Style

When evaluating R.K. Narayan, Shashi Tharoor seems to commit himself to these theses: Narayan has a natural style of writing, or a style which is second nature to him; to go significantly beyond his limited range he would have to experiment more with language, reducing the accessibility of his fictions. I cast doubt on this combination by proposing that Narayan’s middle-of-the-road style requires suppressing linguistic innovations in earlier drafts.

Specialization appears to be a more efficient way to achieve shared ends: you specialize in one task and I in another and we combine our efforts. Specialization in literature would seem to call for a divide between literary critics, who interpret and evaluate fictions, and fiction writers themselves. But such a divide is a disadvantage for assessing some claims made within literary criticism, notably that a certain style goes with a certain content.

Nietzsche talks about style [Stil and cognates] in all of his published and authorized works, from The Birth of Tragedy to Ecce Homo. He refers to style in over one hundred passages. Yet the scholarly literature on Nietzsche and style includes only a handful of publications, among them Derrida’s notorious Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles (1978), which barely even engages with Nietzsche’s writings (see also Magnus 1991 and Babich 2011, 2012). Much of the rest of the literature is about Nietzsche’s style, rather (...) than about what he has to say about style. And none of it is comprehensive. In this paper, I aim to fill the gap in the secondary literature by using digital humanities methods to systematically investigate the functions of style in Nietzsche’s writings. I argue that, for Nietzsche style emerges in the context of a tradition in a community. It can then become personalized and individualized, though there are dangers with such innovations. One’s personal style is expressive of one’s psychology and physiology, and can go wrong by mis-expressing. Correlative with style, in Nietzsche’s conception, is the taste of the audience. Only those who share important psychological characteristics with the stylist will be able to fully comprehend their expressions. Finally, moving beyond aesthetics, Nietzsche connects style with moral and intellectual character, contending that the good stylist seeks recognition as such from those with good taste. (shrink)

This chapter argues that several aspects of Bernard Williams’s style, methodology, and metaphilosophy can be read as evolving dialectically out of Wittgenstein’s own. After considering Wittgenstein as a stylistic influence on Williams, especially as regards ideals of clarity, precision, and depth, Williams’s methodological debt to Wittgenstein is examined, in particular his anthropological interest in thick concepts and their point. The chapter then turns to Williams’s explicit association, in the 1990s, with a certain form of Wittgensteinianism, which he called ‘Left Wittgensteinianism’. (...) It is shown how this is not a sudden conversion, but the direct product of Williams’s longstanding critical engagement with Wittgenstein’s methodology and metaphilosophy: Williams arrives at this position by envisaging a Wittgensteinianism that thinks in concrete sociohistorical terms, embraces genuine explanation, and relinquishes its insistence on the purity of philosophy. When properly understood, moreover, this critique turns out to be continuous with Williams’s advocacy of a conception of philosophy as a humanistic discipline. Finally, it is shown that Williams inherits from Wittgenstein a certain understanding of how philosophy can help us to live, in particular the therapeutic ambition to liberate us from distortions in our self-understanding by assembling reminders. (shrink)

