Demonstrates that slapstick film comedies display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium. Slapstick film comedy may be grounded in idiocy and failure, but the genre is far more sophisticated than it initially appears. In this book, Burke Hilsabeck suggests that slapstick is often animated by a philosophical impulse to understand the cinema. He looks closely at movies and gags that represent the conditions and conventions of cinema production and demonstrates that film comedians display a canny and (...) sometimes profound understanding of their medium—from Buster Keaton’s encounter with the film screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924) to Harpo Marx’s lip-sync turn with a phonograph in Monkey Business (1931) to Jerry Lewis’s film-on-film performance in The Errand Boy (1961). The Slapstick Camera follows the observation of philosopher Stanley Cavell that self-reference is one way in which “film exists in a state of philosophy.” By moving historically across the studio era, the book looks at a series of comedies that play with the changing technologies and economic practices behind film production and describes how comedians offered their own understanding of the nature of film and filmmaking. Hilsabeck locates the hidden intricacies of Hollywood cinema in a place where one might least expect them—the clowns, idiots, and scoundrels of slapstick comedy. “From its analysis of the vaudevillian Victorian origins to early Hollywood expressions, and from defining classical performances by the likes of Keaton to recent postmodern recapitulations, Hilsabeck’s theoretically rigorous and wide-ranging study masterfully weaves a path through the historical, technical, and philosophical art of slapstick comedy. A must for scholars working in this field.” — Daniel Varndell, author ofHollywood Remakes, Deleuze and the Grandfather Paradox. (shrink)

This paper deals critically with Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness, a study of seven film comedies from the 30’s and 40’s, among them The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam’s Rib, and It Happened One Night. Negatively, I argue that Cavell’s interpretations of the films he deals with are often extravagant, if held to any objective standard; that his conception of the genre of the comedy of remarriage is highly arbitrary, both in its inclusions and exclusions, and in its (...) contention that the genre does not have a history; and that the philosophy of marriage implicit in Cavell’s criticism is unsatisfactory in implying the illegitimacy of most existing marriages. Positively, I support his contentions that the genre has its roots in Shakespearean comedy and that the films often (sometimes quite consciously) raise the very difficult philosophical questions Cavell takes them to raise. Though I find much to disagree with, I contend that Cavell is writing criticism of the highest order. (shrink)

This paper deals critically with Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness, a study of seven film comedies from the 30’s and 40’s, among them The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam’s Rib, and It Happened One Night. Negatively, I argue that Cavell’s interpretations of the films he deals with are often extravagant, if held to any objective standard; that his conception of the genre of the comedy of remarriage is highly arbitrary, both in its inclusions and exclusions, and in its (...) contention that the genre does not have a history; and that the philosophy of marriage implicit in Cavell’s criticism is unsatisfactory in implying the illegitimacy of most existing marriages. Positively, I support his contentions that the genre has its roots in Shakespearean comedy and that the films often (sometimes quite consciously) raise the very difficult philosophical questions Cavell takes them to raise. Though I find much to disagree with, I contend that Cavell is writing criticism of the highest order. (shrink)

