First, however, I will consider our "engaged experience" of The [End Page 191] Golden Bowl, a key example for Nussbaum, to show more particularly why we ought to be cautious about accepting James's late style as exemplary for moral philosophy, despite Nussbaum's passionate advocacy. What kind of friend do we meet there, in that world full of indeterminacy, obliquity, and circumnavigation? What kind of guidance in practical reasoning do we get from this implied author—what "ought" emerges from the Jamesian "is"?Perhaps because, as Nussbaum admits, her work on fiction as moral philosophy emerged "out of a longstanding love" for The... (shrink)

Marx's work is dual, and includes both a philosophical and an economic aspect. The philosophical work was developed with great speed between 1842 and 1846 in a series of extraordinary texts, notably the Critique of the Hegelian State, the third manuscript of 1844, and The German Ideology (1845–6). It is a philosophy unlike anything that had gone before it and is without equal. It was destined to shake the foundations of Western thought. Such is its originality, in fact, that it (...) remains misunderstood even today. (shrink)

This book re-evaluates New Left and Marxist texts from the 1980s, in order to explore problems facing the study of 'class' which have emerged within Australian and international theories. The author contrasts the popular ideas of Connell, Bourdieu and the 'Death of Class' thesis, with those of lesser known texts, concluding that no single definition can account for the various historical meanings of class. Instead, loosely following Castoriadis, the concept of class can best be understood as creatively imagined and institutionalised. (...) Paternoster proposes that class is best studied through historical phenomenology, which can be used to link political economy, cultural sociology and anthropological ethnographies. This approach allows the contributions of Marxist and New Left authors to be reintegrated with contemporary theories. Doing so highlights the significance of labour populism, while cautioning against the ahistorical applications of texts such as Boudieu's Distinction. Reimagining Class in Australia will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, history, political economy and anthropology. (shrink)

This volume, originally published in 2002, assembles the historical sequence of writings that Kant published between 1783 and 1796 to popularize, summarize, amplify and defend the doctrines of his masterpiece, the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781. The best known of them, the Prolegomena, is often recommended to beginning students, but the other texts are also vintage Kant and are important sources for a fully rounded picture of Kant's intellectual development. As with other volumes in the series there are copious (...) linguistic notes and a glossary of key terms. The editorial introductions and explanatory notes shed light on the critical reception accorded Kant by the metaphysicians of his day and on Kant's own efforts to derail his opponents. (shrink)

Debates among contemporary philosophers and literary scholars on the moral value of representational art revolve around how art appreciation influences the audience—whether viewer or reader. Martha Nussbaum, a distinguished scholar in law and ethics who has initiated many lively dialogues on this subject, holds that we have a great deal to learn from literary works—in particular, realist novels—because they so concretely depict the ways in which personal and social circumstances shape human emotions, actions, and choices. While Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (...) can motivate impartial concern, she posits, Henry James’s The Golden Bowl demonstrates how we should conduct moral deliberation.1 Noël Carroll, a principal... (shrink)

Reformed ecclesiology suffers from a lack of a concrete sense of catholicity, a lack that easily shatters unity in the church. This article broadly sketches a way in which Reformed confessions and the practice of confessing can help fill that lack, drawing from Robert Schreiter's The New Catholicity. By understanding confessing in terms of remembering dangerous memories, Reformed catholicity has the potential for enabling the church to be a unifying witness in an age where globalizing forces have fragmented societies and (...) inflamed troubling sentiments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Proceedings of the ALSC (1995 Convention)Patrick HenryGiven the oppressively politicized character of academic literary studies today, it took courage and conviction to found a new literary society in 1994. The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics is dedicated to the study of literature as a source of pleasure and insight. This would be banal were it not for the way in which culture wars, identity politics, and race and (...) gender issues have come to dominate university literature departments. More than merely a handful of scholars wish to reverse this trend: in less than two years, the ALSC has grown to 1800 members and its first conference, held in Minneapolis, September 22–24, 1995, was a notable success.Because we favor a true pluralism, and like many others are tired of the predictable posturing that permeates so much literary scholarship today, we invited the ALSC to publish its first conference proceedings in our pages. The meeting offered much variety, with classicists and modernists, poets, fiction writers, and critics trading ideas on literature and aesthetics. Despite worries by its detractors that the ALSC represents reaction or blind traditionalism, there was a refreshing openness to the proceedings, with lucid examples of critical reading and topics from metaphor in Dickens and Auden’s Alcaic stanza in “In memory of Sigmund Freud,” to the Islamic influence on Dante’s Commedia—a connection that belies the charge that the Western canon is inevitably Eurocentric. If the ALSC can revive a sense of wonder before the greatest works of literary art and provide an alternative to the complacency and pretentiousness of contemporary theory, it deserves support from us all.For twenty years it has said on our inside back cover that Philosophy and Literature “owes allegiance to no particular school or style of criticism or philosophy.” Our only loyalty is to literature and philosophy; they constitute our field of interest. It has never been our aim to adopt the correct ideology. We remain skeptical of ideological commitments and will continue to publish exciting jargon-free articles representative of the entire spectrum of approaches to literature and philosophy.Copyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)