This volume contains a selection of nine essays with an interdisciplinary perspective. They were originally presented at the Sixth International Conference on Word and Music Studies, which was held at Edinburgh University in June 2007 and was organized by the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). The contributions to this volume focus on self-reference in various systematic, historical and intermedial ways. Self-reference - including, as a special case, metareference (the self-conscious reflection on music, literature (...) and other medial concerns) - is explored, among others, in instrumental music by Mozart, Mahler and Satie, in the structure and performance of (meta-)operas, in operatic adaptations of drama and filmic adaptations of opera, as well as in intermedial novelistic references to music. The essays cover a historical range from the 18th century to the present and are of interest to literary and opera scholars and students, musicologists as well as all readers generally interested in medial self-reference and intermediality studies. (shrink)

Part of the greatness of great literature consists in the profound, philosophic ideas the works contain. These ideas may not be unknown to philosophy but, when rendered in literary form, they gain an aesthetic force often lacking in the philosophic treatise with its careful train of reasoning.In this insightful study, Burton Porter explores the philosophic content of some outstanding literary works, analyzing and evaluating the ideas that drive the narrative.Porter first examines the concept of free will and determinism (...) in Melville's Moby Dick, placing the quest for the white whale within the context of foreordination, hubris, prophecy, and defiance of divine power. Connections are also drawn to Euripides' Medea and Shakespeare's King Lear as well as the Old Testament.The good and the right are traced in Anouilh's Antigone and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, showing the philosophic antagonisms in the literature and in the conflicted minds of the authors.Voltaire' Candide and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov are then explored insofar as they express the problem of evil--the tension between human suffering on earth and belief in a benevolent, wise, almighty God.Finally, the nature of the self is investigated in Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and Kafka's The Metamorphosis, focusing on identity and the mind-body problem.Porter makes philosophy come alive by showing its expression in art and revealing the depth of ideas that make literature compelling.Burton Porter (Springfield, MA) is currently professor of philosophy at Western New England College and a visiting professor of philosophy at Mt. Holyoke College. He is the author or editor of numerous books including Philosophy Through Fiction and Film, The Voice of Reason, and Reasons For Living. (shrink)

Through the examination of anti-psychiatric theory and literary texts, this timely and thought-provoking volume explores the possibilities of liberating our habitual patterns of perception and consciousness beyond the confines of a capitalist era. In Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry, Skott-Myhre asks the question, how might we be different if we didn't live in a capitalist society? By drawing on Marxist and post-Marxist theory, and conducting nuanced analysis of the professional writings of anti-psychiatrists including Basaglia and Laing, and the (...) work of fiction writers Kafka and Garcia Marquez, the text identifies alternative conceptualizations of the self. Focusing in particular on portrayals of institutions and the family, Skott-Myhre proposes that these social systems offer new modes of reading the world and ourselves which will transform social organization and free subjectivity from dominant capitalist structures. This transdisciplinary text responds to a revitalized interest in alternatives to traditional psychology, an interest in life beyond capitalism, and the crisis in the traditional family. Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry will offer timely reading for graduate students, researchers, and scholars in the fields of cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, family studies, and interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Self-Culture in Emerson’s Schellingian Solution to FateNicholas L. Guardiano (bio)Professor of English literature, President of Yale University, and Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Angelo Bartlett Giamatti (1938–1989), delighted in saying that Emerson “is as sweet as barbed wire.”1 Giamatti understood the full range of Emerson’s thought, which spans the highs and lows of the human condition. Writings such as “Experience,” “Illusions,” “The Tragic,” and “Fate” demonstrate the (...) transcending of Emerson’s transcendentalism beyond any soft Romanticism or naïve idealism. They consistently assert the reality of antagonistic forces pervading human experience and nature. “The Tragic” opens with the lines: “He has seen but half the universe who never has been shown the House of Pain. As the salt sea covers more than two thirds of the surface of the globe, so sorrow encroaches in man on felicity” (CW 10:334).2 “Fate” similarly insists: “We cannot trifle with this reality [of fate], this cropping-out in our planted gardens of the core of the world. No picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts” (CW 6:11; my emphasis). Emerson was made intimately aware of the House of Pain by his own personal hardships. To name only a few, there was the death of his first wife Ellen at age 19 from tuberculosis, a rheumatic eye disease that left Emerson nearly blind for months, the terrible loss of his five-year old son Waldo to scarlet fever, the untimely deaths of his two brothers Charles and Edward in their 20s, a fire that partially destroyed the Emerson family home, and the inexorable mental decline into aphasia afflicting Emerson in his final years. Emerson further bore sympathetic witness to the hardships of his friends, family, and community. In addition, he lived through the national crisis of the American Civil War, and was a committed abolitionist willing to face head on the real evils of slavery. These experiences and others were a discipline in the tragic [End Page 28] constitution of the world. Furthermore, they provided hints on how to make one’s way through it.3In this essay, I aim to do some justice to Emerson’s mature transcendentalism by examining his metaphysical-ethical co-principles of fate and freedom, or necessity and power. These co-principles are the central topic of the essay “Fate,” which appeared as the opening chapter of the book The Conduct of Life (1860). There, Emerson somewhat paradoxically admits both principles as opposing forces, and attempts to show their compatibility using a Schellingian dialectic. After presenting Emerson’s understanding of fate and an interpretation of his metaphysical solution to it, I follow up on the primary ethical concern that opens the essay and book, namely “How shall I live?” (CW 6:1). To that end, I attempt to flesh out the ethical character of a life that embraces fate in terms of an Emersonian project of self-culture. My methodological approach throughout evolves progressively from the interpretation to the expansion of Emerson’s ideas. Its first section examines his philosophy as an offshoot of the world-historical line of thought extending from Plato to the Neoplatonists, Eriugena, Spinoza, Goethe, and Schelling, among others. Later philosophers, scientists, and artists who took inspiration from Emerson’s transcendentalism, including Charles Peirce, the Hudson River School painters, Wallace Stevens, and Loren Eiseley, follow the same intellectual trajectory.4 Further taking up the torch, my second section creatively amplifies Emerson’s insights for an ethics of self-culture, and in this way argues for the truth of his Schellingian form of freedom.I. The Problem and Its SolutionFor Emerson, fate is real. It consists in the “immovable limitations” and necessary “laws of the world” (CW 6:2). These limits or laws occur in the conduct of life not so much as theoretical abstractions or remote chains of efficient [End Page 29] causality but as impositions on our will, both from within and without. On the one hand, we are confronted by the rough and tumble of nature, the outside environment in which we live. Serious in Emerson’s nineteenth century and remaining so today are... (shrink)