In this essay I attempt to unpack Andy Kaufman in his many manifestations, ultimately arguing that traditional notions of comedy cannot help us get at the root of what is going on here. Through a discussion and criticism of the theories of comedy presented by Christopher Fry, Susanne Langer, Walter Kerr, and Maurice Charney, I suggest how Andy's comedy employs a rejection of the modernist conceits of a fixed identity, a denotative language, a progressive history, and (...) a separation of temporality from Being. Ultimately focusing on the way in which Freud's theory of comedy gets deconstructed when we read it through the lens of Andy’s work, I take apart specific jokes and comedic “moments” in Andy's work and show how the Freudian framework cannot support such an aesthetic. What is, in fact, most challenging in Andy's work as a comedian is not merely the way in which his own identity is up for grabs but the way in which he forces the audience to have its identity as an audience called into question, the way in which a Baudrillardean simulacrum stands in for a missing punchline while we, his fans, wait for something that is never coming. And yet we, his fans, laugh. Sometimes uncomfortably, but always more authentically. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 211-222 [Access article in PDF] Criticism and the Terror of Nothingness C. Jason Lee DESTINY IS OFTEN ANOTHER NAME for narrative, it being the order we retrospectively find in scattered events. It is traditionally the role of the storyteller to create a believable narrative, with the reader investing attention into believing the story while the critic dissects the results to ascertain whether the magic (...) works. As Wallace Stevens put it, "we orchestrate a whole history and then imprison ourselves in the score, as if someone else had written it." 1 In the author's note to the second edition (1962) of Wise Blood (1949) Flannery O'Connor makes the point that her novel is a comic novel, yet its comedy does not lessen the depth of understanding it offers concerning the complexity of freedom. 2 The obsession with fate and destiny that swamps her characters, leads the reader into a gothic nightmare where humans in their attempt to re-create themselves dig themselves further into the graves of their dead relatives. For O'Connor free will does not mean one will but many wills conflicting in one man, and she explains the integrity of the central character of Wise Blood, Hazel Motes, as stemming from his vigorous attempts to rid himself of the "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind."This figure is the Jesus of his grandfather, and it is also the religious preoccupation of the Deep South. Destiny has shaped his features and his character in the mold of his grandfather, and whomever he meets believes he too is a preacher. After establishing the Church Without Christ, like many sons attempting to shake off their origin, Hazel Motes realizes that his new way of behaving is in some sense being controlled [End Page 211] by his past and that he must shake off all vestiges to possess freedom. One might argue that, by eventually blinding himself, Hazel Motes is behaving as a soul who has given into the temptation of purgation, as if this is destiny. But it can be argued that this act is going against destiny, as it is an act that is perhaps trying to persuade God of something, despite the Oedipal connotations.Questioned by his landlady why he blinded himself he says to pay, and when asked to pay for what, he replies it does not matter what. Mrs. Flood is frightened of death, particularly death being one long blind existence, and Hazel Motes is a reminder to her of her destiny. This can be read as a judgment on life also. Yet she eventually decides to take care of him, for both altruistic and materialistic reasons, believing that his widow would inherit his war pension. Mrs. Flood, her name evocative of apocalyptic occurrences and Old Testament punishment, is a critic of the text; the text in this instance is nothing written but rather Motes himself. It seems that Hazel Motes, his name a reference to taking the mote out of one's own eye before you try and take the splinter out of another's, is punishing himself for his previous denial of Christ and for his sins, such as fornication, as with Mrs. Watts the prostitute and Sabbath Hawks, and murder, but also something more primal.After trying desperately to break the curse of his biological inheritance, his wise blood, just like the character Enoch Emery, it forces him to once again take on roles that deny him freedom. Hazel Motes may seem to a contemporary reader as a caricature, the mad preacher/antipreacher of the American South, but as V. S. Pritchett puts it, Hazel Motes is "entirely real" (p. viii). His self-blinding is part of his further alienation from the world, the world he has come back to after the "Great War." O'Connor shows how this watershed in human history was so devastating, Motes's new theology entirely rational. After having an insight into the world in reality through war, Hazel Motes is now "going to do some things... (shrink)

Only a Joke Can Save Us presents an innovative and comprehensive theory of comedy. Using a wealth of examples from high and popular culture and with careful attention to the treatment of humor in philosophy, Todd McGowan locates the universal source of comedy in the interplay of the opposing concepts lack and excess. After reviewing the treatment of comedy in the work of philosophers as varied as Aristotle, G. W. F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Alenka (...) Zupancic, McGowan, working in a psychoanalytic framework, demonstrates that comedy results from the deployment of lack and excess, whether in contrast, juxtaposition, or interplay. Illustrating the power and flexibility of this framework with analyses of films ranging from Buster Keaton and Marx Brothers classics to Dr. Strangelove and Groundhog Day, McGowan shows how humor can reveal gaps in being and gaps in social order. Scholarly yet lively and readable, Only a Joke Can Save Us is a groundbreaking examination of the enigmatic yet endlessly fascinating experience of humor and comedy."--Publisher's summary. (shrink)