The unlivable is the most extreme point of human suffering and injustice. But what is it exactly? How do we define the unlivable? And what can we do to prevent and repair it? These are the intriguing questions Judith Butler and Frédéric Worms discuss in a captivating dialogue situated at the crossroads of contemporary life and politics. Here, Judith Butler criticizes the norms that make life precarious and unlivable, while Frédéric Worms appeals to a "critical vitalism" as a way of (...) allowing the hardship of the unlivable to reveal what is vital for us. For both Butler and Worms, the difference between the livable and the unlivable forms the critical foundation for a contemporary practice of care. Care and support, in all their aspects, make human life livable, that is, "more than living." To understand it, we must draw on the concrete practices of humans who are confronted with the unlivable: the refugees of today and the witnesses and survivors of past violations and genocide. They teach us what is intolerable but also undeniable about the unlivable, and what we can do to resist it. Crafted with critical rigor, mutual respect, and lively humor, the compelling dialogue transcribed and translated in this book took place at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) on April 11, 2018, at a time when close to two thousand migrants were living in nearby makeshift camps in northern Paris. The Livable and the Unlivable showcases this 2018 dialogue in the context of Butler's and Worms's ongoing work and the evolution of their thought, as presented by Laure Barillas and Arto Charpentier in their equally engaging introduction. It concludes with a new afterword that addresses the crises unfolding in our world and the ways a philosophically rigorous account of life must confront them. While this book will be of keen interest to readers of philosophy and cultural criticism, and those interested in vitalism, new materialism, and critical theory, it is a far from merely academic text. In the conversation between Butler and Worms, we encounter questions we all grapple with in confronting the distress and precarity of our times, marked as it is by types of survival that are unlivable, from concentration camps to prisons to environmental toxicity, to forcible displacement, to the Covid pandemic. The Livable and the Unlivable at once considers longstanding philosophical questions around why and how we live, while working to retrieve a philosophy of life for today's Left. (shrink)

The late Vivienne Westwood sketched a role for fashion that elevates it from the prosaic to the status of art, as something important, life-enhancing, and worthy of pursuit. Here, a philosophical treatment of Westwood’s vision of fashion that does justice to the artistic and life-enhancing value that fashion can realise is offered, using an emergent theory in contemporary analytic aesthetics. The virtue theory of art delineates the intrinsic worth of art in terms of the opportunities it provides for us to (...) exercise and cultivate virtues such as courage, self-expression, imagination, wit, or authenticity. Our engagement with art can subsequently be genuinely life-enhancing in lieu of the constitutive role the virtues play in living well. The present study takes Westwood’s claims as a jumping-off point, considering how they speak not just to her own designs but to our relationship with our clothes more broadly. Fashion is defended as a practice that performs this function in analogous ways to other genres of art and thus has clear artistic value as well as enables us to live well. Given this potential, just as Westwood claimed, there are reasons to perform the practice well because it has importance for the ways in which it can realise artistic value and aid us in living well. (shrink)

This book closely examines our commonly held beliefs about human suffering, and offers unique insights into God's role in why we suffer. Dr. Perri critically examines what it means to be human from a Judeo-Christian perspective, and extrapolates from the work of Carl Gustav Jung showing a deeply complex development of human transcendence in human suffering. On an interpersonal level, Dr. Perri elaborates on the work of Martin Buber and Emanuel Levinas and shows how our suffering can be shared and (...) lessened by our unconditionality and presence for the other. Scriptural passages are quoted from both the Hebrew and New Testament texts, and are used to depict the suffering of humankind as seen in the face of Job. It was this face, according to Perri, that Jesus saw in the faces of those He came to redeem, and that ultimately brought Him to the crucifix of redemption. Dr. Perri challenges Sartre's position that our existence precedes our essence, and draws on the work of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Christian theology in this regard. He further elaborates a neurodevelopmental paradigm that creates essence as the basis of our freedom to choose. This book can be read and studied by both professionals in the helping and healing professions, and lay persons seeking to better understand our suffering, and how to better help those who suffer. Dr. Perri offers specific ways in how to be present for those who suffer, how to read and receive the hidden language of human suffering, and how to use silence as a communication skill. (shrink)

A comparative analysis of the different notions of ‘ways of thinking’ introduced by philosophers. A guiding thread running through historical epistemology in an attempt to unify the researches of its authors. A comprehensive study of Ian Hacking’s ‘project of styles of reasoning’ and its implications for the relativism.

Modern buildings do not easily harmonize with other buildings, regardless of whether the latter are also modern. This often-observed fact has not received a satisfactory explanation. To improve on existing explanations, this article first generalizes one of Ortega y Gasset’s observations concerning modern fine art, and then develops a metaphysics of styles that is inspired by work in the philosophy of biology. The resulting explanation is that modern architecture is incapable of developing patterns that facilitate harmonizing, because such patterns would (...) humanize buildings and modern architecture is a homeostatic property cluster with a dehumanizing motive at its core. (shrink)

Infirmity -- Loneliness -- Grief -- Failure -- Injustice -- Absurdity -- Hope.

