Philosophy of Humour : New Perspectives /
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This volume aims to reignite interest in a sorely neglected field within philosophy: the philosophy of humour. Indeed, although humour, jokes and laughter make up a quintessentially human domain of extreme universal importance, it has not received the sustained and involved attention and investigation that it merits. This volume draws on theories both distant and more nearby in order to contemporize the discussion into the 21st century, with each of the ten contributions demonstrating just how many perspectives and conversations are to be had, both on theoretical and concrete levels, now and going forward.
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1 online resource (201 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004548817
Experiencing Tess of the d'Urbervilles : A Deweyan Account /
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This book interprets Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles with the openness toward experience recommended by John Dewey's Art as Experience . The characters of Tess are considered as real people with sexual bodies and complex minds. Efron identifies the "experience blockers" that the critical tradition has stumbled upon, and defends Hardy's involvement in telling his story. Efron offers a new way of evaluating literature inspired by Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004458758
9789042016941
Language, Culture and Cognition from Descartes to Lewes /
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"This volume describes how the significance of language and culture in forming human cognition has been understood from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century"--
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004507241
9789004507234
Learning to Live: Six Essays on Marcel Proust /
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In this collection of essays, Maurizio Ferraris explores the world portrayed in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. He ponders how memory is tied to self-identification and knowledge; how the passage of time is only perceptible after it has passed; and how life, ultimately, is accurately portrayed in literature in ways that were seen as inconceivable in our youth. Running throughout the book is the sense that memory is all we are; we are what we remember or what others remember of us.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004431232
9789004422551
Simone de Beauvoir : a humanist thinker /
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This collection of humanist readings of Simone de Beauvoir's work is a novel contribution to contemporary research on Beauvoir, and a defense of the importance of the humanities. It demonstrates the significance and value of humanistic research through the work of Beauvoir, and argues that the reception and influence of her works demonstrate the transformative potential of humanistic research. Organized around three topics, each chapter ascertains Beauvoir's relation to the humanities and the humanist tradition. The first group focuses on Beauvoir's interdisciplinary methodology and critical thinking, the second on her ethics of freedom and the construction of values. The last section explores how Beauvoir uses literature as a laboratory for developing her ideas on human interaction. The chapters can be studied as independent essays, or read together as a whole. Simone de Beauvoir-A Humanist Thinker reveals new and previously unexplored dimensions of Beauvoir's work by exposing her as a significant and inspiring humanist thinker. This volume attests that Beauvoir's works continue to offer conceptual tools and insights enabling readers to critically analyze their own situation. In today's world, where religious fanaticism and totalitarian ideologies are gaining ground, humanist values and humanistic research are more important than ever.
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1 online resource (xiv, 215 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004294462 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Literature and the encounter with immanence /
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In Literature and the Encounter with Immanence Brynnar Swenson collects nine original essays that approach the relationship between literature and immanence through methodologies grounded in the philosophy of Spinoza. One of Spinoza's most provocative claims is a simple declaration of ignorance: "We do not know what a body can do." A literary theory based on immanence privileges the ontological status of the text and the material act of reading. Rather than ask what a text means, the essays here ask what a text can do. Each essay documents a distinct literary and philosophical encounter with immanence and, as a result, opens up a space to read literature as one would read philosophy and vice versa .
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1 online resource (ix, 192 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004311930 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Dostoevsky's legal and moral philosophy : the trial of Dmitri Karamazov /
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This work closely examines the trial of Dmitri Karamazov as the springboard to explaining and critically assessing Dostoevsky's legal and moral philosophy. The author connects Dostoevsky's objections to Russia's acceptance of western juridical notions such as the rule of law and an adversary system of adjudication with his views on fundamental human nature, the principle of universal responsibility, and his invocation of unconditional love. Central to Dostoevsky's vision is his understanding of the relationship between the dual human yearnings for individualism and community. In the process, the author related Dostoevsky's conclusions to the thought of Plato, Augustine, Anselm, Dante, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Throughout the work, the author compares, contrasts, and evaluates Dostoevsky's analyses with contemporary discussions of the rule of law, the adversary system, and the relationship between individualism and communitarianism.
