|
Showing 1 - 8 of
8 matches in All Departments
The Golden Rule-'do to others as you would have them do to you',
'what is hateful to you to your fellow don't do', to take the two
most familiar formulations-defines a meeting place for many fields
of learning. There the study of comparative religion, philosophy
and ethics, anthropology and sociology, and the whole range of
cross-cultural studies carried on in the social sciences and the
humanities intersect. That hardly presents a surprise, since the
Golden Rule finds a place in most religions and is universally
acknowledged to form a part of the shared heritage of human wisdom.
But if it is one thing on which religions concur, that does not
mean the Golden Rule is simple or self-evident. Its ubiquity
presents us with tough questions of context and difficult problems
of content. Both the Golden Rule itself and how it attests to the
human condition demand study. Defining the rule and explaining its
universality in religion and culture require attention. The role of
the Golden Rule in various systems of thought, both religious and
philosophical, invites study. How the logic of a given system
interprets the Golden Rule demands analysis. Objective data
deriving from empirical study of nature and society deserve close
examination. Specialists in a wide range of disciplines have a
contribution to make out of their particular disciplines and areas
of expert knowledge.
This is a book about the ethics of authorship. Most directly, it
explores different conceptualizations of the responsibilities of
the author to the reader. But it also engages the question of what
styles of authorship allow these responsibilities to be met. Style
itself is an ethical issue, since the relation between the writing
subject and the reader--and the dynamics of authority and
influence, of gift giving and friendship in this relation--have as
much to do with how one writes as what one says. The two writers
who serve as the main subjects for this work, the German idealist
philosopher G. W. F. Hegel and the Danish Christian existentialist
Soren Kierkegaard, invite us to confront particularly challenging
questions about the ethics of authorship. Each in his own way
explores styles of authorship that employ a variety of strategies
of seduction in order to entice the reader into his narratives,
strategies that at least on the surface appear to be fundamentally
manipulative and unethical. Further, both seek to enact their own
deaths as authors, effectively disappearing as reliable guides for
the reader. That might also seem to be ethically irresponsible, an
abandonment of the reader, who has been seduced only to be
deserted. This is the first work to undertake a sustained
questioning of Kierkegaard's central distinction between his own
"indirect" style of communication and the (purportedly) "direct"
style of Hegel's philosophy. Hegel was in fact a much more subtle
practitioner of style than Kierkegaard represents him as being,
indeed, a practitioner whose style is in the service of an
ambitious reconceptualization of the ethics of authorship. As for
Kierkegaard, his own indirect style raises a whole series of
ethical questions about how the reader is imagined in relation to
the author. There is finally an either/or between Hegel and
Kierkegaard, just not the one Kierkegaard proposes as between an
author devoid of ethics and one who makes possible a true ethics of
authorship. Rather, the either/or is between two competing
practices of authorship, one daunting with the cadences of a highly
technical style, the other delightful for its elegance and
playfulness--but both powerful experiments in the ethics of style.
This is a book about the ethics of authorship. Most directly, it
explores different conceptualizations of the responsibilities of
the author to the reader. But it also engages the question of what
styles of authorship allow these responsibilities to be met. Style
itself is an ethical issue, since the relation between the writing
subject and the reader--and the dynamics of authority and
influence, of gift giving and friendship in this relation--have as
much to do with how one writes as what one says. The two writers
who serve as the main subjects for this work, the German idealist
philosopher G. W. F. Hegel and the Danish Christian existentialist
Soren Kierkegaard, invite us to confront particularly challenging
questions about the ethics of authorship. Each in his own way
explores styles of authorship that employ a variety of strategies
of seduction in order to entice the reader into his narratives,
strategies that at least on the surface appear to be fundamentally
manipulative and unethical. Further, both seek to enact their own
deaths as authors, effectively disappearing as reliable guides for
the reader. That might also seem to be ethically irresponsible, an
abandonment of the reader, who has been seduced only to be
deserted. This is the first work to undertake a sustained
questioning of Kierkegaard's central distinction between his own
"indirect" style of communication and the (purportedly) "direct"
style of Hegel's philosophy. Hegel was in fact a much more subtle
practitioner of style than Kierkegaard represents him as being,
indeed, a practitioner whose style is in the service of an
ambitious reconceptualization of the ethics of authorship. As for
Kierkegaard, his own indirect style raises a whole series of
ethical questions about how the reader is imagined in relation to
the author. There is finally an either/or between Hegel and
Kierkegaard, just not the one Kierkegaard proposes as between an
author devoid of ethics and one who makes possible a true ethics of
authorship. Rather, the either/or is between two competing
practices of authorship, one daunting with the cadences of a highly
technical style, the other delightful for its elegance and
playfulness--but both powerful experiments in the ethics of style.
|
|