'A good essay must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.' According to Virginia Woolf, the goal of the essay 'is simply that it should give pleasure...It should lay us under a spell with its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last.' One of the best practitioners of the art she analysed so rewardingly, Woolf displayed her essay-writing skills across a wide range of (...) subjects, with all the craftsmanship, substance, and rich allure of her novels. This selection brings together thirty of her best essays, including the famous 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', a clarion call for modern fiction. She discusses the arts of writing and of reading, and the particular role and reputation of women writers. She writes movingly about her father and the art of biography, and of the London scene in the early decades of the twentieth century. Overall, these pieces are as indispensable to an understanding of this great writer as they are enchanting in their own right. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

In Three Guineas, first published in June, 1938 Virginia Woolf set about answering three questions. How should war be prevented? Why does the government not support education for women? Why are women prevented from engaging in professional work? Many at the time saw the matter of how best to prevent war as entirely unconnected with “women’s issues”; Woolf linked together the answers, and connected them too with discussions of such matters as social class, in what has come (...) to be acknowledged as a landmark both of feminist and of anti-war writing. Included in the first and other early editions—and integral to the work—was a series of five photographs of men of high position wearing garments that mark their status . Unlike most editions available today, this facsimile edition includes the illustrations as well as the text of the original. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virginia Woolf, Time, and the RealJane DuranCritical appraisal of the work of Virginia Woolf has tended to focus on feminist concerns, or on issues revolving around the actual facts of her upbringing and the extent to which she might have been thought to be a victim of abuse. Although some commentators have noted that Woolf's high modernist style lends itself to a number of (...) readings with respect to sense of self, the passage of time, and a sort of phenomenological reflection, philosophical concerns have, in general, not played a large role in Woolf scholarship to date.In this article I shall argue that some of Woolf's best known work—especially To the Lighthouse—exemplifies a concern for time, reality and a sense of interior life-as-lived that is overtly philosophical in its construction, and even somewhat didactic. Furthermore, I will claim, it is part and parcel of modernism as it is ordinarily conceived to address these issues in some fashion, even if, in many cases, they are not addressed as thoroughly as they are in Woolf's work. Even if we can be certain that a great deal of Woolf's mental disturbance, or mental illness, was the result of childhood abuse, or even inherited tendencies, it still does not detract from the power with which she was able to use depictions of inner turmoil to give us a sense of the fleeting and transitory nature of the real. Indeed, such a sense is one of the hallmarks of Woolf's work and is acknowledged by most of her critics, even if it is not termed a philosophical concern. I will analyze constructs of time and the chronological through a view of To the Lighthouse.IA number of philosophers have offered conceptions of time; these efforts range from those of antiquity to the more technical articulations [End Page 300] of the twentieth century. One of the most haunting evocations of the power of time is in the work of one whose thought is seldom cited in this regard, Simone de Beauvoir. In Old Age, she offers a phenomenological account of the passage of time that reflects an emphasis on the internally-felt disparity between the past and the present that is a frequently-remarked upon aspect of old age.1 There is a paucity of experience-of-the-present among the very elderly, and a reliance upon the past. Concomitantly, there is a foreshortening of the future. As Beauvoir writes: "How far does memory allow us to retrieve our lives? The images... are far from possessing the richness of their original object. An image is the seeing of an absent object by means of an organic and affective analogue" (p. 147). Despite the fact that these images may lack the richness of the original, the somewhat paradoxical effect of being older is that these images predominate.In To the Lighthouse, Woolf plays with time in a way that allows for a development of the internally-sensed structure of time on the parts of the various characters. Although many have remarked upon the well-known middle section, "Time Passes," this aspect of the felt sensation of time as an internal phenomenon, and one on which her characters seem to draw at regular intervals, is a somewhat little remarked feature of the rest of the book. It is present from the outset: James's first thoughts about the trip to the lighthouse highlight time in a sort of reversal of the way that Beauvoir has indicated for the elderly; James's conception of the passing of time is altered in another sense, since he is only six. He has projected himself forward so intently to the trip to the lighthouse that everything else has seemed somewhat unreal. As Woolf writes, "he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed...."2Although the differences between the felt constructions of time between, for example, childhood and old age might seem to partake of the commonplace, Beauvoir is among those philosophers who have used the notion of the truncation of time and the foreshortening of the future among the elderly to make philosophical commentary. By the same token... (shrink)