The philosophical ideal of self-knowledge has been all but forgotten in what Walker Percy calls "the age of theory." Hartle attempts to recover that ancient philosophical task and to articulate what that ideal could mean in the context of our historical situation. She considers and rejects claims that we can attain self-knowledge through theory, anti-theory, or narrative and she defends philosophy as a humanistic, rather than scientific, endeavor. Self-Knowledge in the Age of Theory will be of (...) great interest not only to philosophers but to scholars of literature and other humanities. (shrink)

The exciting new book argues for a renewed emphasis on humanism--contrary to the trend of post-humanism, or what Neema Parvini calls "the anti-humanism" of the last several decades of literary and theoretical scholarship. In this trail-blazing study, Michael Bryson argues for this renewal of perspective by covering literature written in different languages, times, and places, calling for a return to a humanism, which focuses on literary characters and their psychological and existential struggles--not struggles of competition, but of connection, the (...) struggles of fragmented, incomplete individuals for integration, wholeness, and unity. (shrink)

The present study examines the idea of lucid self-delusion in late nineteenth and early twentieth century French literature. It traces its gradual incorporation at every level of the text--author, narrator and reader--and connects this tendency to trends in contemporary German philosophy . As a primary vehicle for lucid self-delusion, story-telling becomes a central theme in the confessional prose and symbolist poetry of the period. Here the narrative voice often performs a deliberate and conscious falsification upon the (...) material of the tale, just as the author, at a higher level, spins experience into acknowledged fantasy. The result is that the reader, while willingly submitting to the illusion on which all reading depends, must also reconstruct the activity of speaker and author, and is thus placed in a similar double position. ;If the reader's relationship to the text is ultimately made to resemble that of the author, this is because the latter discerns a new form of heroism in such a rigorous lucidity, coupled with the determination to believe: a resolution to live life as if it made sense, even if this means forcing it to do so; to act as if one had a fixed essence, even if this means constructing one. Lucid self-delusion becomes a value to fill the vacuum; and self-reflexivity, the aesthetic analogue of this psychological state, comes to characterise the literary output of an age. (shrink)

Philosophy as Fiction seeks to account for the peculiar power of philosophical literature by taking as its case study the paradigmatic generic hybrid of the twentieth century, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. At once philosophical--in that it presents claims, and even deploys arguments concerning such traditionally philosophical issues as knowledge, self-deception, selfhood, love, friendship, and art--and literary, in that its situations are imaginary and its stylization inescapably prominent, Proust's novel presents us with a conundrum. How (...) should it be read? Can the two discursive structures co-exist, or must philosophy inevitably undermine literature (by sapping the narrative of its vitality) and literature undermine philosophy (by placing its claims in the mouth of an often unreliable narrator)? In the case of Proust at least, the result is greater than the sum of its parts. Not only can a coherent, distinctive philosophical system be extracted from the Recherche, once the narrator's periodic waywardness is taken into account; not only does a powerfully original style pervade its every nook, overtly reinforcing some theories and covertly exemplifying others; but aspects of the philosophy also serve literary ends, contributing more to character than to conceptual framework. What is more, aspects of the aesthetics serve philosophical ends, enabling a reader to engage in an active manner with an alternative art of living. Unlike the "essay" Proust might have written, his novel grants us the opportunity to use it as a practice ground for cooperation among our faculties, for the careful sifting of memories, for the complex procedures involved in self-fashioning, and for the related art of self-deception. It is only because the narrator's insights do not always add up--a weakness, so long as one treats the novel as a straightforward treatise--that it can produce its training effect, a feature that turns out to be its ultimate strength. (shrink)

The past two decades have been a time of heightened interest in the moral aspects of the practice of medicine. This interest has been reflected in medical education by the establishment of medical humanities programs in both preclinical and clinical education in many medical schools. It has also been reflected in the literature with a dramatic increase in journal articles on medical ethics as well as the development of medical ethics in textbooks. A number of journals have developed that (...) are specifically devoted to medical ethics, including The Journal of Medical Ethics, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, The Journal of Medical Humanities, Theoretical Medicine, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, just to name a few. The literature includes both theoretical foundations and conceptual analyses of particular issues as well as practical advice and general suggestions for how to implement programs in medical humanities. (shrink)

What is the moral, spiritual, and educative function of philosophy and literature in modern lives? Such a large question is rarely posed by philosophers or literary theorists these days, but one philosopher who has put it at the top of his agenda is Richard Rorty. His general answer is that both literature and philosophy serve distinct ends: the private end of personal fulfilment through the redescription of experiences and the possibility of self-creation, and the public (...) end of expanded horizons of moral imagination and spheres of solidarity. In what follows I will take a closer look at Rorty’s proposal. I begin by situating it as a contribution to philosophical discussions of the ‘problems of modernity’. Second, I draw attention to an important but sometimes neglected thought that underscores Rorty’s proposal: the alliance of philosophy and literature in making sense of modern lives. With this background in place, in the third section I consider the distinctive version of the private/public split that Rorty invokes, which can be regarded as his version of worldmaking in modernity. I argue that Rorty’s version of the distinction has more going for it than some critics have been prepared to grant, and that it at least provides a basis for further reflection on the important question it helps to answer. (shrink)

Unravels the philosophical, literary, and personal theaters of faith, self-deception, communion, difficult reality, and existential crisis in texts by Kierkegaard, Melville, Henry Bugbee, and others.

