Nietzsche and Proust

Nietzsche and Proust PDF Author: Duncan Large
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199242276
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
This book combines a Nietzschean reading of Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu with a Proustian reading of time and transcendence in Nietzsche's philosophy. Drawing in particular on Gilles Deleuze's early studies of the two writers, it argues (against Jacques Derrida and JuliaKristeva) that they pursue a parallel programme of overcoming post-Kantian idealism through an emphasis on the materiality of the body and the 'genealogy' of its interpretations. 'Proust's perspectivism' is analysed in the context of Nietzsche's radical epistemological relativism, the key themes ofinvoluntary memory and eternal recurrence are read together as elements in a shared aesthetics of self-creation, and in conclusion the complex temporalities of Nietzsche and Proust's 'untimely' texts are shown to issue into the problematics of the 'postmodern'.

Nietzsche and Proust

Nietzsche and Proust PDF Author: Duncan Large
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199242276
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book combines a Nietzschean reading of Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu with a Proustian reading of time and transcendence in Nietzsche's philosophy. Drawing in particular on Gilles Deleuze's early studies of the two writers, it argues (against Jacques Derrida and JuliaKristeva) that they pursue a parallel programme of overcoming post-Kantian idealism through an emphasis on the materiality of the body and the 'genealogy' of its interpretations. 'Proust's perspectivism' is analysed in the context of Nietzsche's radical epistemological relativism, the key themes ofinvoluntary memory and eternal recurrence are read together as elements in a shared aesthetics of self-creation, and in conclusion the complex temporalities of Nietzsche and Proust's 'untimely' texts are shown to issue into the problematics of the 'postmodern'.

Allegories of Reading

Allegories of Reading PDF Author: Paul De Man
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300028454
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This important theoretical work by Paul de Man sets forth a mode of reading and interpretation based on exemplary texts by Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. The readings start from unresolved difficulties in the critical traditions engendered by these authors, and they return to the places in the text where those difficulties are most apparent or most incisively reflected upon. The close reading leads to the elaboration of a more general model of textual understanding, in which de Man shows that the thematic aspects of the texts--their assertions of truth or falsehood as well as their assertions of values--are linked to specific modes of figuration that can be identified and described. The description of synchronic figures of substitution leads, by an inner logic embedded in the structure of all tropes, to extended, narrative figures or allegories. De Man poses the question whether such self-generating systems of figuration can account fully for the intricacies of meaning and of signification they produce. Throughout the book, issues in contemporary criticism are addressed analytically rather than polemically. Traditional oppositions are put in question by a rhetorical analysis which demonstrates why literary texts are such powerful sources of meaning yet epistemologically so unreliable. Since the structure which underlies this tension belongs to language in general and is not confined to literary texts, the book, starting out as practical and historical criticism or as the demonstration of a theory of literary reading, leads into larger questions pertaining to the philosophy of language. "Through elaborate and elegant close readings of poems by Rilke, Proust's Remembrance, Nietzsche's philosophical writings and the major works of Rousseau, de Man concludes that all writing concerns itself with its own activity as language, and language, he says, is always unreliable, slippery, impossible....Literary narrative, because it must rely on language, tells the story of its own inability to tell a story....De Man demonstrates, beautifully and convincingly, that language turns back on itself, that rhetoric is untrustworthy."--Julia Epstein, Washington Post Book World "The study follows out of the thinking of Nietzsche and Genette (among others), yet moves in strikingly new directions....De Man's text, almost certain to be endlessly provocative, is worthy of repeated re-reading."--Ralph Flores, Library Journal "Paul de Man continues his work in the tradition of 'deconstructionist criticism, '... which] begins with the observation that all language is constructed; therefore the task of criticism is to deconstruct it and reveal what lies behind. The title of his new work reflects de Man's preoccupation with the unreliability of language. ... The contributions that the book makes, both in the initial theoretical chapters and in the detailed analyses (or deconstructions) of particular texts are undeniable."--Caroline D. Eckhardt, World Literature Today

The Portable Nietzsche

The Portable Nietzsche PDF Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440674191
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 627

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Book Description
The works of Friedrich Nietzsche have fascinated readers around the world ever since the publication of his first book more than a hundred years ago. As Walter Kaufmann, one of the world’s leading authorities on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction, “Few writers in any age were so full of ideas,” and few writers have been so consistently misinterpreted. The Portable Nietzsche includes Kaufmann’s definitive translations of the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche’s four major works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra Wagner and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In addition, Kaufmann brings together selections from his other books, notes, and letters, to give a full picture of Nietzsche’s development, versatility, and inexhaustibility. “In this volume, one may very conveniently have a rich review of one of the most sensitive, passionate, and misunderstood writers in Western, or any, literature.” —Newsweek

The Genealogy of Values

The Genealogy of Values PDF Author: Edward Andrew
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847680627
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Until the time of Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, philosophers generally held economics to be an integral element of moral philosophy. These days, the language of values--moral, aesthetic, and cognitive--dominates philosophic discourse, even though contemporary philosophers rarely hold economics to be integral to moral philosophy. Examining the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and the art of Marcel Proust, Edward Andrew provides the first sustained critical analysis of values discourse, an analysis that deconstructs its content and its form.