Marks individually or in combination constitute images that represent objects. How do those images represent those objects? Marks vary in style, both between and within images. Images also vary in style. How do those styles relate to each other and to the objects that those images represent? Referencing a diverse range of images, we answer the first question with a response-dependence theory of image representation derived from Mark Johnston, differentiating Lockean primary qualities of marks from secondary qualities of images. We (...) answer the second question with a perceptual theory of style derived from Paul Grice, differentiating physical style from image style, and representing conventionally from representing conversationally. (shrink)

What is artistic style? In the literature one answer to this question has proved influential: the view that artistic style is the expression of personality. In what follows we elaborate upon and evaluatively compare the two most plausible versions of this view with a new proposal—that style is the expression of the artist’s ideals for her art. We proceed by comparing the views’ answers to certain questions we think a theory of individual artistic style should address: Are there limits on (...) what range of features can figure in a style? Can flaws be stylistic? Are there limits on the range of art forms across which a given style can be exhibited? To what extent is a style a kind of unity, and why? What makes style an artistic achievement? Why do we care about style? By considering the different views' answers to these questions we argue that our proposal is a workable theory of individual style and suggest that it fares better on the whole than both versions of the influential and widely accepted view. (shrink)

Es gibt offensichtlich nicht nur Moden der Kleidung, der Frisur oder des Wohnens, sondern auch Moden in den Wissenschaften, in Kunst, Philosophie und vielleicht sogar in der Religion. Das heisst aber gerade in Bereichen, die doch eigentlich 'feste Prinzipien' gegen den Wechsel des Zeitgeistes und der Moden verteidigen. Aber was bedeutet dann in diesen Zusammenhängen "Mode"? Und wie lassen sich solche geistigen Moden erklären? Gehören "Mode" und "Moderne" zusammen? Der vorliegende Band versucht eine systematische Antwort auf diese Fragen, indem er (...) zunächst das Phänomen des Modischen auf seinen offenkundigen Feldern untersucht: den Kleidungsmoden, Wohnmoden, Körpermoden und den Moden in Freizeitgestaltung und Tourismus sowie im Sport. Von hier aus wird nach den spezifisch intellektuellen Moden in den Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften, in der Kunst, in der Philosophie und in der Religion gefragt. Mit Beiträgen von: Georg Bertram, Hubertus Busche, Yvonne Förster, Robert Gugutzer, Rainer Hartmann, Frank Hillebrandt, Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Irene Nierhaus, Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati, Verena Potthoff, Tim Rojek. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's life and writings attest the extraordinary importance that the art of music had for him. It would be fair to say even that among the great philosophers of the twentieth century he was one of the most musically sensitive. Wittgenstein’s Denkbewegungen contains some of his most unique remarks on music, which bear witness not only to the level of his engagement in thinking about music, but also to the intimate connection in his mind between musical acculturation, the perils (...) of modernity, and the challenge, which was very personal to Wittgenstein, of philosophizing amidst what he believed was a dissolution of the resemblances which unite his culture’s ways of life. In particular, Denkbewegungen contains unique remarks on modern music, the problem of Gustav Mahler’s music, and the music of the future. Also, it contains, among other things, some unusually forward-looking remarks on the differences between Brahms and Bruckner, which both probe deeply into the nature of musical creativity and anticipate his later philosophical move beyond the inner/outer divide in his last writings. I shall offer a close reading of Wittgenstein’s remarks on music in Denkbewegungen, which situates them in the broader context of his philosophical development in his middle-period and beyond. I aim to show the deep integration of Wittgenstein’s thinking about music with his philosophical development, his deep sense of cultural lamentation, and his development as a person and as a philosophical expositor. (shrink)

