The Philosophy of Autobiography / Christopher Cowley.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Cowley, Christopher, Editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Autobiography--Philosophy.

Autobiography.

Autobiography--Authorship.

Autobiography in literature.

Autobiographical fiction.

Philosophers--Biography.

Philosophers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (249 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

We are living through a boom in autobiographical writing. Every half-famous celebrity, every politician, every sports hero-even the non-famous, nowadays, pour out pages and pages, Facebook post after Facebook post, about themselves. Literary theorists have noticed, as the genres of "creative nonfiction" and "life writing" have found their purchase in the academy. And of course psychologists have long been interested in self-disclosure. But where have the philosophers been? With this volume, Christopher Cowley brings them into the conversation. Cowley and his contributors show that while philosophers have seemed uninterested in autobiography, they have actually long been preoccupied with many of its conceptual elements, issues such as the nature of the self, the problems of interpretation and understanding, the paradoxes of self-deception, and the meaning and narrative structure of human life. But rarely have philosophers brought these together into an overarching question about what it means to tell one's life story or understand another's. Tackling these questions, the contributors explore the relationship between autobiography and literature; between story-telling, knowledge, and agency; and between the past and the present, along the way engaging such issues as autobiographical ethics and the duty of writing. The result bridges long-standing debates and illuminates fascinating new philosophical and literary issues.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: What Is a Philosophy of Autobiography?

1. Art Imitating Life Imitating Art: Literary Narrative and Autobiographical Narrative

2. A Person's Words: Literary Characters and Autobiographical Understanding

3. Body, Memory, and Irrelevancies in Hiroshima mon amour

4. Memory, Self- Understanding, and Agency

5. Telling Our Own Stories: Narrative Selves and Oppressive Circumstance

6. Self-Deception, Self- Knowledge, and Autobiography

7. Autobiographical Acts

8. Writing about Others: An Autobiographical Perspective

9. From "I" to "We": Acts of Agency in Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophical Autobiography

10. Fraudulence, Obscurity, and Exposure: The Autobiographical Anxieties of Stanley Cavell

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226268088

022626808X

OCLC:

922581747