Paul de Man Notebooks

Paul de Man Notebooks PDF Author: Paul de Man
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748670173
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This anthology collects 36 texts and papers from the Paul de Man archive, including essays on art and literature, translations, critical fragments, research plans, interviews, and reports on the state of comparative literature.

The Consolations of Philosophy

The Consolations of Philosophy PDF Author: Alain De Botton
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030783350X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
From the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, a delightful, truly consoling work that proves that philosophy can be a supreme source of help for our most painful everyday problems. Perhaps only Alain de Botton could uncover practical wisdom in the writings of some of the greatest thinkers of all time. But uncover he does, and the result is an unexpected book of both solace and humor. Dividing his work into six sections -- each highlighting a different psychic ailment and the appropriate philosopher -- de Botton offers consolation for unpopularity from Socrates, for not having enough money from Epicurus, for frustration from Seneca, for inadequacy from Montaigne, and for a broken heart from Schopenhauer (the darkest of thinkers and yet, paradoxically, the most cheering). Consolation for envy -- and, of course, the final word on consolation -- comes from Nietzsche: "Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us." This wonderfully engaging book will, however, make us feel better in a good way, with equal measures of wit and wisdom.

Philosophy As Fiction

Philosophy As Fiction PDF Author: Joshua Landy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199731101
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
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.

Marcel Proust in Context

Marcel Proust in Context PDF Author: Adam Watt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107021898
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
This wide-ranging volume of essays provides an illuminating set of approaches to the multifaceted contexts of Proust's life and work.

Philosophy in the Garden

Philosophy in the Garden PDF Author: Damon Young
Publisher: Scribe Us
ISBN: 9781950354078
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Why did Marcel Proust have bonsai beside his bed? What was Jane Austen doing, coveting an apricot? How was Friedrich Nietzsche inspired by his 'thought tree'? In Philosophy in the Garden, Damon Young explores one of literature's most intimate relationships: authors and their gardens. For some, the garden provided a retreat from workaday labor; for others, solitude's quiet counsel. For all, it played a philosophical role: giving their ideas a new life. What unites the authors--Proust, Woolf, Colette, Rousseau, Orwell, Emily Dickinson, Kazantzakis--portrayed in Philosophy in the Garden is not any one ideal, but a devotion to the garden itself: to its philosophical fertility. Despite being bookworms and paper moths, they did some of their best thinking al fresco. (Even Jean-Paul Sartre, whose hero in Nausea was sickened by a chestnut tree.) Philosophy in the Garden reveals the profound thoughts discovered in parks, backyards, and pot-plants. It does not provide tips for mowing overgrown couch grass, or mulching a dry Japanese maple. It is a philosophical companion to the garden's labors and joys.

The Age of Atheists

The Age of Atheists PDF Author: Peter Watson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476754330
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 640

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Book Description
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2014 From one of England’s most distinguished intellectual historians comes “an exhilarating ride…that will stand the test of time as a masterful account of” (The Boston Globe) one of the West’s most important intellectual movements: Atheism. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzche declared that “God is dead” and ever since tens of thousands of brilliant, courageous, thoughtful individuals have devoted their creative energies to devising ways to live without God with self-reliance, invention, hope, wit, and enthusiasm. Now, for the first time, their story is revealed. A captivating story of contest, failure, and success, The Age of Atheists sweeps up William James and the pragmatists; Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis; Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, and Albert Camus; the poets of World War One and the novelists of World War Two; scientists, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking; and the rise of the new Atheists—Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. This is a story of courage, of the thousands of individuals who, sometimes at great risk, devoted tremendous creative energies to devising ways to fill a godless world with self-reliance, invention, hope, wit, and enthusiasm. Watson explains how atheism has evolved and reveals that the greatest works of art and literature, of science and philosophy of the last century can be traced to the rise of secularism. From Nietzsche to Daniel Dennett, Watson’s stirring intellectual history manages to take the revolutionary ideas and big questions of these great minds and movements and explain them, making the connections and concepts simple without being simplistic. The Age of Atheists is “highly readable and immensely wide-ranging…For anybody who has wondered about the meaning of life…an enthralling and mind-expanding experience” (The Washington Post).