DOCSLIB.ORG

Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More Information

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More Information Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01960-7 - Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More information BECKETT AND ANIMALS Th e animals that appear in Samuel Beckett’s work are diverse and unpredictable. Th ey serve as victim and persecutor, companion and adversary, disconcerting observers and objects oblivious to the human gaze. Bringing together an international array of Beckett specialists, this is the fi rst full-length study to explore the signif- icance of the animals that populate Beckett’s prose, drama and poetry. Essays theorize a broad spectrum of animal manifestations whilst focussing on the roles that distinct animal forms play within Beckett’s work, including horses, sheep, cats, dogs, bees, insects and others. Contributors situate close readings within a larger literary and cultural context, drawing on thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Deleuze , Foucault and Agamben, and on authors such as Flaubert , Kafka and Coetzee . Th e result is an incisive and provocative collec- tion that traverses disciplinary boundaries, revealing how Beckett’s creatures challenge conventional notions of species identity and, ultimately, what it means to be human. ma r y b r y d e n is professor of French Literature at the University of Reading and co-director of the Beckett International Foundation. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01960-7 - Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01960-7 - Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More information BECKETT AND ANIMALS edited by M A R Y B R Y D E N U n i v e r s i t y o f R e a d i n g © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01960-7 - Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More information c a m b r i d g e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S ã o Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org /9781107019607 © Cambridge University Press 2013 Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed in the United States of America A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Beckett and animals / [edited by] Mary Bryden. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-107-01960-7 (hardback) 1. Beckett, Samuel, 1906–1989 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Animals in literature. I. Bryden, Mary, 1953– editor of compilation. pr6003.e282z5688 2013 848′.91409–dc23 2012044991 isbn 978-1-107-01960-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01960-7 - Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More information C o n t e n t s N o t e s o n C o n t r i b u t o r s p a g e vii A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s xiii List of Abbreviations xv I n t r o d u c t i o n 1 Mary Bryden p a r t i : a n i m a l i t y 1 Forms of Weakness: Animalisation in Kafka and Beckett 13 Shane Weller 2 B e c k e t t , C o e t z e e a n d A n i m a l s 2 7 Yoshiki Tajiri 3 Th e Beckettian Bestiary 40 Mary Bryden 4 ‘Quite Exceptionally Anthropoid’: Species Anxiety and Metamorphosis in Beckett’s Humans and Other Animals 59 David Wheatley 5 ‘ An Animal Inside’: Beckett/Leibniz’s Stone, Animal, Human and the Unborn 71 Naoya Mori 6 Pavlov’s Dogs and Other Animals in Samuel Beckett 82 Ulrika Maude 7 Little Animals in the Brain: Beckett’s ‘porteurs de la m é moire’ 94 Yoshiyuki Inoue v © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01960-7 - Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More information vi Contents part ii: the specificity of animals 8 ‘ Th ink, Pig!’: Beckett’s Animal Philosophies 109 Jean-Michel Rabat é 9 B e c k e t t ’ s ‘ N e c e s s a r y ’ C a t [ s ] 1 2 6 Linda Ben-Zvi 1 0 M a k i n g F l i e s M e a n S o m e t h i n g 1 3 9 Steven Connor 1 1 ‘ H o o v e s ! ’ : Th e Equine Presence in Beckett 153 Joseph Anderton 1 2 Th e Dancing Bees in Samuel Beckett’s Molloy : Th e Rapture of Unknowing 165 Angela Moorjani 1 3 ‘ D e s p i s e d f o r Th eir Obviousness’: Samuel Beckett’s Dogs 177 Chris Ackerley 1 4 B e c k e t t a n d S h e e p 1 8 8 Julie Campbell 15 ‘Eyes in Each Other’s Eyes’: Beckett, Kleist and the F e n c i n g B e a r 2 0 3 Maximilian de Gaynesford 1 6 W o r d s w i t h o u t A c t s : B e c k e t t ’ s P a r r o t s 2 1 2 B r i g i t t e L e J u e z I n d e x 225 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01960-7 - Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More information C o n t r i b u t o r s c h r i s a c k e r l e y i s p r o f e s s o r a n d p a s t h e a d o f d e p a r t m e n t a t t h e University of Otago, New Zealand. His speciality is annotation, and his publications include book-length annotations of Beckett’s Watt and Murphy (reprinted 2010 by Edinburgh University Press) and, with S. E. Gontarski, the Grove Press and Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett . He has edited Watt for Faber (2009), and is currently writing a book on Beckett and Science and annotating three works (including a newly discovered novel) by Malcolm Lowry. j o s e p h a n d e r t o n i s s t u d y i n g t o w a r d s a P h D a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f Nottingham. His areas of research specialism include