Die Beitrage dieses Buches knupfen an Stanley Cavells psychoanalytisch inspirierte Studien zu Literatur, Drama und Film als Beitrage zu einer Anthropologie der Endlichkeit an. Cavell interpretiert Kunstformen wie Shakespeares Tragodien, die Hollywood-Komodien der Wiederverheiratung und die Melodramen der Unbekannten Frau als experimentelle Narrative von Menschen, die mit ihrer Endlichkeit hadern. Dabei geht es um die alte philosophische Frage nach dem guten Leben, was die Analyse der Spielarten der Lebensverfehlung einschliesst. Dazu gehort etwa die Unfahigkeit, sich uber die eigenen Wunsche, Anspruche (...) und Interessen in der Beziehung zu einer anderen Person zu verstandigen, was dazu fuhrt, dass man die eigene Perspektive mit einer allgemeinen unparteiischen Sicht der Vernunft und personliches Vertrauen mit Wissen uber eine Person verwechselt, nach einer unerreichbaren Einheit strebt, die Selbststandigkeit der anderen Person als Bedrohung erlebt oder sich selbst in der Beziehung verliert. Dementgegen rekonstruiert Cavell unter dem Titel "moralischer Perfektionismus" eine philosophische und kunstlerische Tradition, die sich mit der Erfahrung einer unbefriedigenden sozialen und privaten Wirklichkeit auseinandersetzt - wobei das Genre Komodie besondere Beachtung findet. Mit Beitragen von Elisabeth Bronfen, Eike Brock, Lorenz Engell, Josef Fruchtl, David Gern, Michael Hampe, Lars Leeten, Dimitri Liebsch, Maria-Sibylla Lotter, Ludwig Nagl und Jochen Schuff. (shrink)

In this book, classicist Joshua Billings considers classical Greek drama as intellectual history. Developing an innovative approach to dramatic form as a mode of philosophical thought, Billings recasts early Greek intellectual history as a conversation across types of discourses and demonstrates the significance of dramatic reflections on widely-shared conceptual questions. He integrates evidence from tragedy, comedy, and satyr play into the development of early Greek philosophy in order to place poetry at the center of Greek thought. He (...) thus offers a substantially new history and map of classical intellectual culture: drama, on his view, appears as our best source for understanding the thought of the fifth century, while at the same time revealing significant tensions and anxieties in the development of philosophy. At the heart of the book is a novel approach to the philosophical qualities of drama. Though dramatists and their works have been considered philosophical in a variety of ways going back to antiquity, scholarly approaches have consistently taken "literature" and "philosophy" as defined categories, tracing more or less direct connections between one and the other. On the contrary, Billings argues that neither "literature" nor "philosophy" were available as stable categories in the fifth century. Rather he describes the way that drama treats issues that would come to be called philosophical, without relying on assumptions concerning what constitutes philosophical method or literary form. Drama develops a kind of method that allows it to pose and pursue conceptual questions in dramatic form which Billings describes as the "philosophical poetics" of drama. (shrink)

Oscar Kenshur’s “Demystifying the Demystifiers: Metaphysical Snares of Ideological Criticism” should go a long way toward convincing most readers that the cure for “ideological” criticism is worse than the disease. His attempt to uncouple ideology and epistemology in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and Michael Ryan’s Marxism and Deconstruction belongs to an increasingly popular subgenre of metacriticism, the “more-historical-than-thou” offensive against Marxists and new historicists for their alleged essentialist procedures.1 There is no question that Kenshur raises significant issues about the nature of (...) ideological analysis that should be debated. However, he has neither interrogated the basis of his own assumptions about seventeenth-century views of language theory and epistemology nor convincingly demonstrated, to my mind, that Ryan is somehow wrong in his reading of Hobbes. The weakness of Kenshur’s argument is that he seems intent on erecting the windmills at which he wants to tile—most damagingly for his argument a simplistic notion of ideology that he assumes both Hobbes and Ryan share. By accepting a deterministic notion of ideology, Kenshur offers a “corrective” to overzealous claims for the significance of ideological criticism that has the effect not of “sav[ing history] from its friends” but of returning it to the status of “background” or “context” that it had been for a previous generation of New Critics. The terms in which he casts his argument—epistemology and/or ideology—redefine “ideological criticism” in a polemical manner designed, it seems, to discourage anyone from wanting to practice it. His ultimate purpose is not simply to save “history” from the Ryans of the world but to inoculate his versions of literature and philosophy against the ideological virus. To respond fully to the various issues that Kenshur raises would require detailed analyses of seventeenth-century literary and political culture and of the institutionalization of twentieth-century criticism; simply to discuss the differences between Hobbes and Ryan on epistemology or ideology would require a full-length study of the various discourses in which and against which their works are situated. Given the limitations of a critical response, I shall confine my remarks to two suspect areas of Kenshur’s argument: his characterization of seventeenth-century notions of the relationships among language, epistemology, and ideology and his assumptions about the nature of claims currently made for ideological analysis. 1. See, for example, Edward Pechter, “The New Historicism and Its Discontents: Politicizing Renaissance Drama,” PMLA 102 : 292-303. Robert Markley teaches in the English department of the University of Washington and is editor of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. He is the author of Two-Edg’d Weapons: Style and Ideology in the Comedies of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve and coauthor, with Kenneth J. Koespel, of Newton and the Failure of Messianic Science: A Postmodern Inquiry into the Discourses of Natural Philosophy. (shrink)

