| Aesthetics & Ethics: Otherness and Moral Imagination from Aristotle to Levinas and from 'uncle Tom's Cabin' to 'house Made of Dawn Contributor(s): Claviez, Thomas (Author) |
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ISBN: 3825354539 ISBN-13: 9783825354534 Publisher: Universitatsverlag Winter OUR PRICE: $72.20 Product Type: Hardcover Published: January 2008 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General - Religion | Buddhism - General (see Also Philosophy - Buddhist) |
| Series: American Studies - A Monograph |
| Physical Information: 466 pages |
| Themes: - Religious Orientation - Buddhist |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In a first, theoretical part, this study analyzes what role "otherness" plays in the most influential moral-philosophical approaches to date - from Aristotle and the Neo-Aristotelians (Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum) via Kantianism and its deconstructors (Jean-Francois Lyotard, J. Hillis Miller) to the works of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas - and sheds light on its highly problematic status in Western notions of justice and aesthetics. Starting from a revised notion of the sublime, the second part uses the different theoretical approaches to interpret four American novels (Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', Herman Melville's 'Billy Budd, Sailor', Richard Wright's 'Native Son', and N. Scott Momaday's 'House Made of Dawn'), and examines how far the respective moral-philosophical systems carry in elucidating these texts, as well as what role literary-historical and generic strategies play in dramatizing the encounter with "otherness". |