The visibility of pregnancy in contemporary societies through various forms of medical imaging has often been interpreted by feminist critics as negative for the autonomy and experience of pregnant women. Here, I consider the representation of pregnancy in Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando, and Sally Potter’s film of the same name arguing that, despite limited critical attention to Orlando’s pregnancy, these texts offer a productive interpretation of gestation that counters conventionally reductive cultural images of that embodied state. In particular, (...) I argue that Potter’s translation of Woolf’s novel to the screen gives us a useful model for thinking through the new visibility of pregnancy in contemporary Western culture. (shrink)

This article is the guest editors’ introduction to the Special Topic Forum on Extreme Operating Environments appearing in Business & Society. The forum includes two articles accepted after review and revision. The two articles address the macro-level aspects of business’s role in society in terms of accessing resources and markets and in terms of being a change agent or enabler to promote a better or more stable local economy. The articles also provide case studies of businesses developing, getting (...) access to resources and markets, and affecting the larger institutional environment despite great uncertainty and harsh operating environments where the traditional assumptions of stability and security are not available. This Special Topic Forum is published in cooperation with Business & Professional Ethics Journal which, working with the guest editors, has published two other articles that address the more micro-level aspects and the ethical dilemmas business may face in extreme operating environments. (shrink)

In A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf considers with energy and wit the implications of the historical exclusion of women from education and from economic independence. In A Room of One's Own, she examines the work of past women writers, and looks ahead to a time when women's creativity will not be hampered by poverty, or by oppression. In Three Guineas, however, Woolf argues that women's historical exclusion offers them the chance to form (...) a political and cultural identity which could challenge the drive towards fascism and war. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

How is feminism changing the way women and men think, feel, and act? Virginia Held explores how feminist theory is changing contemporary views of moral choice. She proposes a comprehensive philosophy of feminist ethics, arguing persuasively for reconceptualizations of the self of relations between the self and others and of images of birth and death, nurturing and violence. Held shows how social, political, and cultural institutions have traditionally been founded upon masculine ideals of morality. She then identifies a distinct (...) feminist morality that moves beyond culturally embedded notions about motherhood and female emotionality. Examining the effects of this alternative moral and ethical system on changing social values, Held discusses its far-reaching implications for altering standards of freedom, democracy, equality, and personal development. Ultimately, she concludes, the culture of feminism could provide a fresh perspective on--even solutions to--contemporary social problems. Feminist Morality makes a vital contribution to the ongoing debate in feminist theory on the importance of motherhood. For philosophers and other readers outside feminist theory, it offers a feminist moral and social critique in clear and accessible terms. (shrink)

This essay raises the question of gender in relation to the question of intellectuals in Britain, commenting on the gender blindness that made their exclusion so automatic in Collini's study. It looks at some women who might have been included, focussing particularly on Virginia Woolf as one who was not only a very significant public intellectual, but who in her essays entitled 'The Common Reader' also provided a definition and analysis of the role of an intellectual which (...) is very different from that suggested by Collini. Rather than offering expert advice, Woolf sought to help readers to develop their own critical insights. (shrink)

