Download or read book Literature and Skepticism written by Pablo Oyarzun and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature and Skepticism links the skeptic attitude to the conditions of possibility in (modern) literature—in particular, the narrative form and the essay. Pablo Oyarzun proposes that narrative and the essay document the relationship between literature and skepticism in different but complementary and, at the same time, complicit ways. As the narrative performance reaches the structural limit of the literary—understood as the domain of fiction—a sort of para-discursive reflection critically accompanies this performance, discussing it, ironizing it, feigning to disbelieve it, or overtly belying it. Yet the narrative doubtfully takes distance from itself, surrendering all right to a final truth at the very moment at which truth emerges, essayistic, to the surface. The authors considered—Montaigne, Swift, Lichtenberg, Kleist, Kafka, and Borges—are eminent representatives of one and the other form, and all of the works analyzed are cases of a complex interplay between narrative and essay.
Download or read book Stanley Cavell and Literary Skepticism written by Michael Fischer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1989-04-24 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cavell is read avidly by students of film, television, painting, and music, but especially by students of literature, for whom he offers major readings of Thoreau. Fischer (English, U. of New Mexico) shows why Cavell's work is also of particular relevance to the controversies surrounding poststructuralist literary theory. Paper edition (0-226-25141-1) is available for $10.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Skepticism in Early Modern English Literature written by Anita Gilman Sherman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious account of skepticism's effects on major authors of England's Golden Age shows how key philosophical problems inspired literary innovations in poetry and prose. When figures like Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert of Cherbury, Cavendish, Marvell and Milton question theories of language, degrees of knowledge and belief, and dwell on the uncertainties of perception, they forever change English literature, ushering it into a secular mode. While tracing a narrative arc from medieval nominalism to late seventeenth-century taste, the book explores the aesthetic pleasures and political quandaries induced by skeptical doubt. It also incorporates modern philosophical views of skepticism: those of Stanley Cavell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Roland Barthes, and Hans Blumenberg, among others. The book thus contributes to interdisciplinary studies of philosophy and literature as well as to current debates about skepticism as a secularizing force, fostering civil liberties and religious freedoms.
Download or read book Sublimity and Skepticism in Montaigne and Milton written by David Louis Sedley and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boldly investigates the relationship between the sublime as an aesthetic category and the emergence of skepticism as a philosophical problem
Download or read book Uncertain Chances written by Maurice S. Lee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maurice Lee's study illustrates how writers such as Poe, Melville, Douglass, Thoreau, Dickinson, and others participated in a broad intellectual and cultural shift in which Americans increasingly learned to live with the threatening and wonderful possibilities of chance.
Download or read book Scepticism and Hope in Twentieth Century Fantasy Literature written by Kath Filmer-Davies and published by Popular Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filmer argues that, in secular society, the psychological need to hope is met in the literature of fantasy. She illustrates her thesis using the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Peter Beagle, Susan Cooper, Madeleine L'Engle, George Orwell, Russell Hoban, James Thurber, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Alan Garner, Ursula LeGuin, and Patricia Wrightson. Paper edition (unseen), $13.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Shakespeare s Tragic Skepticism written by Millicent Bell and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies have long noted the absence of readily explainable motivations for some of Shakespeare’s greatest characters: why does Hamlet delay his revenge for so long? Why does King Lear choose to renounce his power? Why is Othello so vulnerable to Iago’s malice? But while many critics have chosen to overlook these omissions or explain them away, Millicent Bell demonstrates that they are essential elements of Shakespeare’s philosophy of doubt. Examining the major tragedies, Millicent Bell reveals the persistent strain of philosophical skepticism. Like his contemporary, Montaigne, Shakespeare repeatedly calls attention to the essential unknowability of our world. In a period of social, political, and religious upheaval, uncertainty hovered over matters great and small—the succession of the crown, the death of loved ones from plague, the failure of a harvest. Tumultuous social conditions raised ultimate questions for Shakespeare, Bell argues, and ultimately provoked in him a skepticism which casts shadows of existential doubt over his greatest masterpieces.
Download or read book Joseph Conrad and the Fictions of Skepticism written by Mark Wollaeger and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1990-11-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "You want more scepticism at the very foundation of your work. Scepticism, the tonic of minds, the tonic of life, the agent of truth - the way of art and salvation." Joseph Conrad wrote these words to John Galsworthy in 1901, and this study argues that Conrad's skepticism forms the basis of his most important works, participating in a tradition of philosophical skepticism that extends from Descartes to the present. Conrad's epistemological and moral skepticism - expressed, forestalled, mitigated, and suppressed - provides the terms for the author's rethinking of the peculiar relation between philosophy and literary form in Conrad's writing and, more broadly, for reconsidering what it means to call any novel 'philosophical'. Among the issues freshly argued are Conrad's thematics of coercion, isolation, and betrayal; the complicated relations among author, narrator, and character; and the logic of Conradian romance, comedy, and tragedy. The author also offers a new way of conceptualizing the shape of Conrad's career, especially the 'decline' evidenced in the later fiction. The uniqueness of Conrad's multifarious literary and cultural inheritance makes it difficult to locate him securely in the dominant tradition of the British novel. A philosophical approach to Conrad, however, reveals links to other novelists - notably Hardy, Forster, and Woolf - all of whom share in the increasing philosophical burden of the modern novel by enacting the very philosophical issues that are discussed within their pages. Conrad's interest as a skeptic is heightened by the degree to which he resists the insights proffered by his own skepticism. The first chapter introduces the idea of the Conradian 'shelter', and the next two use Schopenhauer to show how the language of metaphysical speculation in Tales of Unrest and 'Heart of Darkness' spills over into a religious impulse that resists the disintegrating effect of Conrad's skepticism. The author then turns to Hume to model the authorial skepticism that in Lord Jim contests the continuing visionary strain of the earlier fiction and Descartes to analyze the ways in which Romantic vision is more stringently chastened by irony in Nostromo and The Secret Agent. The concluding chapter touches on several late novels before examining how competing models of political agency in Conrad's last great fiction of skepticism, Under Western Eyes, situate it somewhere between ideology critique and a mystified account of the exigencies of individual consciousness.
