Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and LiteratureOxford University Press, USA, 1990 - 403 pages 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. |
Contents
Form and Content Philosophy and Literature | 3 |
An Aristotelian Conception of Private and Public Rationality | 54 |
3 Plato on Commensurability and Desire | 106 |
Jamess The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy | 125 |
Literature and the Moral Imagination | 148 |
Literary Theory and Ethical Theory | 168 |
The Princess Casamassima and the Political Imagination | 195 |
8 Sophistry About Conventions | 220 |
9 Reading for Life | 230 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
activity akrasia Alcibiades argues argument Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's belief Booth cataleptic chap character choice claim commensurability commitments complex conception concerned concrete connection criticism David David Copperfield desire discussion distinction emotions erotic essay ethical example experience express F. R. Leavis fact feeling Finely Aware Flawed Crystals Fragility Golden Bowl heart Henry James Hilary Putnam human Hyacinth ical idea imagination important insist intellectual James's judgment knowledge literary literature live Maggie Marcel moral philosophy narrative nature norm novel object Odysseus particular passion Perceptive Equilibrium person Phaedrus philosophical Plato political Princess Casamassima principles Protagoras Proust question rational reader reading reason relation relationship response Richard Wollheim role romantic love seems sense shows simply social Socrates sort soul speak Stanley Cavell Steerforth story Strether structure style tells theory things thought tion transcendence truth understanding vision writing