M'illumino/d'immenso - I'm lit/with immensity is Geoffrey Brock's translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti's poem Mattina. In the poem's minimalism, Ungaretti points to the maximal: the richness of poetry's expressive possibilities and the power of thinking in literature. This book addresses the fascination of readers to transcend the boundaries of their own in fiction, and literature's capacity, according to Kant, even to evoke, with the help of the development of aesthetic ideas, representations that exceed what is empirically and conceptually graspable (...) - in case studies about myths of creativity, images of death and the beyond after the 'death of God', of the soul, of melancholy as the dark ground of genius, of metamorphoses of both evil and good, of ecstasy, of the economy of self-sacrifice, of the art of resistance, and, among others, about figurations of biography and the portrait as approaches to singularity, what is particular and cannot be fully subsumed to any universality. (shrink)

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy. The papers, many of them previously inaccessible to non-specialist readers, explore such fundamental issues as the relationship between style and content in the exploration of ethical issues; the nature of ethical attention and ethical knowledge and their relationship to written forms and styles; and the role of the emotions in deliberation and self-knowledge. Nussbaum investigates and defends a conception of (...) ethical understanding which involves emotional as well as intellectual activity, and which gives a certain type of priority to the perception of particular people and situations rather than to abstract rules. She argues that this ethical conception cannot be completely and appropriately stated without turning to forms of writing usually considered literary rather than philosophical. It is consequently necessary to broaden our conception of moral philosophy in order to include these forms. Featuring two new essays and revised versions of several previously published essays, this collection attempts to articulate the relationship, within such a broader ethical inquiry, between literary and more abstractly theoretical elements. (shrink)

The interweavement of philosophy and literature allows to gain a new sense from the own, lived experiences and to express them through narrations, as the paradigmatic works of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Borges show. They all deal with the inexorability of time and the fact of being at the mercy of the unwanted aspects of Being-in-the-world, the detailed reading of which allows us to assert that the event of the emergence of a new sense lies in the experience of (...) the creative power of the instant, wherein the difference is introduced as the first principle through a Copernican turn and where the eternity expresses itself. In fact, the instant in its repetition results from a strike of chance, an assumption which leads to a new understanding not only of time as a network of destinies, but of eternity as extensive, intensive or ecstatic eternity. Being involved in this experience means to undergo an existential experience of time which produces an irrevocable change of the self. (shrink)

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy. The papers, many of them previously inaccessible to non-specialist readers, deal with such fundamental issues as the relationship between style and content in the exploration of ethical issues; the nature of ethical attention and ethical knowledge and their relationship to written forms and styles; and the role of the emotions in deliberation and self-knowledge. Nussbaum investigates and defends a conception (...) of ethical understanding which involves emotional as well as intellectual activity, and which gives a certain type of priority to the perception of particular people and situations rather than to abstract rules. She argues that this ethical conception cannot be completely and appropriately stated without turning to forms of writing usually considered literary rather than philosophical. It is consequently necessary to broaden our conception of moral philosophy in order to include these forms. Featuring two new essays and revised versions of several previously published essays, this collection attempts to articulate the relationship, within such a broader ethical inquiry, between literary and more abstractly theoretical elements. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Possible Selves and Webs of Belief The Textually Cultivated “I”: Making up One's Mind Metaphorical Identification and Self‐Individuation.

Introduction. The article is focused on studying the self-knowledge techniques used in Buddhism and their application in teaching philosophy. The relevance of the study is due to the search for new approaches to studying philosophy, including approaches related to philosophical practice, as well as the interest of modern scientists in the problem of consciousness. The problem of consciousness is interdisciplinary and its study is of practical importance for philosophers, psychologists, linguists, specialists in artificial intelligence. Buddhism as a (...) philosophical doctrine provides rich material for the study of the phenomenon of consciousness, which does not lose its relevance today. A feature of the Buddhist approach to consciousness is that it has an axiological orientation that is directly related to the problem of self-knowledge. The practices of self-knowledge used in Buddhism enable a person to become happier and more harmonious, which is so important for each of us. The aim of the study is to conduct a philosophical analysis of Buddhist practices of self-knowledge and self-transformation in order to use them in the educational process. Methods: the author uses general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction; phenomenological method to identify the intentions that are key for consciousness. The author also uses the hermeneutical method to interpret Buddhist texts. The method of introspection as self-observation of consciousness is used in Buddhist meditation techniques. The scientific novelty of the study is that we approach the study of extensive material on Buddhism in the context of the problem of selfknowledge, which is inextricably linked with the Buddhist concept of consciousness. The revealed and studied Buddhist techniques of self-knowledge have been adapted for teaching philosophy. Results. A philosophical analysis of the literature on Buddhism in the context of the problem of self-knowledge was carried out. As a result of the analysis, Buddhist techniques for working with consciousness, such as meditation, the method of pondering Zen koans, the method of getting rid of material attachments, or the practice of austerities, were studied and described. A philosophical analysis of various Buddhist meditation techniques showed that they are based on the Buddhist concept of consciousness, which denies the existence of an individual “I”, considers the “I” to be nothing more than a combination of various dharmas, therefore the purpose of meditation in Buddhism is to identify oneself with one’s own “I”, to achieve a state of voidness in which we must comprehend our true identity. The method of pondering Zen koans is also one of the techniques for working with one’s consciousness in Buddhism. As a result of deliberation of these paradoxical miniatures, a person goes beyond the boundaries of logical thinking; there is a transition from the level of profane consciousness to the level of deep consciousness. The basis of the method of getting rid of material attachments or the practice of austerities in Buddhism is the concept of the middle path. We have established a similarity between the method of getting rid of material attachments, the concept of the middle path and minimalism as a way of life. Findings. Elements of the Buddhist practices of self-transformation can be successfully used in the teaching of philosophy at the university as a practical aspect of studying this discipline, forming students with the idea of philosophy as a way of life leading to positive self-transformation. Studying the practical aspects of Buddhist philosophy contributes to the formation of tolerance, awareness, education of humanism and altruism, and the skills of psycho-emotional self-regulation. (shrink)

Frank Palmer, Richard Eldridge, and Martha Nussbaum explore the contributions that imaginative literature can make to ethics. From three different moral philosophical perspectives, they argue that reading literature can help persons to achieve greater moral understanding. This essay examines how each author conceives of moral understanding, particularly in its emotional dimension, and how each thinks that reading literature can promote moral understanding. The essay also considers some implications of this work for religious ethics.