Download or read book Radical Skepticism and the Shadow of Doubt written by Eli Hirsch and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-28 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radical Skepticism and the Shadow of Doubt brings something new to epistemology both in content and style. At the outset we are asked to imagine a person named Vatol who grows up in a world containing numerous people who are brains-in-vats and who hallucinate their entire lives. Would Vatol have reason to doubt whether he himself is in contact with reality? If he does have reason to doubt, would he doubt, or is it impossible for a person to have such doubts? And how do we ourselves compare to Vatol? After reflection, can we plausibly claim that Vatol has reason to doubt, but we don't? These are the questions that provide the novel framework for the debates in this book. Topics that are treated here in significantly new ways include: the view that we ought to doubt only when we philosophize; epistemological “dogmatism”; and connections between radical doubt and “having a self.” The book adopts the innovative form of a “dialogue/play.” The three characters, who are Talmud students as well as philosophers, hardly limit themselves to pure philosophy, but regale each other with Talmudic allusions, reminiscences, jokes, and insults. For them the possibility of doubt emerges as an existential problem with potentially deep emotional significance. Setting complex arguments about radical skepticism within entertaining dialogue, this book can be recommended for both beginners and specialists.
Download or read book On Academic Scepticism written by Cicero and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2006-02-28 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Brittain's elegant new translation of Cicero's Academica makes available for the first time a readable and accurate translation into modern English of this complex yet crucial source of our knowledge of the epistemological debates between the skeptical Academics and the Stoics. Brittain's masterly Introduction, generous notes, English–Latin–Greek Glossary, and Index further commend this edition to the attention of students of Hellenistic philosophy at all levels.
Download or read book Species intelligibilis 1 Classical roots and medieval discussions written by Leen Spruit and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1994 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main purpose of this book is to offer a comprehensive historical analysis of the discussions on a crucial problem for the Medieval theory of knowledge: the formal mediation of sensible reality in intellectual knowledge.
Download or read book Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration written by Alan Levine and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of original essays by the nation's leading political theorists examines the origins of modernity, and considers the question of tolerance as a product of early modern religious skepticism. Rather than approaching the problem with a purely historical lens, the authors actively demonstrate the significance of these issues to contemporary debates in political philosophy and public policy. The contributors to Early Modern Skepticism raise and address questions of the utmost significance: Is religious faith necessary for ethical behavior? Is skepticism a fruitful ground from which to argue for toleration? This book will be of interest to historians, philosophers, religious scholars, and political theorists -- anyone concerned about the tensions between private beliefs and public behavior.
Download or read book Kant and Skepticism written by Michael N. Forster and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a reappraisal of Immanuel Kant's conception of and response to skepticism, as set forth principally in the "Critique of Pure Reason". This book argues that Kant undertook his reform of metaphysics primarily in order to render it defensible against these types of skepticism.
Download or read book Skepticism written by Richard Henry Popkin and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology contains the principal texts of the skeptical tradition from its origins in antiquity to contemporary philosophy. Selections include the writings of both well-known and lesser-known but influential philosophers of the Western tradition who either advanced skeptical views or dealt with skeptical issues for other philosophical or religious purposes. An introduction on the origins, kinds, and significance of philosophical skepticism puts the various readings in the context of the history of Western philosophy. The editors have also added brief discussions of each philosopher and text included in the anthology, plus a selected bibliography, which lists the main secondary literature on ancient, modern, and contemporary skepticism. This collection is ideal for introductory philosophy courses and courses on intellectual history, or for any reader interested in an influential school of thought, which challenges the nature of philosophy itself.
Download or read book The Modes of Scepticism written by Julia Annas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1985-05-23 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the Hellenistic classic has had an enormous impact on Western thought when rediscovered in the sixteenth century, it has remained neglected in recent times. This new translation should interest laymen as well as professional scholars and philosophers.
Download or read book The Luxury of Skepticism written by Timothy Dykstal and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From his close analysis of the works of the era's great philosophers, Dykstal argues that the dialogue as a literary form helped to develop, and subsequently transform, the public sphere in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Scepticism Inc written by Bo Fowler and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-03-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A weary atheist, Edgar Malroy challenges people to put their money where their faith is at his metaphysical betting shop. He causes a dangerous faith war, resulting in multiple popes, a beautiful messianic woman who claims to be God's messenger, and a technological meltdown with artificially intelligent home appliances.