the novels of Samuel Beckett, the history of Beckett criticism and the relationship between Beckett and critical theory. linda ben-z v i , professor emerita in English and Th eatre Studies from Colorado State University and Tel Aviv University, was twice elected president of the International Samuel Beckett Society, and for fi f- teen years has served as convener of the Beckett Working Group of the International Federation of Th eatre Research. Amongst her eleven authored and edited books are Samuel Beckett , Women in Beckett , Drawing on Beckett and Beckett at 100: Revolving It All, co-edited with Angela Moorjani. Her biography Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times won the Jury Prize of the American Library Association. m a ry bry den is professor of French and co-director of the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading. She is a past president of the International Samuel Beckett Society and currently president of the Association of University Professors and Heads of French. She has published extensively on Samuel Beckett and Gilles Deleuze, and her authored and edited books include Women in Samuel Beckett’s Prose and Drama , Samuel Beckett and the Idea of God , vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01960-7 - Beckett and Animals Edited by Mary Bryden Frontmatter More information viii Contributors Samuel Beckett and Music , Gilles Deleuze and Religion , Gilles Deleuze: Travels in Literature , and Beckett’s Proust/Deleuze’s Proust (co-edited with Margaret Topping). She is currently preparing a monograph on T. E. Lawrence. j u l i e c a m p b e l l i s l e c t u r e r i n L i t e r a t u r e a n d D r a m a a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y of Southampton, UK. She was co-convenor of the Samuel Beckett Working Group, which met at the IFTR conference in Osaka, Japan, 2011, and convenor of the Working Group meeting in Southampton, 2012.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Attuning Poetry and Philosophy
    The old quarrel Article Accepted Version De Gaynesford, M. (2020) The old quarrel. Forum For Philosophy. Available at http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/93065/ It is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from the work. See Guidance on citing . Published version at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/the-old-quarrel/ All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law. Copyright and IPR is retained by the creators or other copyright holders. Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the End User Agreement . www.reading.ac.uk/centaur CentAUR Central Archive at the University of Reading Reading’s research outputs online ATTUNING POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY Maximilian de Gaynesford on the old quarrel between poetry and philosophy Analytic philosophers may find nothing untoward about the following snippet of autobiography: I stopped writing in the fashion of a poet who puts down what sounds good to him and who needn’t defend his lines (either they resonate with a reader or they don’t). Instead, I tried to ask myself, when writing: precisely what does this sentence contribute to the developing exposition or argument, and is it true? You become analytical when you practise that sort of (frequently painful) self-criticism. The author captures what drew many of us towards this way of doing philosophy, what keeps us at it. Quote this to a wider audience however, and you may find people react with a mixture of recognition and horror. Recognition, because the author captures exactly what keeps them away from analytic philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Literary Studies and the Philosophy of Literature Andrea Selleri • Philip Gaydon Editors Literary Studies and the Philosophy of Literature
    Literary Studies and the Philosophy of Literature Andrea Selleri • Philip Gaydon Editors Literary Studies and the Philosophy of Literature New Interdisciplinary Directions Editors Andrea Selleri Philip Gaydon Department of English and Department of Philosophy Comparative Literature University of Warwick University of Warwick Coventry, United Kingdom Coventry, UK ISBN 978-3-319-33146-1 ISBN 978-3-319-33147-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33147-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958287 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
    [Show full text]
  • Understanding Meaning and World
    Understanding Meaning and World Understanding Meaning and World: A Relook on Semantic Externalism By Sanjit Chakraborty Understanding Meaning and World: A Relook on Semantic Externalism By Sanjit Chakraborty This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Sanjit Chakraborty All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9103-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9103-5 To my Gurudev Hilary Putnam, Who taught me how to love philosophy a little more... Without whom not! CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One ................................................................................................. 7 The Internalism-Externalism Debate in Contemporary Philosophy of Language and Mind Introduction (1.1) Contemporary Debate: Internalism Verses Externalism (1.2) Descriptivism of Frege and Russell (1.3) Putnam’s and Kripke’s Theses on Reference (1.4) Putnam on Externalism Concluding Remarks Chapter Two .............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • A Plea for Perlocutions