Im 2009 erschienenen Buch "Philosophie des Leidens" versucht Boris Wandruszka, jene immanente Lebensstruktur und Lebensdynamik aufzudecken, die zu den einfachsten und fundamentalen Strukturmomenten des Leidens vorstosst; diese erste "Wissenschaft vom Leiden" transzendierte daher nicht die Grenzen der Anschaubarkeit, sondern verblieb in der "Immanenz des 'inneren Lebens' bzw. des Erlebens". Im aktuellen Buch "Metaphysik des Leidens" werden die "realen Bedingungen der Moglichkeit von Leiden" ermittelt: Wie muss eine Welt beschaffen sein, damit darin ein leidendes Wesen erscheinen konne? Welche Rolle hat das (...) Leiden in Bezug zum fundamentalen Widerfahrnis-, Resonanz- und Responsivitatscharakter des Lebens? Es wird gezeigt, dass menschliches Leben, das einer plural-agonalen Welt ausgesetzt ist, nicht leidfrei moglich ist, dass aber andererseits das Leid nicht das letzte Wort sein kann, sondern notwendig auf Ganzheit, Reifung, Erlosung und Harmonie bezogen ist. Nur auf dem Hintergrund der Spannung zwischen absoluter Seins-, Sinn- und Lebensfulle und der stets problematischen und fragilen Teilhabe von Menschen am "absoluten und leiduberwindenden Urleben" kann Leiden entstehen, durchlitten, verstanden, aber auch uberwunden werden. Hier erreicht der "Opfergedanke", in dem das unvermeidliche Leid frei angenommen und dadurch transformiert wird, seine reinste und hochste Ausformung. Erst nach Klarung dieser Verhaltnisse wird die "Theodizeefrage" als "das Problem der Probleme" angegangen und am Leitfaden der Hiob-Erzahlung diskutiert. Letztlich erweist sich, dass trotz allem Schmerz, Mangel, Unrecht und Unsinn ein "Potential des Unendlichen" im Leiden verborgen liegt, das auf seine Uberwindung durch Sein-, Sinn- und Werterfullung, durch Tat, Erkenntnis und Liebe verweist und dass diese drei "Machte" der Leidensherausforderung bedurfen, um ihre Weite, Tiefe und Hohe auszuloten. (shrink)

Style research has a long and venerable tradition, but its results are highly fragmented. Style exists in language and literature, art and architecture – but every discipline has its own theories. New approaches in empirical aesthetics and multimodality call for broader perspectives. This book offers an overview of experimental research on style, and proposes a common theoretical basis. How do we perceive styles? How do styles change – and why? What is multimodal style? Are style and personality really connected? How (...) is style related to aesthetic experiences? Which cognitive mechanisms are relevant for the creation and perception of styles? Are there neural correlates for style use? The book discusses these and further questions, providing researchers with a valuable source of new ideas. (shrink)

У статті з’ясовано проблему контекстної логіко-інтелектуальної експресивності та входження її до сфери категорії регулятивності. Із цією метою експресивність проаналізовано у двох її виявах – інгерентному та адгерентному. Доведено, що адгерентні експресивні засоби – стилістичні прийоми – беруть активну участь у регулюванні читацької діяльності. Продемонстровано інклюзивні відношення між експресемами та регулятемами, окреслено ядерно-периферійний ресурс регулятивних засобів.

In recent discussions of two important issues in the philosophy of perception, viz. the problems of perceptual presence and perceptual constancy, Merleau-Ponty’s ideas have been garnering attention thanks to the work of Sean Kelly and Alva Noë. Although both Kelly’s normative approach and Noë’s enactive approach highlight important aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s view, I argue that neither does full justice to it because they overlook the central role that style plays in his solution to these problems. I show that a closer (...) look at the Phenomenology and several other texts from this period reveals that, on Merleau-Ponty’s account, we are able to perceive the absent features of objects as present, constant properties, and constant objects because we recognize that the objects we perceive have a unique style that persists through and unifies all their appearances. (shrink)