Ethical Politics and Modern Society introduces and critically examines British idealist philosopher, Thomas Hill Green, his practical philosophy and its reception in China between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. As a response to the modernity issue in Great Britain, Green's philosophy, in particular his ethical politics, anticipated a practical solution to the individual alienation issue in modern society. Witnessing the resemblance between Green's ethical politics and classical Chinese ethical and political thought, some (...) Chinese scholars became inclined to take Green's thought as an intellectual approach to assimilate Western modernity. While Green and the Chinese scholars both intended to articulate an ethical conception of modern politics in response to the issue of modernity, their results were very different. In this book, James Jia-Hau Liu analyses why modern Chinese scholars introduced Green's philosophy to China and why the studies of Green's philosophy in China have since faded away. Modern Chinese scholars, such as Gao Yi-Han, Chin Yueh-Lin, Tang Jun-Yi, Chang Fo-Chuan and Yin Hai-Guang, are explored in greater detail. The contradictory standings towards modernity between Green and Chinese scholars illustrate how to understand the difference forms of modernity that can be embodied therein. Ethical Politics and Modern Society is a valuable resource to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, history of social and political thought, British Idealism and the work of Thomas Hill Green. (shrink)

As a critic, Virginia Woolf has been called a number of disparaging names: "impressionist," "belletrist," "raconteur," "amateur." Here is one academic talking on the subject: "She will survive, not as a critic, but as a literary essayist recording the adventures of a soul among congenial masterpieces. . . . The writers who are most downright, and masculine, and central in their approach to life - Fielding or Balzac - she for the most part left untouched....Her own approach was (...) at once more subterranean and aerial, and invincibly, almost defiantly, feminine." In other words, Virginia Woolf is not a critic; how could she be? She is a woman. From its beginning, criticism has been a man's world. This is to say not only that males have earned their living as critics but, more importantly, that the conventionally accepted ideals of critical method are linked with qualities stereotypically allotted to males: analysis, judgment, objectivity. Virginia Woolf has had a poor reputation as a critic not merely because her sex is female but because her method is "feminine." She writes in a way that is said to be creative, appreciative, and subjective. We will accept this descriptive for the moment but will later enlarge on it, and even our provisional acceptance we mean to turn to a compliment. Barbara Currier Bell has written articles on critical theory and modern poetry and has served as a consultant on women's education at both Vassar and Hampshire Colleges. She is assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University. Carol Ohmann is the author of Ford Madox Ford: From Apprentice to Craftsman and several articles on English and American fiction. She coedited Female Studies IV: Teaching about Women with Elaine Showalter and is chairman of the Department of English at Wesleyan University. She has contributed, with Richard Ohmann, "Reviewers, Critics, and The Catcher in the Rye , and "CRITICAL RESPONSE: Universals and the Historically Particular" .See also: "The Masculine Mode" by Peter Schwenger in Vol. 5, No. 4; "The Robber in the Bedroom: or, The Thief of Love: A Woolfian Grieving in Six Novels and Two Memoirs" by Mark Spilka in Vol. 5, No. 4. (shrink)

This book introduces Virginia Woolf as a nondualist and process-oriented thinker whose ideas are strikingly similar to those of her contemporary, Alfred North Whitehead. The author argues that in their respective fields, the two thinkers criticized the materialist turn of their time and attempted to undermine long-rooted dualisms.

In Virginia Woolf's 1931 novel The Waves, one of Bernard's many becomings – his ‘becoming-savage’ – reveals a point of intersection between Woolfian aesthetics and Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy. Moreover, a triangulation of Woolf's ‘moments of being’, Deleuze and Guattari's ‘worlding’, and coloniality provides a new and productive node for examining the debates surrounding imperialism in these thinkers’ works, and an insistence that Woolf, read alongside Deleuze and Guattari, offers an alternate and precisely ethical way of (...) being in the world. (shrink)

Virginia Held's Feminist Morality defends the idea that it is possible to transform the "public" sphere by remaking it on the model of existing "private" relationships such as families. This paper challenges Held's optimism. It is argued that feminist moral inquiry can aid in transforming the public sphere only by showing just how much the allegedly "private" realms of families and personal relationships are shaped-and often misshapen-by public demands and concerns.