Justification for reading Pride and Prejudice as a philosophical novel may be found in its much cited and variously interpreted opening sentence: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." This universal law is the first principle of a philosophical novel, although I shall also interpret it as the statement of a scientific law of human nature, a characterization of the civility of English society, and (...) as a pronouncement on the manners of an economic class. Pride and Prejudice is a philosophical novel both in the sense of presenting a philosophy in exposition and of embodying a philosophy in action, and literary criticism exercises its proper function by expounding that philosophy and by explicating and clarifying the thought and action of the novel by means of it. The thought of Pride and Prejudice may be uncovered by interpreting it in accordance with any of a variety of philosophies, but it is peculiarly appropriate, and enlightening, to recognize its Platonizing echoes since the dialogues of Plato have gone through a history of interpretation that has evolved distinctions which are useful in interpreting Pride and Prejudice. Many interpreters of Plato's dialogues, in antiquity and later, argue that they are not statements of thoughts or opinions but are simply exhibitions of how philosophers talk; others, beginning with the Old Academy, interpret them as the expression of the truth not of the doctrines of one philosopher, but of all philosophers; some, beginning with the skepticism of the Middle or New Academy, hold that the method of Socrates was to demonstrate that all doctrines are false and therefore, by the same token, true; and some, following the Neoplatonists, sought in them the adumbration of a truth transcending human thought and expression. Neoplatonic truths are suited to tragedy and epic; skeptical Academic opinions provide a place and expectation proper to comedy. All Platonisms share hierarchical structures of being, thought, and aspiration. Plato himself describes three ladders of being, knowledge, and love in the Republic and the Symposium. The New Academic skepticism chooses a low place on those ladders, which is excellently named in the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice: knowledge is based on self-evident truths, opinion can rise no higher than "a truth universally accepted," "possession of a good fortune" is a dubious degradation of vision of the ideal God to possession of material goods, and "want of a wife" is a transformation of charity or agape or love of the good in itself to concupiscence or eros or matrimony. Richard McKeon is the editor of The Basic Works of Aristotle and coeditor of Peter Abailard, Sic et Non: A Critical Edition. He delivered an earlier version of this paper at the 1977 Modern Language Association's session of the Division on Philosophical Approaches to Literature. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Arts of Invention and Arts of Memory: Creation and Criticism" and "Canonic Books and Prohibited Books: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Religion and Culture". (shrink)

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice brings together leading researchers from Canada, the United States, and Europe in an interdisciplinary collection of essays to chart the future of critical inquiry in gender and comedy studies.