What today divides analytical from Continental philosophy? This paper argues that the present divide is not what it once was. Today, the divide concerns the styles in which philosophers deal with intellectual problems: solving them, pressing them, resolving them, or dissolving them. Using ‘the boundary problem’, or ‘the democratic paradox’, as an example, we argue for two theses. First, the difference between most analytical and most Continental philosophers today is that Continental philosophers find intelligible two styles of dealing with problems (...) that most analytical philosophers find unintelligible: pressing them and resolving them. Second, when it comes to a genuine divide in which not understanding the other side’s basic philosophical purposes combines with disagreement on fundamental questions of doctrine, the only such divide today is that between those analytical philosophers who tend to solve problems and those Continental philosophers who tend to press problems. It is among these subgroups that there is a real philosophical divide today. So the analytical–Continental divide is more a matter of style than of substance; but as we try to show, differences in style shape differences over substance. (shrink)

A number of objections to the style matrix that Arthur Danto introduced in “The Artworld” seem to have quelled most discussion of it. So telling have these arguments been that Danto himself later recanted the idea entirely. This situation is somewhat unfortunate. It may be that Danto's own interpretation of the style matrix is not tenable, but I believe we can articulate an alternative reading of it that escapes the aforementioned objections. While the interpretation I suggest cannot provide all that (...) Danto initially imagined for his style matrix, it does maintain much that was theoretically beneficial in it. (shrink)

One of the areas of interdisciplinary research on culture is the study of the relationship between religion and art. Among the religious movements, "Protestantism" has assumed especial importance due to its relation with the" religious reform movement". In this cultural context, "expressionism" represents one of the most important stages of the evolution of forms of art. Using a library-based method, this paper seeks to investigate the common aspects and relations between these two movements. The theoretical foundations were compared in the (...) form of a case study with the movie “Dr. Calgary’s Work Room" (1920). The research results show that expressionism and Protestantism have common aspects in one general aspect and in three particular aspects. Thus, it is possible to give religious interpretations works of art. The interaction among religion, culture and art on the basis of an existential understanding of religion is the common aspect in this relationship. Moreover, the historical-cultural commonalities, an expressive element and a dark tension-making content in Expressionism the similar of which is found in Protestant theology, indicate the remarkable aspects of this relationship. -/- . (shrink)

Recent attention to the relationship between aesthetic value and cognitive value has focused on whether the latter can affect the former. In this article, I approach the issue from the opposite direction. I investigate whether the aesthetic value of a work can influence its cognitive value. More narrowly, I consider whether a work's aesthetic value ever contributes to or detracts from its philosophical value, which I take to include the truth of its claims, the strength of its arguments, and its (...) internal consistency. I argue that aesthetic value does have such an impact, at least sometimes and to some degree. The aesthetic merits of some works help to preserve their consistency, and the aesthetic defects of other works render them self-contradictory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One striking feature of On the Genealogy of Morals is how it is written. Nietzsche employs a literary style that provokes his readers' emotions. In Beyond Selflessness, Christopher Janaway argues that such a literary approach is integral to Nietzsche's philosophical goals. Feeling the emotions Nietzsche's style arouses is necessary for understanding the views he defends. I argue that Janaway's position is mistaken. The evidence at our disposal fails to establish that emotion is ever necessary for cognition. However, I maintain (...) that we do have good evidence for a slightly weaker claim. The emotionally sensitive person is epistemically better off than the cold and dispassionate person. There are some truths he or she will be more likely to believe and will have better reasons for believing. I conclude that Janaway is right to defend the philosophical importance of Nietzsche's literary writing style. His error is simply that he overstates the case. (shrink)

