The Nonsense of Kant and Lewis Carroll

The Nonsense of Kant and Lewis Carroll
Author: Ben-Ami Scharfstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2014-04-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 022610589X

What if Immanuel Kant floated down from his transcendental heights, straight through Alice’s rabbit hole, and into the fabulous world of Lewis Carroll? For Ben-Ami Scharfstein this is a wonderfully instructive scenario and the perfect way to begin this wide-ranging collection of decades of startlingly synthesized thought. Combining a deep knowledge of psychology, cultural anthropology, art history, and the history of religions—not to mention philosophy—he demonstrates again and again the unpredictability of writing and thought and how they can teach us about our experiences. Scharfstein begins with essays on the nature of philosophy itself, moving from an autobiographical account of the trials of being a comparativist to philosophy’s function in the outside world to the fear of death in Kant and Hume. From there he explores an impressive array of art: from China and Japan to India and the West; from an essay on sadistic and masochistic body art to one on the epistemology of the deaf and the blind. He then returns to philosophy, writing on Machiavelli and political ruthlessness, then on the ineffable, and closes with a review of Walter Kaufmann’s multivolume look at the essence of humanity, Discovering the Mind. Altogether, these essays are a testament to adventurous thought, the kind that leaps to the furthest reaches of the possible.

Necessary Nonsense

Necessary Nonsense
Author: Irving Massey
Publisher: Cognitive Approaches to Cultur
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2018
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780814213797

Explores the cognitive possibilities of nonsense, literary and philosophical, from Kant to Carroll, from examinations of Asperger's to the waking state.

Philosophy of Nonsense

Philosophy of Nonsense
Author: Jean-Jacques Lecercle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2012-11-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134902409

'Jean-Jacques Lecercle's remarkable Philosophy of Nonsense offers a sustained and important account of an area that is usually hastily dismissed. Using the resources of contemporary philosophy - notably Deleuze and Lyotard - he manages to bring out the importance of nonsense' - Andrew Benjamin, University of Warwick Why are we, and in particular why are philosophers and linguists, so fascinated with nonsense? Why do Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear appear in so many otherwise dull and dry academic books? This amusing, yet rigorous new book by Jean-Jacques Lecercle shows how the genre of nonsense was constructed and why it has proved so enduring and enlightening for linguistics and philosophy.

Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense

Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense
Author: Lewis Carroll
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2012-09-06
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0141956690

The first collected and annotated edition of Carroll's brilliant, witty poems, edited by Gillian Beer. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...' wrote Lewis Carroll in his wonderfully playful poem of nonsense verse, 'Jabberwocky'. This new edition collects together the marvellous range of Carroll's poetry, including nonsense verse, parodies, burlesques, and more. Alongside the title piece are such enduringly wonderful pieces as 'The Walrus and the Carpenter', 'The Mock Turtle's Song', 'Father William' and many more. This edition also includes notes, a chronology and an introduction by Gillian Beer that discusses Carroll's love of puzzles and wordplay and the relationship of his poetry with the Alice books 'Opening at random Gillian Beer's new edition of Lewis Carroll's poems, Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense, guarantees a pleasurable experience - not all of it nonsensical' - Times Literary Supplement Lewis Carroll was the pen-name of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Born in 1832, he was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was appointed lecturer in mathematics in 1855, and where he spent the rest of his life. In 1861 he took deacon's orders, but shyness and a stammer prevented him from seeking the priesthood. His most famous works, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872), were originally written for Alice Liddell, the daughter of the Dean of his college. Charles Dodgson died of bronchitis in 1898. Gillian Beer is King Edward VII Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Cambridge and past President of Clare Hall College. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. Among her works are Darwin's Plots (1983; third edition, 2009), George Eliot (1986), Arguing with the Past: Essays in Narrative from Woolf to Sidney (1989), Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter (1996) and Virginia Woolf: The Common Ground (1996).

In Praise of Nonsense

In Praise of Nonsense
Author: Winfried Menninghaus
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1999-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780804729529

Ludwig Tieck's 1797 rewriting of Charles Perrault's famous Bluebeard tale (1697) explicitly claims to be an "arabesque" book "without any sense and coherence." The author's close reading of this capricious narrative, based on Kant's theory of what it means to produce nonsense, reveals a specifically Romantic type of nonsense.

A Comparative History of World Philosophy

A Comparative History of World Philosophy
Author: Ben-Ami Scharfstein
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 710
Release: 1998-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791436837

Breaks through the cultural barriers between Western, Indian, and Chinese philosophy and demonstrates that despite considerable differences between these three great philosophical traditions, there are fundamental resemblances in their abstract principles.

Logique Du Sens

Logique Du Sens
Author: Gilles Deleuze
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1990
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780231059831

Considered one of the most important works of one of France's foremost philosophers, and long-awaited in English, "The Logic Of Sense" is an essay in literary and psychoanalytic theory, and philosophy, and helps to illuminate such works as "Anti-Oedipus".

A Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

A Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Author: Matthew C. Altman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2018-05-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0429982364

Immanuel Kant's groundbreaking Critique of Pure Reason inaugurated a new way of understanding the world that continues to impact philosophy to the present day. With clear explanations and numerous examples, A Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason takes students step by step through the book in a way that captures their interest without sacrificing depth or intellectual rigor. Although it is informed by recent Anglo-American scholarship, the Companion focuses on Kant's own arguments rather than secondary texts and scholarly debates that may otherwise distract from what Kant himself is attempting. The Companion first places the Critique in its historical and philosophical context before addressing the three main parts of the book in order: the Transcendental Aesthetic, the Transcendental Analytic, and the Transcendental Dialectic. The Companion also briefly explains how Kant continues his investigation into God, freedom, and immortality in the Critique of Practical Reason, and it concludes with an assessment of Kant's importance in the history of modern philosophy. Key features include a glossary of technical terms, with succinct definitions and cross-references, as well as an annotated bibliography of the most important English-language secondary sources on Kant's theoretical philosophy.

Poetics and Ethics of Anthropomorphism

Poetics and Ethics of Anthropomorphism
Author: Christopher Kelen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2021-10-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000463613

Poetics and Ethics of Anthropomorphism: Children, Animals, and Poetry investigates a kind of poetry written mainly by adults for children. Many genres, including the picture book, are considered in asking for what purposes ‘animal poetry’ is composed and what function it serves. Critically contextualising anthropomorphism in traditional and contemporary poetic and theoretical discourses, these pages explore the representation of animals through anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism, and through affective responses to other-than-human others. Zoomorphism – the routine flipside of anthropomorphism – is crucially involved in the critical unmasking of the taken-for-granted textual strategies dealt with here. With a focus on the ethics entailed in poetic relations between children and animals, and between humans and nonhumans, this book asks important questions about the Anthropocene future and the role in it of literature intended for children. Poetics and Ethics of Anthropomorphism: Children, Animals, and Poetry is a vital resource for students and for scholars in children’s literature.

Alice in Space

Alice in Space
Author: Gillian Beer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2018-01-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 022656469X

An examination of Carroll's books about Alice explores the contextual knowledge of the time period in which it was written, addressing such topics as time, games, mathematics, and taxonomies.