Introduction: Laughter as an expression of human nature in the Middle Ages and the early modern period: literary, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological reflections -- Judith Hagen. Laughter in Procopius's wars -- Livnat Holtzman. "Does God really laugh?": appropriate and inappropriate descriptions of God in Islamic traditionalist theology -- Daniel F. Pigg. Laughter in Beowulf: ambiguity, ambivalence, and group identity formation -- Mark Burde. The parodia sacra problem and medieval comic studies -- Olga V. Trokhimenko. Women's laughter and gender politics (...) in medieval conduct discourse -- Madelon Köhler-Busch. Pushing decorum: uneasy laughter in Heinrich von Dem Türlîn's Diu crône -- Connie L. Scarborough. Laughter and the comic in a religious text -- John Sewell. The son rebelled and so the father made man alone: ridicule and boundary maintenance in The Nizzahon vetus -- Birgit Wiedl. Laughing at the beast: the judensau: anti-Jewish propaganda and humor from the Middle Ages to the early modern period -- Fabian Alfie. Yes . . . but was it funny? Cecco Angiolieri, Rustico Filippi and Giovanni Boccaccio -- Nicolino Applauso. Curses and laughter in medieval Italian comic poetry -- Feargal Béarra. Tromdhámh guaire: a context for laughter and audience in early modern Ireland -- Jean E. Jost. Humorous transgression in the non-conformist fabliaux: a Bakhtinian analysis of three comic tales -- Gretchen Mieszkowski. Chaucerian comedy: Troilus and Criseyde -- Sarah Gordon. Laughing and eating in the fabliaux -- Christine Bousquet-Labouérie. Laughter and medieval stalls -- Scott L. Taylor. Esoteric humor and the incommensurability of laughter -- Jean N. Goodrich. The function of laughter in The second shepherds' play -- Albrecht Classen. Laughing in late-medieval verse and prose narratives -- Rosa Alvarez perez. The workings of desire: Panurge and the dogs -- Elizabeth Chesney Zegura. Laughing out loud in the Heptaméron: a reassessment of Marguerite de Navarre's ambivalent humor -- Lia B. Ross. You had to be there: the elusive humor of the Sottie -- Kyle Diroberto. Sacred parody in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of wit -- Martha Moffitt Peacock. The comedy of the shrew: theorizing humor in early modern Netherlandish art -- Jessica Tvordi. The comic personas of Milton's Prolusion VI: negotiating masculine identity through self-directed humor -- John Alexander. Ridentum dicere verum (using laughter to speak the truth): laughter and the language of the early modern clown "pickelhering" in German literature of the late seventeenth century (1675-1700) -- Thomas Willard. Andreae's ludibrium: Menippean satire in The chymische hochzeit -- Diane Rudall. The comic power of illusion-allusion -- Allison P. Coudert. Laughing at credulity and superstition in the long eighteenth century. (shrink)

Why, then, do we huddle in the dark around the campfires of our flickering narratives? There are obviously many different reasons for doing so. Yet, having heard various récits—whether "stories" or "accounts"—during the narrative conference, I am more inclined than ever to see self-assertive entertainment and self-transcending commitment as two kinds of ultimate motivation for our countless narratives. Stories and histories and other narrative or descriptive accounts help us to escape boredom and indifference—ours as well as that of other people. (...) Those nearly vacant states of mind at the zero degree of entertainment and commitment bring us frightfully close to the experience of nonexistence. Hence our desire to replace boredom by thrilling or gratifying entertainment and to replace indifference by the social or cosmic commitment either to change the world or to change ourselves. In a world of unmixed colors and pure literary genres, tragedy, comedy, satire, and romance might answer distinct needs for thrill, gratification, indignation, and admiration. But, as Roy Schafer and Victor Turner have reminded us, the private and social dramas underlying psychoanalytical and anthropological accounts are even less pure than most works of literature. Couldn't we conclude that life's internal and external dramas stem from a compound desire for self-assertion and self-transcendence—a desire which, in the realm of literary entertainment and commitment, motivates the emergence and appreciation of tragicomedy? Paul Hernadi teaches English and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classification and the editor of What is Literature? and What is Criticism? His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Literary Theory: A Compass for Critics," appeared in the Winter 1976 issue. (shrink)

The paper discusses the Anglo-American philosophy of law of the 20th century, more specifically the philosophy of law of Ronald Myles Dworkin and his criticism of the legal positivism of Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart. The author presents the history of the criticism of legal positivism in Ronald Dworkin’s philosophy of law and distinguishes historical stages. The subject of the study is the critique of legal positivism but not the Hart-Dworkin debate itself, well known in Western philosophy of law. The (...) reason is that the discussion was conducted between Dworkin and Hart’s supporters but not between Dworkin and Hart by himself. The latter responded to the criticism only after twenty seven years. The article explains why Dworkin chose for his criticism Herbert Hart’s version of legal positivism. This is due to the fact that Dworkin highly appreciated Hart’s positivist theory of law and characterized it as the “most clear.” The article presents the methodological foundations of criticism of Hart’s legal positivism in Dworkin’s philosophy of law. It reveals a methodological divergence between the two legal theories, which directly affects the understanding of the concept of law and its content. Therefore, we can assume that the legal theories of Hart and Dworkin are two competing models of law: Dworkin’s model considers law as a set of rules and principles and Hart’s model acknowledges only rules and court decisions as a source of law. The article also presents the key principles of positivism criticized by Dworkin. These principles, firstly, interpret law as a set of legal rules determined through a special legal criterion, secondly, provide the judge with an opportunity to make a decision “at his own discretion” in a situation not regulated by law, and, thirdly, recognize only legal rights and obligations enshrined in legal regulations. It is important to note that in this article the author describes criticism as an independent phenomenon of legal philosophy with a particular focus on the history and foundations of this phenomenon. (shrink)