No matter how insulated we are by wealth or friends we can all expect to undergo some form of loss, failure, or disappointment. The common reaction is to bear it as best we can--some do this better than others--and move on with life. Dr. Christopher Hamilton proposes a different response to adversity. Focusing on the arenas of family, love, illness, and death, he explores constructive ways to deal with adversity and embrace it to derive unique insight into our condition. Offering (...) examples from history, literature, and science, he suggests how we might recognize it as a precious source of enlightenment, shaping our very existence. - The School of Life is dedicated to exploring life's big questions: How can we fulfill our potential? Can work be inspiring? Why does community matter? Can relationships last a lifetime? We don't have all the answers, but we will direct you toward a variety of useful ideas--from philosophy to literature, from psychology to the visual arts--that are quaranteed to stimulate, provoke, nourish, and console. (shrink)

This text articulates how and why suffering can be pedagogical in character and how it is often key to authentic and meaningful acts of teaching and learning. This collection threads through education, nursing, psychiatry, ecology, and medicine, and blends together affinities between hermeneutic conceptions of the cultivation of character and Buddhist meditations on suffering and its locale in our lives.

Schopenhauer and Adorno on Bodily Suffering explores how the works of both philosophers revolve around an entwinement of pessimism and optimism, which links statements regarding the wrongness of the world to analyses of the human capability to experience compassion with bodily suffering and to the redeeming qualities of the arts.

On one standard view, paraphrasing Kierkegaard requires no special literary talent. It demands no particular flair for the poetic. However, Kierkegaard himself rejects this view. He says we cannot paraphrase in a straightforward fashion some of the ideas he expresses in a literary format. To use the words of Johannes Climacus, these ideas defy direct communication. In this paper, I piece together and defend the justification Kierkegaard offers for this position. I trace its origins to concerns raised by Lessing and (...) Mendelssohn about the relationship between form and content in works of art. I maintain that Kierkegaard follows early German Romantic thinkers in applying these aesthetic concerns to philosophical writing. By way of conclusion, I discuss the implications of Kierkegaard’s position for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

This article addresses two puzzles, one about the nature of satire and its kinship with moral philosophy and the other about the possibility of practicing philosophy through works of art. While it has long been noted that moral satire and applied ethics share subject matter in common, there has been little attention to the prominence of argument by analogy in satire. This essay shows that satire has a kinship with moral philosophy close enough that it is possible to practice philosophy (...) through satire and thus possible to practice philosophy through works of narrative fiction. (shrink)

A book on the problem of evil, focusing on alleged gratuitous suffering.

Dans un texte bref et essentiel prononcé et publié en 1992, Paul Ricœur interrogeait l’expérience de la souffrance au cœur de l’existence humaine. Il en dépliait les horizons dans le rapport à soi et à l’autre, depuis la douleur corporelle jusqu’à la souffrance morale. Ce volume se propose de donner aujourd’hui à relire ce texte clé tant pour sa compréhension que pour une réflexion sur l’anthropologie philosophique et l’éthique du soin. Les contributions qui le suivent, chacune à leur manière, rebondissent (...) sur les éléments d’analyse aujourd’hui particulièrement stimulants qui sont les siens, tout en les mettant en perspective avec certains enjeux très concrets du soin dans nos vies. (shrink)

This paper compares the views of styles of science of Alistair Crombie and Ian Hacking with the notion of styles of art, as developed by Alois Riegl at the end of the 19th Century. Important similarities are noted, notably in the conceptualization of the autonomy of styles. Riegl developed in particular the notion of Kunstwollen , which encompasses an implied relation to the world, in both a cognitive and an ethical sense, and a relation to the public of art. The (...) latter aspect will be examined as the “role of the spectator”. Finally, a number of Riegl’s view on art are tentatively applied to styles of science. (shrink)

Following the pattern set by the early German Romantics, Kierkegaard conveys many of his insights through literature rather than academic prose. What makes him a valuable member of this tradition is the theory he develops to support it, his so-called “theory of indirect communication.” The most exciting aspect of this theory concerns the alleged importance of indirect communication: Kierkegaard claims that there are some projects only it can accomplish. This paper provides a critical account of two arguments Kierkegaard offers in (...) defense of this claim. The first argument is that he needs to use indirect communication in order to discourage people from losing themselves in the “crowd”. The second argument is that he needs to use it in order to help people out of a “monstrous illusion”. It is shown that while both arguments justify Kierkegaard’s decision to use indirect communication, neither one supports the original claim about its indispensability. (shrink)