    CONVERSATIONS 4 A Plea for Perlocutions DAVID KAUFMANN After staging the shipwreck of the constative-performative distinction halfway through How To Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin goes on famously to “make a fresh start on the problem.”1 He relinquishes the original opposition between making statements and doing things and then introduces a ternary account of speech acts. He distinguishes between locutionary acts (in which we produce sounds with “a certain sense and a cer- tain reference”[95]), illocutionary acts (in which we perform acts such as “asking or answering a question, giving some information… announcing a verdict...and the nume- rous like” [98-99]), and perlocutionary acts (in which we “produce consequential ef- fects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of an audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons”[101]). For all the philosophical ink that has been spilled on Austin, not much has been devoted to perlocutions. Locutions and illocutions get almost all the action. Stanley Cavell has been one of the few philosophers to emphasize the impor- tance of the perlocutionary for speech act theory. In his forward to the second edition of Shoshana Felman’s The Scandal of the Speaking Body and in his essay “Performa- tive and Passionate Utterances,” Cavell assumes, as Stephen Mulhall puts it, that Aus- tin believes that “the perlocutionary effect of any utterance [is] extrinsic to its sense and force” and thus that the perlocutionary can be opposed to the illocutionary act.2 Because Austin maintains that the illocutionary is conventional and the perlocutio- nary is not (121), Cavell argues that illocutions come down on the side of the Law, while perlocutions give voice to Desire.
    [Show full text]
  • Wittgenstein's Anti-Scientistic Worldview
    Final draft of article published in Jonathan Beale and Ian James Kidd (eds.), Wittgenstein and Scientism (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 59-80 (www.routledge.com/Wittgenstein-and-Scientism/Beale- Kidd/p/book/9781138829398) Wittgenstein’s Anti-scientistic Worldview Jonathan Beale A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. – Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. … The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?) (PI §122) This chapter outlines ways in which Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism is manifest in his later conception of philosophy and the negative attitude he held toward his times. The chapter tries to make clear how these two areas of Wittgenstein’s thought are connected and reflect an anti-scientistic worldview he held, one intimated in the above passage. It is argued that the later Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy is marked out against two scientistic claims in particular. First, the view that the scientific method is superior to all other means of learning or gaining knowledge. Second, the view that scientific knowledge is superior to all other kinds of knowledge and understanding. Wittgenstein’s opposition to these claims is brought out through examining a fundamental aim of his later philosophy, producing the ‘kind of understanding which consists in “seeing connections”’ (PI §122), and his attempts to expose certain philosophical confusions.
    [Show full text]
  • John Mcdowell - Wikipedia
    2019/7/25 John McDowell - Wikipedia John McDowell John Henry McDowell (born 7 March 1942) is a South African John Henry McDowell philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford and now University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written extensively on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work has been in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. McDowell was one of three recipients of the 2010 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award,[6] and is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the British Academy. McDowell has, throughout his career, understood philosophy to be "therapeutic" and thereby to "leave everything as it is", which he understands to be a form of philosophical quietism (although he does not consider himself to be a "quietist"). The philosophical quietist believes that John McDowell in Paris, October philosophy cannot make any explanatory comment about how, for example, 2007 thought and talk relate to the world but can, by offering re-descriptions of [1] philosophically problematic cases, return the confused philosopher to a Born 7 March 1942 state of intellectual quietude. However, in defending this quietistic Boksburg, South perspective McDowell has engaged with the work of leading Africa contemporaries in such a way as to therapeutically dissolve what he takes to Alma mater University College of be philosophical error, while developing original and distinctive theses Rhodesia and about language, mind and value. In each case, he has tried to resist the Nyasaland (as issued influence of what he regards as a misguided, reductive form of by University of philosophical naturalism that dominates the work of his contemporaries, London) particularly in North America.