This article shows how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century arguments about historical evidence and elite humanist traditions of textual criticism and historical method evolved into the secular political theory of the eighteenth century. It shows how the French crown sponsored scholars who worked on empirical, source-based history as a tool for political prudence, but as this critical historical methodology became public, the crown realized it could be used against its interests, as in the case of the Affaire de Thou. In the (...) mid-seventeenth century, Colbert sought to suppress the old royal humanist historical tradition; however a number of political critics such as Amelot de La Houssaye and Pierre Bayle worked to publicize the tools of historical, political criticism, setting the stage for Enlightenment critics of absolutism such as Durey de Meinières and ultimately Montesquieu and Gibbon. (shrink)

According to Hegel, art in its ‘supreme task’ is engaged in ‘bringing to our minds and expressing the Divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit’. Raymond Geuss, in a highly illuminating paper, has connected Hegel’s conception of art’s supreme task with the project of theodicy. In this paper I explore Hegel’s aesthetics of comedy through this theodicy-based framework Geuss has proposed, and I consider what light this framework can shed on comedy (...) and, reciprocally, what light comedy can shed on it. In particular, invocation of a theodicy can give the impression of art as a kind of defense of the status quo. Yet Hegel’s brief, but pivotal remarks on comedy complicate this picture in an interesting way. The best comedy does reassure us about the basic rationality and goodness of the world. Yet Aristophanic comedy—the sort Hegel lauds as the best and the most truly comic—has a strongly social-critical streak that Hegel notes with great admiration. Hegel’s theory of comedy says as much about him as it does about the genre. But if we are attentive to Hegel’s remarks on comedy, they will offer us a point of resistance against overly Panglossian interpretations of the Hegelian supreme task of art and will help us better understand in what way active social criticism through art is compatible with that higher calling. (shrink)

These essays treat a heterogeneous group of texts: alongside On the Sublime and How the young man should listen to poetry are an Attic comedy, a satyr play, a Plutarchan fragment, and the epitome of a lost work by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. It is a mixed bag, which is the point. Hunter offers "moments" in the history of criticism because we lack evidence to write a linear narrative . Given the lacunose record, he suggests the best way forward (...) is to lower the barrier separating "literary" from "critical" texts and to look for general patterns of similarity. Thereby he hopes to explain antiquity's predominantly "utilitarian" approach to literature, its "concern with what literature was for" . Although individual chapters show Hunter's characteristic inventiveness and wide range of reference, this reviewer found many of his claims overbroad. Indeed, the general approach recommended here seems less likely to enrich "our understanding of the ways in which the ancients sought to explain and use creative art" than to impede progress toward that worthy goal. (shrink)

Comedy is sacred—it's woven through the Bible. James Cary has rare first-hand experience of writing comedy for the BBC—and has a degree in theology. He and former actor and comedian, Barry Cooper (co-writer of Christianity Explored) do a weekly podcast called Cooper and Cary Have Words. This is an intelligent, funny, informative book for anyone who likes comedy.

An unprecedented reading of Hegel’s Logic that sets this difficult work in a dialogue with literary texts. In this book, Angelica Nuzzo proposes a reading of Hegel’s Logic as “logic of transformation” and “logic of action,” and supports this thesis by looking to works of literature and history as exemplary of Hegel’s argument and method. By examining Melville’s Billy Budd, Molière’s Tartuffe, Beckett’s Endgame, Elizabeth Bishop’s and Giacomo Leopardi’s late poetry along with Thucydides’ History in this way, Nuzzo (...) finds an unprecedented and productive way to render Hegel’s Logic alive and engaging. She argues that Melville’s Billy Budd is the most successful embodiment of the abstract movement of thinking presented in Hegel’s Logic, connecting Billy Budd’s stutter to the puzzlingly inarticulate beginning of Hegel’s Logic, “Being, pure Being,” identical with “Nothing,” and argues that the Logic serves as an especially appropriate tool for understanding the sudden violent action that strikes Claggart dead. Through these and other readings, Nuzzo finds a fresh way to address interpretive issues that have remained unresolved for almost two centuries in Hegel scholarship, and also presents well-known works of literature in an entirely new light. This account of Hegel’s Logic is framed by the need for an interpretive tool able to orient our understanding of the contemporary world as mired in an unprecedented global crisis. How can the story of our historical present—the tragedy or the comedy we all play parts in—be told? What is the inner logic of our changing world? “Angelica Nuzzo presents an original interpretation of Hegel’s Logic by representing it as a logic of action. This novel approach is supported by insightful readings of the literary texts she covers in the book.” — Andrew Cutrofello, author of All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity. (shrink)