This is a major study of conceptions of selfhood and personality in Homer and Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. The focus is on the norms of personality in Greek psychology and ethics. Gill argues that the key to understanding Greek thought of this type is to counteract the subjective and individualistic aspects of our own thinking about the person. He defines an "objective-participant" conception of personality, symbolized by the idea of the person as an interlocutor in a series of psychological (...) and ethical dialogues. (shrink)

Being in Time examines philosophical treatments of time and self-consciousness in relation to concepts of narrative, focusing on the literary aspects of philosophical writing. Lloyd shows how philosophy bears on the human and emotional aspects of the experience of time which are often neglected by the history of philosophy. Starting with Augustine's treatment of the ways in which time makes him a 'problem to himself', the book traces the themes of unity and the experience of fragmentation and (...) loss as expressed by Descartes, Hume and Kant. The idea of the past as 'lost' is explored through Bergson's philosophy of time and Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return. The book concludes with a discussion of philosophical aspects of themes of self-consciousness, memory and writing in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and the novels of Virginia Woolf. (shrink)

This book analyzes such symbolic designs of the modern troubled imagination as the conspiracy theory of society, deterministic concepts of identity and order, antisemitic obsessions, self-hatred, and the myth of the loss of roots. It offers, among other things, the unique East-Central European materials incorporated in a broad, imaginative synthesis and critique of contemporary social analysis.

Produced on the fringes of philosophy and literary criticism, this book is a pioneering study which aims to explicitly address and thematize what may be called a “critical philosophy in the condition of modernism”. Its most important and original contribution to both disciplines is a self-conscious reflection on possible modes of writing philosophy today, and a systematic comparison with what happened in literary modernism at the beginning of the twentieth-century. The volume is divided into six sections, (...) where internationally renowned scholars discuss such pressing topics as the role of an unreliable narrator in a major philosophical treatise, the different mediums of art-production and how these impact on our perception of the Work itself, the role of narrative in animal ethics and the filmic adaption of a Modernist classic. (shrink)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István (...) Losonczy 29 // ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

The authors address problems with “compulsory” arbitration clauses in contracts. Specifically, they note that consumers are misguided about their rights in such cases. In addition, arbitration clauses do not allow the press to cover any proceedings that may result. The arbitration clauses in contracts are written in legalese that consumers do not understand. The authors found that even university students had difficulty understanding the information in such clauses. An example of an actual case is included.

This article examines the form and language of Simone de Beauvoir’s novella “The Woman Destroyed” to argue that the story is a philosophical work in two ways. First, it contributes to scholarship on narrative self-understanding: it moves beyond Anthony Rudd’s and Peter Goldie’s theories by revealing how the instability of language complicates self-understanding. Second, it invites philosophical introspection by representing life as it is and generating questions about self-understanding for readers to ponder instead of giving them ready-made (...) answers. (shrink)

This study represents a comparison between two radical gestures of literary self-reflexivity: romantic irony and postmodernist metafiction. It examines the impact of early German romantic theory and its central concept of irony on German and English romantic narrative fiction and relates the same to postmodernist self-reflexive novels, including its British and American variants. A primary objective of this comparison is to account for the radical skepticism that postmodernist metafiction voices with respect to the paramount philosophical question of truth (...) and reality. The immanent tension between an absolute idealistic and a radically skeptic position which romantic irony articulates and enacts is conceived of as an important and instructive link to the understanding of postmodernism. (shrink)

Based on Hegel’s thesis of the ‘end of art’, this paper aims to explore how to study Hegel’s philosophy of literature by carrying out a dialogue with Francesco Campana. In his recent book, The End of Literature, Hegel, and the Contemporary Novel (2019), Campana demonstrates how literature resists its end by continuous self-transformation and provides a framework of ‘philosophization’–‘poetry’–‘ordinariness’ in understanding the contemporary novel. While, to some extent, I agree with him on the understanding of (...) the ‘end of art’ thesis, I object to his idea that ‘philosophization’ and ‘ordinariness’ are two poles between which poetry moves. I defend the view that, from the perspective of Hegel’s absolute and taking Hegel’s philosophy as a totality, ‘philosophization’ and ‘ordinariness’ are inseparable. Furthermore, I emphasize the significance of Hegel’s thesis of the ‘end of art’, which I argue lies in revealing the problem of modern subjectivity. Literature, as a unique form of art, also reveals this problem and helps to solve it. Therefore, in the study of Hegel’s philosophy of literature, I insist on adopting the perspective of Hegel’s absolute and taking Hegel’s philosophy as a whole so that we can build connections among different disciplines and among different art-forms and art-types. With this perspective, I make some proposals, which include several paradigms for the study of Hegel’s philosophy of literature. Finally, in terms of the thesis of the ‘end of art’, I maintain that the study of Hegel’s philosophy of literature is to address the problem of modern subjectivity. (shrink)