    [Show full text]
  • A Critique of John Mcdowell's Theory of Moral Perception
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2021 A Critique of John McDowell's Theory of Moral Perception Edward Ray Falls [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Metaphysics Commons Recommended Citation Falls, Edward Ray, "A Critique of John McDowell's Theory of Moral Perception. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2021. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/6517 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Edward Ray Falls entitled "A Critique of John McDowell's Theory of Moral Perception." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. Kristina Gehrman, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Kristina Gehrman, Jon Garthoff, Clerk Shaw, Megan Bryson Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) A Critique of John McDowell’s Theory of Moral Perception A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Edward Falls August 2021 Abstract This dissertation examines an argument that John McDowell’s view is structurally analogous to Protagoreanism, and that arguments structurally analogous to Plato’s arguments against Protagoreanism apply to McDowell’s view.
    [Show full text]
  • A Critique of John Mcdowell's Conception of Experience and Nature
    EXPERIENCE AND THE WORLD OF THE LIVING: A CRITIQUE OF JOHN MCDOWELL’S CONCEPTION OF EXPERIENCE AND NATURE Gregory S. Hakos A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2007 Committee: Michael Bradie, Advisor Cynthia Baron, Graduate Faculty Representative Sara Worley Marvin Belzer ii ABSTRACT Michael Bradie, Advisor John McDowell’s work (in Mind and World and elsewhere) has largely been devoted to two main objectives: 1) defending a non-traditional form of empiricism; and 2) articulating a revised conception of nature. McDowell sees these two objectives as connected. He wants to defend a conception of experience as involving the reception of conceptual “impressions” from the world. But, he sees that such a conception of experience seems to be blocked by a dominant form of naturalism which views nature as devoid of value and meaning. Such a “disenchanted” view of nature makes it impossible to combine the idea that impressions are impacts from the world with the idea that impressions are conceptually structured (by human minds). McDowell’s solution to this problem involves “re-enchanting” or revising naturalism so that nature can be understood as incorporating a “second nature”. McDowell’s notion of second nature is intended to “make room” (in nature) for the idea that the world’s impacts on the sensory faculties of concept-using human beings can be already imbued with intentionality. I agree with McDowell that both our concept of experience and our concept of nature are in need of revision.
    [Show full text]
  • Notes on Contributors
    NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Chris Ackerley is Professor and former HOD of English at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His speciality is annotation, especially of Malcolm Lowry and Samuel Beckett. Recent works include Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy (2nd. ed. 2004), Obscure Locks, Simple Keys: The Annotated Watt (2005), and with S. E. Gontarski the Grove Press and Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (2004 & 2006). Elizabeth Barry is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, UK. She has published widely on Samuel Beckett in Journal of Beckett Studies, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui and Irish Studies Review, and her monograph, Beckett and Authority: The Uses of Cliché, appeared with Palgrave Macmillan in September 2006. She has also published book chapters on the dramatists Jean Genet, Roy Williams and Sarah Kane. Jackie Blackman is a Government of Ireland scholar and has lectured on Beckett at Trinity College Dublin. In 2006 she was dramaturge for a centenary production of Endgame at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin. She gave the inaugural lecture for the Annual Beckett Lecture Series in Tel Aviv University (2007) and her essay “Beckett Judaizing Beckett” was awarded second place in the IFTR New Scholar’s prize, 2007. John Bolin is writing a D.Phil. thesis on Beckett’s novels and early aesthetic theory. He is a student at Exeter College, Oxford University. Gregory Byala has recently completed his doctoral work at Yale University with a dissertation entitled Samuel Beckett and the Problem of Beginning. He is currently a visiting lecturer at Muhlenberg College where he teaches courses on twentieth-century literature.
