Love's Knowledge

Essays on Philosophy and Literature

Martha C. Nussbaum

Brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy
Features two new essays and revised versions of several previously published essays

Love's Knowledge

Essays on Philosophy and Literature

Martha C. Nussbaum

Description

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy. The papers, many of them previously inaccessible to non-specialist readers, deal with such fundamental issues as the relationship between style and content in the exploration of ethical issues; the nature of ethical attention and ethical knowledge and their relationship to written forms and styles; and the role of the emotions in deliberation and self-knowledge. Nussbaum investigates and defends a conception of ethical understanding which involves emotional as well as intellectual activity, and which gives a certain type of priority to the perception of particular people and situations rather than to abstract rules. She argues that this ethical conception cannot be completely and appropriately stated without turning to forms of writing usually considered literary rather than philosophical. It is consequently necessary to broaden our conception of moral philosophy in order to include these forms. Featuring two new essays and revised versions of several previously published essays, this collection attempts to articulate the relationship, within such a broader ethical inquiry, between literary and more abstractly theoretical elements.

Love's Knowledge

Essays on Philosophy and Literature

Martha C. Nussbaum

1. Introduction: Form and Content, Philosophy and Literature
2. The Discernment of Perception: An Aristotelian Conception of Private and Public Rationality
3. Plato on Commensurability and Desire
4. Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy
5. "Finely Aware and Richly Responsible": Literature and the Moral Imagination
6. Perceptive Equilibrium: Literary Theory and Ethical Theory
7. Perception and Revolution: The Princess Casamassima and the Political Imagination
8. Sophistry About Conventions
9. Reading for Life
10. Fictions of the Soul
11. Love's Knowledge
12. Narrative Emotions: Beckett's Geneology of Love
13. Love and the Individual: Romantic Rightness and Platonic Aspiration
14. Steerforth's Arm: Love and the Moral Point of View
15. Transcending Humanity

Love's Knowledge

Essays on Philosophy and Literature

Martha C. Nussbaum

Author Information

Martha C. Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics and the University of Chicago Law School.

Love's Knowledge

Essays on Philosophy and Literature

Martha C. Nussbaum

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the 1991 PEN Spielvogel-Diamondstein Prize for the Best Collection of Essays

"An engaging and satisfying study of literature's intrinsic relationship to philosophy, and of philosophy in its relationship to the rich web of human love and choice....It is a book textured with so many lives and stories that it cannot fail to inspire lively debate on the role of novelist as philosopher and on the centrality of love to wisdom."--Christianity & Literature

"The best modern discussion of the ways in which what we call philosophy and what we call literature interrelate....Anyone who wants to think about how literature and philosophy can serve each other should not just read this book but study it and return to its complex arguments again and again." --Wayne Booth, Philosophy and Literature

"I did not want Love's Knowledge to stop, and I find myself trusting its progress as much as that of any work of moral thinking of recent times."--Arion

"One of the most original books published [in 1991], a hugely stimulating read, which returns us with thoughts refreshed to some of our best-loved authors and brings philosophy back to earth in the process."--The Observer

"With this volume Martha Nussbaum gives new meaning to the word `interdisciplinary': No mere dabbling in closely aligned fields, the essays presented here are based on her considerable knowledge and understanding of classics, philosophy, and comparative literature....Her assertions are balanced, insightful, and infused with subtle humor."--The Bloomsbury Review