Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature | Martha C. Nussbaum

Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature | Martha C. Nussbaum | Taking stories seriously

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Love's Knowledge: ...

	Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature Martha C. Nussbaum Oxford University Press, USA, 1992 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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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.

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required reading

This collection of essays is not only a first-rate work in the philosophy of literature, but it goes beyond the limits of that heading to sound out the philosophical implications of the literary works themselves. It begins by raising the question, so often unhappily answered without analysis, of what form of writing is most hospitable to the raising of philosophical questions. The answer, developed over the course of the essays, is that "literary" authors often present a more intricate and acute consideration of philosophical issues, especially those pertaining to human beings as emotional and moral agents; and this implies a thorough critique of not only the writing style most fashionable in philosophy but also the writers most often studied by those who consider themselves philosophers. A number of the essays assume familiarity with works by, for example, James, Proust, and Beckett, while others are more general in their scope. Anyone who feels that important philosophical issues are raised in literary texts, which deserve a careful, intelligent, and non-formulaic (or "theoretical") reading, ought to read this book. Anyone who has the suspicion that love is something that we ought to try to understand in all of its complexity and fullness, ought to read it as well. It might just restore your faith in novels, in philosophy, and in the human heart striving to understand itself.

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Taking stories seriously

A collection of essays all of which present us with possibilities -- stories as moral teachers. We all learn from, care about, and revel in the stories that we read. Nussbaum takes seriously our ability to approach fiction with care and convincingly argues that we can extend this mode of being as ethical. If we approached the world with the care and attention we do characters in a book, we would be excercising a instinctively human morality. Beautifully written -- it can change your outlook on how we should see ourselves and the world.

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