    [Show full text]
  • 2005-2006 the College William & Mary
    The College William & Mary 2005-2006 Undergraduate Course Catalog The Undergraduate Catalog Announcement for the Three Hundred and Thirteenth Year Williamsburg, Virginia 23185 (757) 221-4000 2005-2006 General Statement of Policy Bulletin of The College of William and Mary—Undergraduate Catalog Issue August 2005 The College of William and Mary does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, disability or age in its programs and activities. All inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies should be addressed to: Ms. Susan S. Grover Director of Equal Opportunity The College of William and Mary Hornsby House P. O. Box 8795 Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795 (757) 221-2615 Note: The catalog provides announcements for the 2005-2006 academic year. It is current until August 2006. The College reserves the right to make changes in the regulations, charges and curricula listed herein at any time. CataLOGS ARE ISSUED FOR OTHER COLLEGE PROGRamS AS FOLLOWS: School of Business School of Education Graduate Studies in Arts and Sciences School of Marine Science Marshall-Wythe School of Law The Honor System Among the most significant traditions of the College of William and Mary is its student ad- ministered Honor System. The spirit and essence of the Honor System have existed at the College for more than 200 years and are embodied in the Honor Code. It asserts that honor and personal integrity are fundamental attributes essential of the climate of trust which must exist in a community of scholars. The Code is an agreement, accepted by each student who enrolls, not to lie, cheat or steal or to tolerate such behavior in others.
    [Show full text]
  • The Philosophy of the Face and 20Th Century Literature and Art
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2005 The hiP losophy of the Face and 20th Century Literature and Art Bernard J. Rhie University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Art and Design Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Esthetics Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Graphic Communications Commons, Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, Other Philosophy Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons, and the Theory and Criticism Commons Recommended Citation Rhie, Bernard J., "The hiP losophy of the Face and 20th Century Literature and Art" (2005). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1000. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1000 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1000 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The hiP losophy of the Face and 20th Century Literature and Art Abstract This dissertation explores the importance of the human face in modern literature, philosophy, and art. "Meaning is a physiognomy," wrote Wittgenstein--quite literally, if somewhat cryptically--in the Philosophical Investigations. My project takes this remark seriously and begins, in chapters one and two, by reading Wittgenstein's discussion of aspect-seeing alongside recent work in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind in order to explain how we perceive mentality in the appearance of a human face. I then trace the surprising ways in which our ability to understand facial expressions informs not only the way we understand language, but also other minds and the concept of personhood itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Access Version Via Utrecht University Repository
    Nonconceptual Content in Perception By Loren Bremmers 5687691 Master's Thesis submitted for the RMA Philosophy Utrecht University June 21, 2019 Supervisor: Dr. Menno Lievers Second reader: Prof. dr. Stefan van der Stigchel Third reader: Prof. dr. Teun Tieleman Master’s Thesis RMA Philosophy by Loren Bremmers Abstract Since the publication of Gareth Evans’s The Varieties of Reference in 1982, in which Evans introduced the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content, there has been an ongoing debate in the philosophy of perception about the nature of the content of perceptual experiences. At first sight, the debate between conceptualists and nonconceptualists does not seem that difficult to get a grip on, as most proponents or opponents of nonconceptual content use versions of the same arguments to argue for and against one of the two positions. However, this thesis shows that there is a complication: methodological disagreements between conceptualists and nonconceptualists cause the participants in the debate to talk past one another. In response to this complication, this thesis argues that (1) philosophical accounts of perception must meet two conditions if a more constructive debate between conceptualists and nonconceptualists is to be realized, and that (2) given my conditions for philosophical accounts of perception, perceptual content can best be understood as nonconceptual. Keywords: Conceptualism, John McDowell, Nonconceptual content, Nonconceptualism, Perceptual content, Perceptual experience, Philosophy of perception
    [Show full text]