Why was mythology of vital importance for the romantics? What role did mythology play in their philosophical and literary work? And what common sources of influence inspired these writers across Britain and Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century? In this wide-ranging study, Owen Ware argues that the romantics turned to mythology for its potential to transform how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Engaging with authors such as William Blake, Friedrich Schlegel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Friedrich von Hardenberg (...) (Novalis), and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ware shows why they believed that neither perception nor reason alone can sustain a vision of the unity of all things. A new mode of cognition is necessary, they claimed, one that revives the poetic origin of mythology and reveals our own mythmaking powers. _Return of the Gods_ investigates the rise of mythology in the British and German traditions and the romantics’ practices of reinterpreting old myths and inventing new ones. Their shared aim was nothing less than to elevate the human imagination to higher stages of self-development in which philosophy and poetry, as well as intellect and imagination, form an integrated whole. Far from calling us to return to the past, the romantics’ work on mythology points us to a future where we can live in harmony with the personal, social, and natural worlds we inhabit. Owen Ware combines intellectual history with philosophical analysis and literary criticism to offer a bold reflection on why mythology mattered for the romantics—and why it still matters today. (shrink)

The authors address problems with “compulsory” arbitration clauses in contracts. Specifically, they note that consumers are misguided about their rights in such cases. In addition, arbitration clauses do not allow the press to cover any proceedings that may result. The arbitration clauses in contracts are written in legalese that consumers do not understand. The authors found that even university students had difficulty understanding the information in such clauses. An example of an actual case is included.

A considerable number of Italian high schools, specifically those classified as liceo, offer a program for the final three years in which the history of Western philosophy is taught from its beginnings through to the 20th century. However, little attention is given to the philosophy of mind, even in the final year, while teachers of history and literature emphasise the dissolution of the self as a key theme for understanding 20th-century culture, often referencing authors like James (...) Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Luigi Pirandello. The rejection of the self is perhaps presented as a cultural hallmark of the 20th century, yet it is frequently overlooked that, from both psychological and philosophical perspectives, this idea is not new. David Hume, for instance, was a prominent critic of the idea of the self as far back as the 18th century. Moreover, the very authors who questioned the consistency of the self still recognised its presence and activity in the experiences they depicted—albeit as a diminished self. The subject, as portrayed in these narratives, though disrupted and fragmented, was still identified as a self and identified itself as such. Recent studies support the hypothesis that a subject finds complete identity only within a narrative dimension, through a personal internalised story that one constructs about oneself, driven by the need to recognise oneself as the subject of one’s experiences and the agent of one’s actions. Therefore, a thorough revision of the concept of the ‘self’ is necessary to make it a central theme in high school curricula, a revision that is best approached through philosophical analysis. (shrink)

The achievement of self-consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology hinges on establishing a relationship with another self-conscious being. How this is accomplished, and even that it is accomplished in Hegel’s text, are topics of dispute and misunderstanding in the literature. I show how Hegel argues for this intersubjective origin of self-consciousness, first, by comparing Hegel’s analysis of lord and bondsman to Sartre’s analysis of intimacy. Second, I focus on two in-terpretive challenges. First, I argue that the staking of (...) life comes from an other-oriented epistemological relation, and not simply from an im-mediate concern with dominating the other. Second, contrary to many interpretations which see the bondsman’s development arising out of an isolated activity merely between himself and the products of his labor, I argue that the slave’s ability to gain knowledge of himself as a self is only possible by establishing a relationship with the lord. This point is essential because, if readings of the bondsman’s development as isolated from the lord are correct, then Hegel has in fact not succeeded in showing that self-consciousness only develops out of intersubjective recognition. (shrink)

Literature is a complex and multifaceted expression of our humanity, one dimension of which is ethical content. This striking collection of new essays pursues a fuller and richer understanding of five of the central aspects of this ethical content. These aspects are: the question of character, its formation, and its role in moral discernment; poetic vision in the context of ethical understanding; literature's distinctive role in self-identity and self-understanding; patterns of moral growth and change that emerge (...) from the philosophical reading of literature; and the historical sources and genealogies of some of our most central contemporary conceptions of the ethical dimension of literature. The volume engages with literary work from Homer to J. M. Coetzee, Shakespeare to David Foster Wallace, and explores the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Levinas, and others. This rich collection presents some of the best new thinking about the ethical content that lies within literature, and it shows why our reflective absorption in literature is the humane--and humanizing--experience many of us have long taken it to be. (shrink)

It is proposed to examine the need for redefining self deception in an Indian socio-cultural context and also on the basis of different social roles that one plays in his/her life time. Self-deception can be defined as the process of acting or behaving against one’s true inner feelings to maintain one’s social status. The conceptconsists of two aspects: maintaining a belief and the behavioral expression of it. Most of the time, deception occurs in the latter part, because it (...) helps the deceiver to achieve a moral protection from the society and thereby, to get a mental pacification. In fact, in some situations, self deception helps to raise our self importance in the society. That is to say, if we express our inner truth, that which is unpleasant for the society, then it can lead to humiliation from the society. An individual adopts self deception as a method to evade dejection from the external world. Whenever I act against my inner feelings, it happens consciously or intentionally so I cannot feel both aspects, as a deceiver and the deceived, at the same time. Besides, I do respect the feelings of myself and in this sense one’s own self can never be deceived! Thus, self deception can be explained with relation to the expression of true beliefs in yourself. (shrink)