When Ann Banfield argued in The Phantom Table1 that the debate about modernism should take into account its revolutionary conception of the objects of sensation, and turned to Bertrand Russell’s 1914 theory of knowledge to do so, she challenged on the one hand the critics’ near ignorance of the Cambridge Apostles’ influence on Bloomsbury, and on the other, the “assumption of contemporary understanding of modernism—that the only philosophy of relevance to twentieth-century art and literature is continental.”2 Following her example, daunting (...) as it may be, I will challenge this last assumption and argue that the philosophy of relevance to the understanding of Woolf’s work is not necessarily continental but British.My .. (shrink)

Contemporary society is in the grip of contractual thinking. Realities are interpreted in contractual terms, and goals are formulated in terms of rational contracts. The leading current conceptions of rationality begin with assumptions that human beings are independent, self-interested or mutually disinterested, individuals; they then typically argue that it is often rational for human beings to enter into contractual relationships with each other.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Provoking a ConversationDavid H. PorterLee T. Pearcy's The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (Baylor University Press, Waco, Tex. 2005) is a book every classicist should read. Pearcy's focus is on the state of classics in our country today: where we are, how we got there, where we need to go. His book is wide-ranging, tightly argued, and carefully researched. Pearcy's assessment of the present state of (...) classics in America strikes me as overly bleak, but his analysis deserves our close attention. Chapters 1 and 2, which trace the history of classical studies in Europe and America since the Renaissance, are filled with valuable information and insights; chapter 3 dissects four interlinked arguments that, to Pearcy's thinking, explain the parlous state of classics today—and threaten its future survival; and chapter 4 offers thoughtful suggestions as to how classicists might respond to these challenges. I doubt that most readers will agree with all of Pearcy's analysis—I certainly do not—but I found his book consistently stimulating. He writes that his purpose is to provoke a conversation, not to solve a problem (118); it is a conversation that will benefit us all, and this book is a welcome and timely catalyst.Pearcy's starting point, and the theme to which he repeatedly returns, is what he identifies as an essential difference between classical studies in Europe (including Great Britain) and classical studies in America. To quote from Pearcy's account of Vittorino da Feltre, whom he sees as an architect of what we now call "liberal education," classical education was designed above all "to take those who would... rule and those who might be admitted to the governing class and to form their minds and souls in such a way that they would be the best rulers (8)... "Renaissance classical education... [was] designed to educate members of the governing class by exposing them to the best patterns of conduct, modes of thinking, and products of culture..." (9). In Europe this form of education made sense in that its presupposition of a governing class matched the social and political realities of the countries in question. In America, by contrast, the advent of democracy undermined the central assumptions of such education and threatened its relevance to our society: "The necessary openness of thought in a democracy has a consequence that is fatal to [End Page 595] the paradigm of classical liberal arts education. In a democratic society, the freedom and theoretical equality of all citizens make it necessary to avoid privileging any single set of beliefs or ideas" (23).Pearcy's hypothesis is thought-provoking, but it strikes me as overly neat. A quick glance at two individuals, one English, the other American, offers some corroboration and also raises some intriguing questions. Leonard Woolf majored in classics at St. Paul's School and Cambridge, and, though his origins were not "aristocratic," upon graduation he entered the ranks of the governing class as a civil servant in Ceylon. The progression matches Pearcy's model, and Woolf even comments on it in terms similar to those Pearcy uses: "The male members of the British aristocracy of intellect went automatically to the best public schools, to Oxford and Cambridge, and then into all the most powerful and respectable professions."1 By contrast, S. S. McClure, the American publisher, migrated from Ireland to the States at age nine as a virtual pauper, spent eight years putting himself through Knox College, and chose to major in classics for reasons similar to those Pearcy identifies as the basis for classical education: "During the years that he reads and studies Greek a boy gets certain standards that he uses all the rest of his life, long after he has forgotten grammar and vocabulary."2 Unlike Woolf, however, McClure found to his dismay that though he had graduated third in a class of thirty, his classical education did not open doors to a professional career: "I talked with other boys, and found that most of them had arranged for the immediate future. One classmate was going into his father's law office; another was going to enter his uncle's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Is Deviated Transcendency? Woolf's The Waves as a Textbook CaseSimon De Keukelaere (bio)The Waves, more than any of Virginia Woolf's other novels, conveys the complexities of human experience.—Kate FlintHumankind—according to mimetic theory—is not (as Marx thought) homo economicus but rather homo religiosus. Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque, Girard's first essay (1961), evocatively opens with a saying by Max Scheler: "L'homme possède ou un Dieu ou (...) une idole" (Man has either a God or an idol). If we may believe Girard, the Enlightenment profoundly misunderstood human beings because it naively assumed that doing away with "ancient superstitions" would fully liberate them: "denial of God does not eliminate transcendency but diverts it from the au-delà to the endeçà " (Girard 1965, 59).What has all this to do with Virginia Woolf's secular art? René Girard's "transcendance déviée," the diverted or deviated transcendency––which we may also want to term idolatry––is beautifully and transparently depicted in one of Woolf's most enigmatic and experimental novels. In The Waves, the portrayal of human desire as mimetic, imitated, is so crystal clear that––once noticed—it can hardly be overlooked any longer. Perhaps even more interesting for mimetic theory is the fact that Woolf (just as Proust did before her) brings into play the language of the sacred when rendering the mimetic nature of human longing. Neither of these two aspects of The Waves (the obsessively mimetic nature of desire and the use of the religious metaphor) have been fully unraveled by Woolf's critics.The purpose of this article is to make obvious the value of Virginia Woolf's (poetic) language for mimetic scholars and to show how deviated transcendency can be made visible and (above all) intelligible through great secular literature. The study of literature is vital to the humanities, not for some frivolous, outdated reasons, but because great literature can, sometimes [End Page 195] more effectively than many erudite studies, convey the complexities of human experience.It would no doubt be unjustifiable to foist Girard's mimetic thesis on Woolf's novel without clear support from the text, but I believe The Waves provides such backing. The outline of the present article is as follows. I first argue that the characters in Woolf's novel really are interdividuals rather than individuals, since mimetic desire plays an important role in them. I subsequently focus on a typically metaphysical illusion that goes along with mimetic desire, that is, the apparent self-sufficiency or divine autonomy of the Other. Then I show how the religious metaphor is consistently linked with the first-mentioned issue and that a form of distorted mysticism is to be recognized throughout the novel. Finally I examine how in The Waves deviated transcendency is depicted as a road toward Death in exactly the same way as Girard does in his Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque (1961).The Interdividual and Her Mimetic DesireMimetic theory is deeply involved with the problem of selfhood, the paradoxical nature of subjectivity. According to René Girard we are not individuals but interdividuals. The ambiguous nature of the Self is a recurrent theme in Woolf's novels too, and especially in The Waves, it seems. As Lisa Marie Lucenti remarks: "Many critics seem to agree that subjectivity, for Woolf, is no simple matter, but they disagree on the significance, expression and forms of its intricacies. The most productive theories for reading Woolf are those which allow for a large measure of variation and ambiguity both between and within individual subjects" (1998, 34). The problematic nature of the Self challenges the critic, since the very concept of character is turned into a conundrum, rather than a useful instrument with which to analyze the novel. To speak of separated characters, of individuals (in-divisus) with regard to The Waves is particularly difficult. So, for example, at the end of the novel Bernard (one of the six "voices" or "characters" whose lives are recounted) states: "I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am—Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda or Louis; or how to distinguish my life from theirs... (shrink)

