Reason's grief : an essay on tragedy and value / George W. Harris.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harris, George W., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tragic, The.

Values.

Ethics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 300 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Reason's Grief takes W. B. Yeats's comment that we begin to live only when we have conceived life as tragedy as a call for a tragic ethics, something the modern West has yet to produce. Harris argues that we must turn away from religious understandings of tragedy and the human condition and realize that our species will occupy a very brief period of history, at some point to disappear without a trace. We must accept an ethical perspective that avoids pernicious fantasies about ultimate redemption but that sees tragic loss as a permanent and pervasive aspect of our daily lives, yet finds a way to think, feel and act with both passion and hope. Reason's Grief takes us back through the history of our thinking about value to find our way. The call is for nothing less than a paradigm shift for understanding both tragedy and ethics.

Contents:

An aesthetic prelude

The problem of tragedy

The dubious ubiquity of reason

Nihilism

Pessimism

Monism : an epitaph

Moralism and the inconstancy of value

Moralism and the impurity of value

Best life pluralism and reason's regret

Tragic pluralism and reason's grief

Postscript on the future : the idea of progress and the avoidance of despair.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-296) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-16892-9

1-280-54146-6

0-511-22587-3

0-511-22644-6

0-511-22459-1

0-511-31727-1

0-511-49893-4

0-511-22526-1

OCLC:

171139503

Publisher Number:

9780521863285