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1 online resource (xvi, 226 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-223) and index. :
9789004325425 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Values of literature /
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Why we read literature and why we should read literature are age-old questions that have, in recent years, gained unprecedented scope and intensity, against the backdrop of what has been perceived as a world-wide crisis in the humanities. While scholars frequently discuss different types of value separately, in this volume values of literature are approached in the plural: we argue that the ethical, aesthetic, cognitive, affective, social, historical, and existential values of literature should be explored in connection with each other. The three parts of the book explore the relationship between ethics and aesthetics; the cognitive, affective, and social values of literature; and the construction and questioning of literary values in society. Throughout the book, we discuss the different things literature can do - ranging from affirmation of social dogmas to its capacities for self-questioning and challenging of moral certainties - through the dynamic interplay of its ethical and aesthetic, cognitive and affective aspects. Literature not only reflects and draws on the values of the historical world from which it stems; it also actively addresses, challenges, and transforms those values and explores new ways to understand value. Through these complementary processes, literature engages in its own distinctively literary forms of value inquiry.
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1 online resource (vi, 222 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401212052 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
C.S. Lewis's Christian apologetics : pro and con /
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Are C. S. Lewis's major arguments in defense of Christian belief sound? In C. S. Lewis's Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con , defenders and critics of Lewis's apologetics square off and debate the merits of Lewis's arguments from desire, from reason, from morality, the "trilemma" argument for the divinity of Christ, as well as Lewis's response to the problem of evil. By means of these lively, in-depth debates, readers will emerge with a deeper understanding and appreciation of today's most influential Christian apologist.
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1 online resource (xi, 272 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-265) and index. :
9789004301658 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Words, Deeds, Bodies: J. L. Austin, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Michael Polanyi /
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Words, Deeds, Bodies by Jerry H. Gill concentrates on the interrelationships between speech, accomplishing tasks, and human embodiment. Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Michael Polanyi have all highlighted these relationships. This book examines the, as yet, unexplored connections between these authors' philosophies of language. It focuses on the relationships between their respective key ideas: Wittgenstein's notion of "language game," Austin's concept of "performative utterances," Merleau-Ponty's idea of "slackening the threads," and Polanyi's understanding of "tacit knowing," noting the similarities and differences between and amongst them.
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1 online resource :
9789004412361
Plato and the moving image /
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This book shows how and why debates in the philosophy of film can be advanced through the study of the role of images in Plato's dialogues, and, conversely, why Plato studies stands to benefit from a consideration of recent debates in the philosophy of film. Contributions range from a reading of Phaedo as a ghost story to thinking about climate change documentaries through Plato's account of pleonexia . They suggest how philosophical aesthetics can be reoriented by attending anew to Plato's deployment of images, particularly images that move. They also show how Plato's deployment of images is integral to his practice as a literary artist. Contributors are Shai Biderman, David Calhoun, Michael Forest, Jorge Tomas Garcia, Abraham Jacob Greenstine, Paul A. Kottman, Danielle A. Layne, David McNeill, Erik W. Schmidt, Timothy Secret, Adrian Switzer, and Michael Weinman.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004398290
Roman Ingarden's philosophy of literature : phenomenological account /
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In Roman Ingarden's Philosophy of Literature Wojciech Chojna discusses Ingarden's theory of literary works and develops a phenomenological account of identity which accommodates differences in interpretations and value judgments without succumbing to relativism. The latter is overcome not through falling back on essentialism but from within relativism. Literature offers us diverse experiences changing our perceptions of ourselves and the worlds we live inches Absolutism proclaiming unmitigated access to the meaning of literary texts is intolerant of differences and leads to violence in life. Conversely, relativism, in the illusory spirit of radical tolerance, turns meanings and values into historically contingent, incompatible interpretations, where communication and reconciliation is impossible, thus justifying ideological conflicts and violence.