"In the 25 essays that comprise this grimly fascinating volume, Reed shines a light into some very dark corners. From its opening tale of South African baboons with a taste for human babies to a thoroughly icky account of a middle-aged woman's seduction of young boys, these are literary snapshots of the world at its worst."--Amazon.com.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky expressed a strange and surprising sentiment through one of the characters of The Brothers Karamazov. A dying young man named Markel declares: Every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than others." He later says: "...every one of us is answerable for everyone else and for everything." Markel's absurd claims have engendered many reflections on the nature of suffering and what it means to be responsible for someone else's suffering. The world has no shortage (...) of pain and evil; what exactly is the relationship between suffering and responsibility? Markel's declarations press forward a question that drives this essay collection: how responsible should we consider ourselves for the suffering of the world? This volume is a collection of essays that struggle in various ways to understand and respond to several philosophical, theological and practical problems. In each case the authors grapple with issues surrounding suffering, immorality, evil, exploitation and oppression. The contributors share a clear concern for the ways that philosophers and theologians should respond to the problems of suffering and evil. They also share a conviction that these remain intense and central problems for philosophy and theology. Evil is an obstacle for belief, for morality, for hospitality, and for hope. This book struggles to address the particular and strong sense of responsibility that falls on Christians when it comes to understanding and, more importantly, responding to the problems of suffering and evil in the world. (shrink)

Hamilton explains why "drama" is a category of literature rather than of theater, even though it is appropriate to describe many theatrical performances as "dramatic." Consideration of the possibilities of theatrical performance are especially important to this category of literature, but need not be (and often are not) decisive in constraining interpretations of dramatic works.

A survey of and a comparison of the relative strengths of two favored views of what theatrical performers do: pretend or engage in a variety of self-display. The behavioral version of the pretense theory is shown to be relatively weak as an instrument for understanding the variety of performance styles available in world theater. Whether pretense works as a theory of the mental capacities that underly theatrical performance is a separate question.

This dissertation concerns Kierkegaard’s theory of indirect communication. A central aspect of this theory is what I call the “indispensability thesis”: there are some projects only indirect communication can accomplish. The purpose of the dissertation is to disclose and assess the rationale behind the indispensability thesis. -/- A pair of questions guides the project. First, to what does ‘indirect communication’ refer? Two acceptable responses exist: (1) Kierkegaard’s version of Socrates’ midwifery method and (2) Kierkegaard’s use of artful literary devices. Second, (...) for what end does Kierkegaard use indirect communication? There are two acceptable responses here as well: (1) helping others become religious and (2) making others aware of the nature of existence. -/- These responses are interrelated. First, Kierkegaard’s notion of religion places restrictions on the means he can use to get readers to become religious. These restrictions ultimately entail that the only viable form of religious pedagogy is the midwifery method. Second, Kierkegaard engages in the midwifery method in part by making readers aware of the nature of existence (especially religious existence). But given the problems plaguing his readers, he thinks a straightforward approach to this project will likely fail. An approach that used artful literary devices such as deception and humor would be more successful. Third, Kierkegaard believes that there is one aspect of religious existence (viz. subjectivity) that people can come to know only first-hand. As such, he cannot directly impart knowledge of subjectivity to his readers. He argues that this means he must use the midwifery method. And he thinks the most productive way to do so is to provide readers with the kind of fictional narratives found in his early pseudonymous writings. Thus artful rhetorical devices play a role here as well. -/- All of Kierkegaard’s arguments for the indispensability thesis turn on debatable assumptions. But the arguments concerning artful rhetorical devices have the additional defect of being merely probabilistic in nature. They lack the strength to support the indispensability thesis even if we grant the relevant background assumptions. Therefore, to the degree that the indispensability thesis has merit, it lies with the arguments concerning the midwifery method. (shrink)