Self-cultivation—taking pedagogical action to educate oneself—is an integral part of non-formal adult education. Ever since Greek antiquity, it has been a central ingredient in the western philosophical and educational tradition. However, we argue that the global challenges that have emerged in the present era of the ecological crisis call for a new kind of understanding of this basic educational phenomenon. Based in particular on recent work in dark ecology and its central concept of the ‘uncanny’, we outline a few (...) key features of our time in relation to the contemporary challenge of self-cultivation. We then review extant literature on self-cultivation to ascertain whether the theoretical resources that have been used to conceptualise it in the past are capable of addressing these new aspects of self-cultivation. We conclude that each of the theoretical resources analysed here offer valuable insights into the novel challenges facing self-cultivation, though not all important questions can be answered. By specifying the contributions and limitations of these theoretical resources, we pave the way for future work on conceptualising self-cultivation for our times. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has changed the healthcare landscape drastically. Stricken by sharp surges in morbidity and mortality with resource and manpower shortages confounding their efforts, the medical community has witnessed high rates of burnout and post-traumatic stress amongst themselves. Whilst the prevailing literature has offered glimpses into their professional war, no review thus far has collated the deeply personal reflections of physicians and ascertained how their self-concept, self-esteem and perceived self-worth has altered during this crisis. Without (...) adequate intervention, this may have profound effects on their mental and physical health, personal relationships and professional efficacy.MethodsWith mentions of the coronavirus pervading social media by the millions, this paper set out to collate and thematically analyse social media posts containing first-person physician reflections on how COVID-19 affected their lives and their coping mechanisms. A consistent search strategy was employed and a PRISMA flowchart was used to map out the inclusion/exclusion criteria.ResultsA total of 590 social media posts were screened, 511 evaluated, and 108 included for analysis. Salient themes identified include Disruptions to Personal Psycho-Emotional State, Disruptions to Professional Care Delivery, Concern for Family, Response from Institution, Response from Society and Coping Mechanisms.ConclusionIt is evident that the distress experienced by physicians during this time has been manifold, multi-faceted and dominantly negative. Self-concepts were distorted with weakened self-esteem and perceived self-worth observed. The Ring Theory of Personhood (RToP) was adopted to explain COVID-19’s impact on physician personhood as it considers existential, individual, relational and social concepts of the self. These entwined self-concepts serve as ‘compensatory’ to one another, with coping mechanisms buffering and fortifying the physician’s overall personhood. With healthcare institutions playing a vital role in providing timely and targeted support, it was further proposed that a comprehensive assessment tool based on the RToP could be developed to detect at-risk physicians and evaluate the presence and effectiveness of established support structures. (shrink)

This article reviews a number of recent books and practices that address a renewed interest in the role that philosophy might play in the living of a rich and fulfilling life. The review looks at books addressed to the general public as well as books which discuss such classical and Hellenistic philosophers as took their task to be helping people achieve happiness in life. It then turns to contemporary studies of the self and of wisdom and turns finally (...) to some newly emerging philosophical practices such as philosophical counselling and philosophical discussion groups of various kinds in order to explore whether philosophy can still be a source of consolation or guidance in contemporary life. (shrink)

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is widely considered to be a bodily disorder accompanied by unrealistic perceptions about one’s own body. Some researchers thus have wondered whether deficits in interoception, a conscious or non-conscious sense of one’s own body, could be a primary cause of AN. In this paper, we make the case that rather than interoception being a primary cause, deficits in interoception may occur as by-products of emotions that arise upstream in the pathogenesis of AN and interact with feelings of (...) a loss of self-control. We consider interoception, emotion, and self-control as a dynamical triad involved in the explanation of AN, with emotions as the central aspect of their interactions. We begin with a critical analysis of recent empirical literature on AN and differentiate three types of interoceptive processes. We then consider the role of self-control in AN. We go on to evaluate recent empirical and philosophical work on the role of emotions in AN and assess their importance in both interoception and self-control dynamics. We develop a testable integrative model that we believe best captures how self-control, emotional and interoceptive processes causally interact in the pathogenesis of AN. In this model, AN behaviors are not caused by interoceptive abnormalities, but rather interact with changes in emotional regulation and feelings of loss of self-control, subsequently leading to interoceptive deficits downstream. To capture a later stage in the pathogenesis of AN, we show how AN behaviors are maintained as a result of feedback among components in the model. We briefly explain future plans to further complement the model using a semi-structured interview to probe patient perspectives in AN. To develop a more valid understanding of AN, this model will have to be integrated into pluralistic approaches that include patient perspectives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 459-460 [Access article in PDF] Reinhard Brandt. Philosophie in Bildern: Von Giorgione bis Magritte. Hamburg: Dumont, 2000. Pp. 470. Paper, NP. Reinhard Brandt, professor for Philosophiegeschichte, offers in his latest book a multi-faceted history of philosophy and art through his detailed interpretations of major paintings in the European tradition, beginning with Giorgione's "The Three Philosophers" and a young Raphael's (...) "The Dream of the Knight,"and stretching to René Magritte's "La condition humaine." In these paintings, as Brandt claims, different philosophical positions are expounded, which he then, in the role of interpreter, attempts to elucidate.In the introduction Brandt explains how this paradoxical phenomenon of philosophizing paintings can even exist. That one can find not only philosophical themes but well-wrought positions in such paintings, and, most importantly, not read these positions into them, is shown in more than thirty short essays, spanning from ancient Greek philosophy and literature, through the Renaissance and on to present-day Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature/philosophy. In almost every interpretation, Brandt critically reviews previous research, exposing and correcting some deeply rooted mistakes and constantly providing new impulses; in light of his philosophical-philological method, some major paintings in the European tradition are interpreted anew.His detailed analysis of Raphael's "The School of Athens" forces a persuasive revision of previous interpretations; the sitting figure in the foreground is not, as previously assumed, Heraclitus, but Democritus. On account of this carefully proven and convincing allotment, an unnoticed field of vision is discovered between the materialist and solid-state physicist Democritus, who with the gestus melancholicus is concentrating on a problem, and Plato, standing perpendicularly over him. Could this problem be the stone cube, on which the philosopher is leaning? From this conjecture we now have a bridge leading to Albrecht Dürer's engraving "Melancholia."Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas" is interpreted anew on account of the surprising solution to the painting's puzzling construction. Brandt shows that the whole picture is viewed from the vantage point of the princess inside the painting, not of an observer outside it. The princess stands before a mirror and Velazquez paints everything exactly as the princess sees it. So the painting, which hangs in the Prado Museum, is the mirror image of a complete reflection of the Self; perhaps it is no coincidence that the painting belongs to the same historical period as Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum dictum. Or Jacques Louis David's "The Death of Socrates": although the painting has been correctly referred back to Plato's Phaidon, until now a Platonic ground position was falsely attributed to the painting. Brandt shows that the painting was conceived with Stoic philosophical positions in mind: death is portrayed as immanently present, coupled with the un-Socratic maxim mortem spernere. The virtuous stance that Socrates still shows on the threshold of death is decisive. And as an added bonus he includes his influential, previously published essay on the title-page emblem of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is Brandt's technical know-how. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of the European intellectual tradition with a [End Page 459] fluid, easy-to-read style, which not only instructs the reader, but entertains as well. At no time does this book approach mere philosophical pedantry; his treatment of some of the lesser known, albeit important, figures in the history of philosophy, e.g., Justus Lipsius and Diogenes of Sinope, is not a lesson in obscurity. The reader feels himself taken on a journey through a history of Western philosophy, always being provided with thought-provoking material. His style, however, is in no way used to mask the often shaky scholarship that has a tendency to go hand-in-hand with such interdisciplinary studies. In every essay Brandt exhausts all the sources; he works with razor-sharp exactness, proceeding with the meticulousness of an outstanding and seasoned scholar.A problem which always accompanies such books is the question: Cui bono? Are either the philosophers... (shrink)