Criticism of Shakespeare's comedies has shifted from stressing their light-hearted and festive qualities to giving a stronger sense of their dark aspects and their social resonances. This volume introduces the key critical debates under five headings: genre, history and politics, gender and sexuality, language and performance.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Task of Criticism: Essays on Philosophy, History, and Community, and: The Active Life: Miller's Metaphysics of DemocracyShannon KincaidJoseph P. Fell, Vincent Colapietro, and Michael J. McGandy, editors The Task of Criticism: Essays on Philosophy, History, and CommunityNew York: W. W. Norton, 2005. 366 pp.Michael J. McGandy The Active Life: Miller's Metaphysics of Democracy Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 231 pp.I must admit (...) that my first encounter with the philosophy of John William Miller was not a pretty one. I first read of him in these pages a decade or so ago, and even though I was thinking a lot about pragmatism and democratic theory, and shared many of his interests, I didn't much like his philosophy. While I liked his style, the vocabulary seemed awkward. His finite idealism confused me. I had problems with his ontology, and his tendency towards historicism seemed odd. I even wrote an essay critical of The Midworld (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), though I never made an aggressive effort to publish it. [End Page 289]This is a good thing, because I would have regretted publishing that essay. I say this because both Michael J. McGandy's The Active Life: Miller's Metaphysics of Democracy, and the new edited collection of Miller's writings entitled The Task of Criticism, do an excellent job of revealing the contemporary significance of Miller's work. Collectively, they have convinced this skeptic that the midworld and its ontology of functioning objects are an important contribution to contemporary American philosophy.The Task of Criticism faces several challenges. First, George P. Brockway supervised the publication of five volumes of Miller's collected works, and Fell himself edited a 1990 volume on Miller's philosophy (The Philosophy of John William Miller, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press), followed by Stephen Tyman's Decrying the Ideal (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993). Colapietro published Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom: John William Miller and the Crises of Modernity (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press) in 2003. Do we really need another volume? Second, Miller's brand of idealism is not very fashionable these days. Is there any hope that pragmatic idealism can inform contemporary social theory, and make a contribution to the very real and concrete problems faced by modern democratic institutions?I believe that the answer to both of these questions is "yes." Recognizing the importance of previous volumes devoted to Miller's philosophy, the editors present The Task of Criticism as the first comprehensive introduction to Miller's philosophy, and it attempts to cut a middle ground between a complete collection of essays and a "best of" anthology. The editors want to provide a framework for understanding Miller's philosophy, and in this attempt they succeed admirably.Why? Because the editors have provided a structure for Miller's thought that was lacking in earlier collections, and by focusing on the issues of philosophical method, historiography, and community, they have provided a framework for understanding Miller's philosophy. In so doing, they have also firmly established the continuing relevance of Miller's work. The recent revival of pragmatic idealism (as evidenced by a recent surge in publications on idealists like Royce and Hocking) is an important development in contemporary American philosophy, and I think Miller deserves a significant role in this movement.One of the things I like about this collection is its presentation as a work of three generations of Miller's students, all indebted to the work of Brockway, and all dedicated to the task of demonstrating the fundamental importance of Miller's work. The text itself not only includes a variety of Miller's writing on a wide range of topics, but also a very effective introduction to Miller's philosophy, short introductory passages for each essay, and a comprehensive index, as well as a bibliography of works by and about Miller. This is, in short, the first textbook of Miller's philosophy, and it does a fine job of capturing the breadth and depth of his philosophy.The scope of Miller's philosophical interests is made even more remarkable by the fact that Miller himself showed little interest... (shrink)