Works of literature represent stories, characters, and events: these are the contents of a work. Often, the contents of literary works are fictional; however, it is just as characteristic of works of literature that these contents are narrated in a distinct style of writing, in an author’s distinct literary “voice.” In this paper, I consider whether works of literature might represent something over and above their fictional contents in virtue of their style alone and what consequences this might have for (...) our thinking about aesthetic education. Both of these concerns—with what works of art represent and what kind of knowledge they make available to us—have been central to recent analytic philosophy of art. While I.. (shrink)

In the growing body of academic literature on biography that has developed in the last few decades, Virginia Woolf's essay, "The New Biography,"1 has come to occupy a central place—mentioned, discussed and quoted from, I would estimate, more often than any other piece of writing on the subject. Virginia Woolf's distinctive view of the nature and limitations of biography has thus had, and continues to have, a deep and wide-ranging influence on the way the genre is (...) discussed by critics and theorists. My aim in this essay is to present a detailed analysis of Virginia Woolf's thinking about biography in order to make clear why I believe its influence on contemporary theorising about biography is, on the whole, a misfortune. As is often pointed out, Virginia Woolf's views on biography are closely connected with—indeed, to an extent that I hope to make clear, they are simply an application of—her views on fiction. In the light of this, I have tried to trace some of the most striking features of her thinking about biography back to her earlier thoughts on fiction, as presented in both her novels and her essays. The result, I hope, will be that, while the attractions of her way of looking at fiction and biography are recognised and revealed, the manifest flaws in her thinking on these subjects are clearly exposed. (shrink)

This new edition of a classic study contains a specially written preface evaluating contemporary feminist criticism.

This collection reflects the result of interactive academic work initiated by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi University Inc., Miami, Florida, during the academic year 2018, and also the scholarly work of academics supporting our University. The authors include international academics from the United States of America, Great Britain, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Switzerland, Austria, Serbia and Macedonia. Table of Contents: About the Authors; Craig Paterson--Contextualism & the History of Philosophy; Darko Bekic--Triangle Concept of Unification-Demilitarization Neutralisation of Korea: An Outline; Orlando Mardner--Economic Dimensions (...) of Armed Groups & Intra-State Terrorism: Preventions Through Geostrategic Changes in the International Laws of Financial Systems; Stephan U. Breu--The Challenge of Educating Refugee Children to Avoid Creating Tomorrow's Extremists; Hatidza Berisa--Historical Context of Military Interventionism; Parvis Hanson--The Future of Globalization: Help or Hurt the World's Poor; Joseph P. Garske--Common Law & Civilian Legal Cultures: Finding A Language of Law for the Global Age; Craig Paterson--The Societas Civilitas, Hate Speech & State Imposed Restrictions; Elmar Kuhn --Education as the Key for a Global Society in Peace & Freedom; Manish Sharma--Global Ecology & Sustainable Development: A Study in Gandhian Perspective; Paul Borrow-Longain--Law of Heraldic Arms; Craig Paterson--William Tyndale's Publication of The New Testament in the English Vernacular; Milka Ristova & Sanja Angelovska--The Contributions of International Law & NonGovernmental Organizations in Facilitating the Peaceful Reunification of the Korean Peninsula; Stephan U. Breu--Blockchains & Cybercurrencies Challenging Anti-Trust & Competition Law; Zoran R. Vitorovic--Preventive Diplomacy as a Key for the Reduction of Asymetric Conflicts; Stephan U. Breu--International Law Under Attack by Geostrategic Tensions Between Leading Nations. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of AI4People, an Atomium—EISMD initiative designed to lay the foundations for a “Good AI Society”. We introduce the core opportunities and risks of AI for society; present a synthesis of five ethical principles that should undergird its development and adoption; and offer 20 concrete recommendations—to assess, to develop, to incentivise, and to support good AI—which in some cases may be undertaken directly by national or supranational policy makers, while in others may be led (...) by other stakeholders. If adopted, these recommendations would serve as a firm foundation for the establishment of a Good AI Society. (shrink)