O'Donovan's gracefully written book is a late but welcome addition to an already large body of literature spawned directly or indirectly by A. Nygren's epoch-making Agape and Eros, the first installment of which appeared in 1930. Most of the ground that it covers is aptly described as a battlefield "on which the smoke still hangs heavy". Interestingly enough, Augustine is the first Latin writer to make extensive use of the expression amor sui or "self-love," which occurs some one-hundred (...) and fifty times throughout his voluminous corpus. Although once accepted virtually without question, his views on this crucial subject have not met with universal approval in our century. Nygren was convinced that Augustine had dealt a lethal blow to the self-denying agape of the Gospel by synthesizing it with the essentially self-regarding eros of Platonic philosophy. Others have since rallied to Augustine's defense, but without always doing full justice to the complexity of his thought. Hence the need for a global assessment of the problem based on a careful scrutiny of the evidence at hand. (shrink)

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel emphasises the importance of understanding consciousness and, even more so, self-consciousness. His lectures on aesthetics contain aesthetic theories for all forms of art (viz. architecture, painting, music or poetry), but critics use them only in significantly altered versions. The present paper attempts to give an in-depth analysis of a poem following one interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of self-consciousness. The poem analysed is not a German Romantic poem, but an Indian poem from (...) the mid-20th century. The explanatory force of Hegel's aesthetics is thus assessed with the needs of a global culture studies in mind. (shrink)

This volume captures the individuality, the national and personal identity, the cultural exchange, and the self-consciousness that have long been sensed as peculiarly potent in the Hellenistic world. The fields of history, literature, art, philosophy, and religion are each presented using the format of two essays followed by a response. Conveying the direction and focus of Hellenistic learning, eighteen leading scholars discuss issues of liberty versus domination, appropriation versus accommodation, the increasing diversity of citizen roles and the (...) dress and gesture appropriate to them, and the accompanying religious and philosophical ferment. The result is an arresting view of the incredible and unprecedented diversity of the Hellenistic world. (shrink)

