Passionate Intelligence Imagination and Reason in the Work of Samuel Johnson

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sachs, Arieh.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784--Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (124 p.) port.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Johns Hopkins University Press 2019

Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press [1967]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Originally published in 1967. Professor Sachs shows the inner coherence of Samuel Johnson's thought by pointing out the interconnectedness of his remarks on religious, moral, aesthetic, political, and psychological subjects. Reason and imagination, the central concepts in the Johnsonian ethos, are elucidated with reference to "vacuity," "attention," "novelty," "diversity," and other words to which Johnson attached special significance. Johnson emerges as an original thinker of the English Christian-humanist heritage; he "is to be read in the same spirit as Pascal." Primarily concerned with the relation between Johnson's ideas and the long tradition of which they are the culmination, Sachs also emphasizes the relevance of Johnson's thought to the twentieth century.

Contents:

Cover

Copyright

Contents

Introduction

One: The Vacuity of Life

Two: Cosmic Hierarchy

Three: The Art of Forgetfulness

Four: Idle Solitude and Diabolical Imagination

Five: The General and Particular

Six: The Folly of Utopia

Seven: The Rationality of Faith

Abbreviations in Notes

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographical footnotes.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-8018-0572-4

1-4214-3539-X

OCLC:

1082255950