Reality and Culture

Essays on the Philosophy of Bernard Harrison
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-90-420-3819-6
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 270, 290 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 476 g

Reihe: Value Inquiry Book Series / Interpretation and Translation

More than being a volume about the philosophy of Bernard Harrison, this volume is about how Harrison conceptualizes the creation of the human world. One might be tempted to classify Harrison as a major voice in many diverse discussions—philosophy of literature, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, color studies, epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, philosophy of culture, Wittgenstein, antisemitism, and more—without recognizing a unifying strand that ties them together. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Harrison contests and destabilizes a persistent and misleading alignment of culture with subjectivity—whether found in unexamined distinctions between nature and culture or appearance and reality. His general aim has been to undermine the belief that human culture deals in smoke and mirrors, and that the only realities are those of extra-human nature. He emphasizes the paraxial foundation of meaning, and argues that the creative inventions of language and culture are as real as any extra-linguistic reality. While granting the existence of extra-human reality, he holds it to be, in itself, conceptually unorganised, but nevertheless cognitively accessible by way of sense-perception and physical manipulation.
This volume offers new critical essays that examine Harrison’s corpus, written by distinguished voices in philosophy and literary studies. It bridges many of the abysses of conflicting opinion opened by the culture wars of the past half-century. Importantly, it includes an opening essay by Harrison that elucidates the unifying strand running through his variegated philosophical writings, and concludes with a chapter in which he replies to and reflects on the other critical essays herein.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Hanna, Patricia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 20./21. Jahrhundert

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Michael Krausz: Editorial Foreword
Patricia Hanna and Dorothy Harrison: Foreword
Preface
Bernard Harrison: Prologue: Reality and Culture
Part One: Literature and Reality
John Gibson: What Do Humanists Want?
Murray Baumgarten: Reading Dickens: Pleasure and the Play of Bernard Harrison’s “Social Practices”
Richard Eldridge: Harrison, Wittgenstein, Donne, and the Powers of Literary Art
Part Two: The Constitution of the Moral Life
Leona Toker: Bernard Harrison on the English Novel
Alan Tapper: From Meaning to Morality in Kovesi and Harrison
Edward Alexander: Paying a Debt: Bernard Harrison versus the Old-New Antisemitism
Part Three: Language and Practice
Danièl Moyal-Sharrock: Bernard Harrison, Literature, and the Stream of Life
Patricia Hanna: Language without Meaning: The Limits of Biolinguistics
Michael Krausz: Bernard Harrison’s “World”
Dennis Patterson: Meaning, Truth, and Practices: A Conundrum
Michael Morris: Language, Fiction, and the Later Wittgenstein
Bernard Harrison: Replies and Reflections
Works Cited
Appendix: Selected Publications of Bernard Harrison
About the Authors
Name Index
Subject Index