This book offers timely contributions to the process of conceptualizing a Latin American specificity and its forms of integration in larger contexts, both on the level of thought and the level of political and social praxis. To produce a critical reading of philosophy while also developing a philosophy of criticism is essential in cultures that continue to struggle for the decolonization of both thought and life. This book allows Anglophone readers access to the world of ideas of some of the (...) most relevant Latin American thinkers of our age. Through a comprehensive discussion of the works and contexts of thinkers such as of José Carlos Mariátegui, Enrique Dussel, Bolívar Echeverría, and Roger Bartra to Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Peter Sloterdijk, Mabel Moraña demonstrates that Latin American thought has not only been inseparable from Western philosophy but also from the determinants of its history and social struggles. By doing so, Mabel Moraña provides an extensive perspective on the connections between historical moments, social structures, and discursive practices. With its interdisciplinary focus, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students in Latin American studies, comparative literature, world literature, and philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Metaphysics of Dante’s ComedyGiuliana CarugatiChristian Moevs. The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy. American Academy of Religion, Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion Series. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xii + 308. Cloth, $49.95Having for a long time insisted on a newly "mystical," as well as a radically contemporary, reading of Dante's Commedia, this reviewer cannot but deeply appreciate Moev's intelligent and well-written book, (...) which addresses the question of the "truth" of the poem, and solves it by pointing in the direction of "self-knowledge, the self-experience of what is" (9). In other words, the poem represents "how... the human soul or intelligence comes to experience itself as divine, all-encompassing, and (one with) the ultimate principle of all being" (58). At a time when reading the Commedia as a "mystical" project is considered by much of Dante criticism as, at best, harmlessly eccentric, this book, in its meticulous use of metaphysical categories, might persuade skeptical medievalists that a lot can be gained by exploring both classic literary texts, and perhaps the entire philosophical tradition, from this perspective.To illustrate how the immensely complex text of the Commedia is organized around the ultimate goal of "divine" self-knowledge, Moevs, relying on a tradition that has its roots in classical antiquity, turns to the cosmological make-up of the poet's universe. The Empyrean, which is the last stop of pilgrim Dante, is the Christian addition to the nine Aristotelian-Ptolemaic concentric spheres of which the universe is comprised, and in the Commedia it represents an "absolutely immaterial and uncreated" quid, the ground of being, the divine mind itself (21). Moevs concentrates on the so-called Primo Mobile, or the ninth of the concentric spheres of the universe, seeing it as the intermediary between the contingent and the absolute, between dispersion and unity: "The Primo Mobile embodies an apparent metaphysical paradox: it is self-sufficient divine awareness and power projected into pure motion and desire, and material reality become featureless extension... and exalted, living potentiality" (38).To see this sphere as one of the avatars of the Platonic world's soul is certainly a wonderful acquisition, although at times Moevs' wording suggests an uneasy shifting of registers from the metaphorical/textual to the "metaphysical": "without the nexus or bridge of the Primo Mobile, there could be no "transhumanizing" (trasumanar), no Incarnation, no revelation, no redemption, no journey... no translation of being into contingent or finite experience, and hence no space-time and no Comedy" (8). Is this simply a general reflection on the ultimate necessity of a divine world? Or does this mean that the peculiar construct that pre-exists the text of the Commedia is what makes the poem possible? Or that 'Primo Mobile' is the poet's own chosen metaphor for the balancing of the finite into the infinite? Is this particular notion centrally important in the poetics of the Commedia? After all, Dante has been trying to define 'deification' all along, from the Vita nuova to the great canzoni to the Convivio. There is one much more visible figure which is invested with "translation [End Page 474] of being into contingent or finite experience," or with significance as "intermediary": the word 'trasumanar' appears in Paradiso 1, where the passing from human to divine is empowered by Beatrice.In his definition of 'experience of the divine,' Moevs insists on distinguishing "pagan" from "Christian" Neoplatonism. A generic Neoplatonic One, described as "above being or existence in any sense, and therefore above the divine mind," is thus opposed to a "Christian thought, both Augustinian and Aristotelian," which "tends to identify the divine mind with pure being" (33). One could perhaps observe that the "above" of, say, Plotinus, can only be seen as pointing to the irreducibility of language to no-thing; as for Christian thought, one would have to forget the gospel of John, and its Word become flesh.From the same "christianizing" perspective, the book insists, a lot more than the Commedia itself, on the sacrificial aspect of salvation: "love is the universal form of the 'knot' that writes and binds the scattered pages of... (shrink)