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1 online resource (181 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004357181 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The ancients and Shakespeare on time : some remarks on the war of generations /
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In The Ancients and Shakespeare on Time Piotr Nowak depicts a world where tradition - devoid of gravity, "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything" - attempts to curb the young and new, while youth resists with all its power, vitality and characteristic insolence. The wars of generations, which Nowak explores in the works of Plato, Aristophanes and Shakespeare, pertain to the essence and meaning of time. They make up the dramatic tensions in the transgenerational dialogue between the old and the young.
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1 online resource (xiv, 106 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-101) and index. :
9789401210676 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Unconscious in Philosophy, and French and European Literature : Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century.
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This book traces the idea of the unconscious as it emerges in French and European literature. It discusses the functioning of the normal unconscious mind and provides examples of the abnormal unconscious in poems and literature. Psychiatric cases as they are understood today are illustrated as mirrored in literature describing the functioning of the disturbed mind.
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1 online resource (403 pages) :
9789042029217 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Politics otherwise : Shakespeare as social and political critique /
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The book is comprised of essays that utilize Shakespeare as a productive window into topics of contemporary social and political relevance. Its interdisciplinary qualities make the book relevant for students of political studies, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and history.
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1 online resource (xiv, 180 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401207461 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Dostoevsky and Kant : dialogues on ethics /
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"In this book, Evgenia Cherkasova brings the philosopher Kant and the novelist Dostoevsky together in conversations that probe why duty is central to our moral life. She shows that just as Dostoevsky is indebted to Kant, so Kant would profit from the deeply philosophical narratives of Dostoevsky, which engage the problem of evil and the claims of human community. She not only produces a novel reading of Dostoevsky, but also guides us to later, often neglected Kantian texts. This study is written with scholarly care, penetrating analysis, elegance of style, and moral urgency: Cherkasova writes with both mind and heart."--Emily Grosholz, Professor of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University.
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1 online resource (xiv, 128 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789042026117 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Shakespeare and philosophy : lust, love, and law /
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This book is an interdisciplinary work that weaves literary interpretation, legal theory, and philosophical doctrine about sex and love into a coherent mosaic in the context of two of Shakespeare's plays: The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure . In the process, the work advances literary interpretations of the plays including character studies of some of the main protagonists. The aim is partly theoretical but mostly practical: to demonstrate what we can learn about living a robustly meaningful and significant human life by taking Shakespeare's work seriously from contemporary philosophical and legal vantage points. Shakespeare does not reveal a tightly defined moral system that he is trying to urge upon his audience. Instead, Shakespeare challenges his audience to struggle with moral complexity as they confront conflicting elements surrounding legal and moral issues presented in his work and within the souls of his characters. His issues and their conflicts are also ours. Much of Shakespeare's work consists of raising weighty questions inextricably connected to the human condition and inviting his audience to ponder possible answers. The philosophical lessons about living our lives meaningfully and significantly that we can derive from Shakespeare are simple yet powerful.
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1 online resource (xiii, 227 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401208727 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Narrative ethics /
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While Plato recommended expelling poets from the ideal society, W. H. Auden famously declared that poetry makes nothing happen. The 19 contributions to the present book avoid such polarized views and, responding in different ways to the "ethical turn" in narrative theory, explore the varied ways in which narratives encourage readers to ponder matters of right and wrong. All work from the premise that the analysis of narrative ethics needs to be linked to a sensitivity to esthetic (narrative) form. The ethical issues are accordingly located on different levels. Some are clearly presented as thematic concerns within the text(s) considered, while others emerge through (or are generated by) the presentation of character and event by means of particular narrative techniques. The objects of analysis include such well-known or canonical texts as Biblical Old Testament stories, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn , J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita , Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones , Ann Radcliffe's The Italian and Matthew Lewis's The Monk . Others concentrate on less-well-known texts written in languages other than English. There are also contributions that investigate theoretical issues in relation to a range of different examples.
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"The chapters of this volume are revised versions of papers given at an international conference on narrative theory and analysis arranged at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo, 19-20 November 2010"--Preface. :
1 online resource (xii, 313 pages) : color illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789401209823 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.