Christopher Gill offers a new analysis of what is innovative in Hellenistic--especially Stoic and Epicurean--philosophical thinking about selfhood and personality. His wide-ranging discussion of Stoic and Epicurean ideas is illustrated by a more detailed examination of the Stoic theory of the passions and a new account of the history of this theory. His study also tackles issues about the historical study of selfhood and the relationship between philosophy and literature, especially the presentation of the collapse of character in (...) Plutrarch's Lives, Senecan tragedy, and Virgil's Aeneid. As all Greek and Latin is translated, this book presents original ideas about ancient concepts of personality to a wide range of readers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 282-284 [Access article in PDF] Bruce Kuklick. A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii + 326. Cloth, $30.00. Scott L. Pratt. Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. xviii + 316. Cloth, $49.95. Paper, $21.95. In his earlier works Bruce Kuklick has studied (...) major figures and episodes in the evolution of American thought, most famously the Golden Age of Harvard. In the present book he proposes to tell the whole story. Beginning, as it must, with Jonathan Edwards, Part I traces the long and difficult process by which philosophy gradually distinguishes itself from theology. Part II deals magisterially with the age of pragmatism, from Darwin to Dewey, and Part III with professional philosophy in the twentieth century. Kuklick's account of this latest development, briefly adumbrated in his previous books, is the freshest and (to this retired professional) most engaging part of the narrative. Once philosophy had loosened the bonds that tied it to theology, once sciences like psychology, originally parts of philosophy, had declared independence and set out on their own, and once philosophy's role as counselor to private morals and public policy had been taken over by psychoanalysis, economics, sociology, and political science, philosophers had to discover a new identity for themselves. Inspired by logical positivism and the linguistic ruminations of the late Wittgenstein, professional philosophy came to mean, very largely, a preoccupation with problems of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and epistemology. The result was that, apart from undergraduate lectures and occasional ventures into the popular media, what philosophers said and wrote, intelligible only to other philosophers, became irrelevant to just about everything of personal and public interest, and even to the traditional concerns of philosophy itself with the nature of reality and the conduct of life.The eventual arrival in the American academy of phenomenology, existentialism, and deconstruction, in spite of their apparent engagement with "real life" and their appeal to undergraduates, only bred another species of professionals and precipitated the familiar antagonism between analytic and continental philosophy. Late in the last century Richard Rorty, a preeminent analytic philosopher, broke ranks, discovered first Heidegger and Derrida, then William James and John Dewey, and declared himself a pragmatist. He characterized philosophy as a single voice in the conversation of the West, which also included literature, literary criticism, the arts, and all the sciences both natural and humane. But he remains a philosopher of language. The pragmatism of the nineteenth century was a low-mimetic [End Page 282] form of the high-mimetic idealism from which it emerged: from Royce to James. Rorty's pragmatism not only takes for granted the (often implicit) materialism and atheism of analytic philosophy, but is itself a new way of understanding and using language. It has been called, inverting James, an old name for a new way of thinking.But I need to correct this overly simple account. As Kuklick is aware, philosophy in America, though it did succeed in detaching itself from theology, has never wholly dissolved its ties to religion. Royce and James in the nineteenth century and Dewey in the twentieth continued to be preoccupied with religious questions, especially with the apparent conflict of religion and science suggested by Darwin's theory. Religious interests survive, barely, in "critical realism." And even though analytic philosophy would seem to be most comfortable with atheism, more than a few thinkers trained in analysis have combined analytic logic and religious faith. Witness the Society of Christian Philosophers. On the whole, however, professional philosophy has been devoid of religious, socio-political, or existential interest. This should not be surprising. All genuine professions serve an end beyond themselves—as medicine serves health, law justice, and theology salvation. But when philosophy becomes a "profession," it has no end but self-preservation, i.e., creating more philosophers and finding jobs for them.One slightly disconcerting feature of Kuklick's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being in Time: Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and LiteratureRuth GroenhoutBeing in Time: Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and Literature, by Genevieve Lloyd; 192 pp. New York: Routledge, 1993, $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.Philosophers have long been telling stories about temporal consciousness. Augustine explained it as an imperfect reflection of the eternal God in whose image persons are made; Kant explained it as the transcendental unity (...) of apperception, assumed in any act of understanding while always just out of range; Nietzsche explained it as eternal recurrence. These issues also appear in literary treatments of the self, particularly those by Proust and Woolf. In this book, Genevieve Lloyd compares a broad range of philosophical discussions to these two writers. [End Page 404]Being in Time argues for several fascinating conclusions, among them a rejection of the claim that modern and premodern philosophy implicitly assumed the existence of a unified subject. Although Proust and Woolf are often held up as paradigmatic of the fragmented self, which also plays a prominent role in Derrida, this is not a postmodern discovery, Lloyd claims; the unified subject has been problematic throughout the Western philosophical tradition. She concludes, nonetheless, that postmodern thought does represent a new departure, at least to the extent that it treats the fragmentation of self not as a problem to be solved, but as a fundamental feature of what it is to be human.Meanwhile, Being in Time also pursues a second theme: the relationship between philosophy and fictional narrative. Drawing on Ricoeur and Aristotle, Lloyd argues that the best way to understand philosophy is to approach it as a story that illuminates and explains the human self by means of metaphor. Literature and philosophy both involve the telling of stories that allow us to make sense of our world and our place in it.Does it follow that literature and philosophy are indistinguishable? They belong to the same family; each offers insight into the human condition, and does so through the medium of myth, story, narrative, or fiction. They are not identical twins, however, since philosophy uses stories and metaphors to draw connections among universals while literature tells its stories about universals by means of particulars. (Compare Hobbes’s State of Nature to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.) For Lloyd, though, it is a mistake to discard the narrative and literary aspects of a philosophical work in an effort to get at what might be considered its real point (namely, deductive arguments). The illuminating power of philosophy lies not in truncated arguments, but rather in the richer narratives, metaphors, and stories that are used to develop and explain them.Her claim for the unique nature of postmodern philosophy may not stand up to scrutiny—from Heraclitus through the skeptics and into the nominalist tradition of the Middle Ages, there has been a strand of Western thought that emphasizes the fragmentary, contingent nature of the self—but Lloyd’s claims for the family resemblance between literature and philosophy should be of interest to students of both subjects, particularly those concerned with the ways in which style, choice of metaphor, and narrative voice are relevant to philosophical study. The book makes an eloquent plea for reading philosophy instead of stripping its arguments of the narrative flesh with which they were originally endowed.Ruth GroenhoutSouthwest Missouri State UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Challenging recent work that contends that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing. This tradition - which Scott Paul Gordon locates in seventeenth-century religious discourse, in early eighteenth-century moral philosophy, in mid eighteenth-century acting theory, and in the emergent novel - resists autonomy and defers agency from the individual to (...) an external 'prompter'. Gordon argues that the trope of passivity aims to guarantee a disinterested self in a culture that was increasingly convinced that every deliberate action involves calculating one's own interest. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas from their roots in the non-conformist religious tradition to their flowering in one of the central texts of eighteenth-century literature, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. (shrink)

Multiple definitions of Modernism have been put forward, often focusing on the character or features of the works of art and literature produced within this cultural movement. Here I want to focus, instead, on the sensibility of Modernism as this has manifested itself to be especially concerned not with the content of representation, but with the materials out of which a representation is made. Through an analysis of eighteenth-century English portraiture, nineteenth-century French political painting, and up to twentieth-century Modernist (...) painting, I will show how one ceases to see the representational content through the materials and technique, and how we begin to see it depicted in them. I will furthermore examine some cases showing the progression into Modernism in those arts, and then consider the parallel movement in philosophy. Each, as we will see, casts important light on the other, and in the end, something essential to the Modernist achievement will emerge in high relief: just as paint and visible, attention-capturing brushstroke is constitutive of the content of modernist painting, and just as steel and glass and the purity of visible, exposed design is constitutive of architecture, so language is constitutive of us and a distinctively modern form of self-understanding. In this context we will see more of the significance of Wittgenstein’s claim that language itself is the vehicle of thought. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Kant advertises his Critique of Pure Reason as fulfilling reason's "most difficult" task: self-knowledge. As it is carried out in the Critique, this investigation is meant to be "scientific and fully illuminating"; for Kant, this means that it must follow a proper method. Commentators writing in English have tended to dismiss Kant's claim that the Critique is the scientific expression of reason's self-knowledge---either taking it to be sheer rhetoric, or worrying that it pollutes the Critique with an unfortunate (...) residue of rationalism. As a result, there is little sustained treatment of the method of the Critique in the secondary literature. Since Kant holds that the substantive insights of critical philosophy are not separable from the methodological context in which they come to light, this is a serious mistake. My dissertation corrects for this, by approaching the Critique through an examination of its method. In doing so, it yields a reading of the Transcendental Deduction that not only promises to resolve current debates about its "proof structure", but also fully accounts for the Deduction's pivotal role in the work as a whole. (shrink)