Global origins of the modern self, from Montaigne to Suzuki / Avram Alpert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Alpert, Avram, 1984- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Self (Philosophy)--History.

Self (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (454 pages)

Place of Publication:

Albany, New York : State University of New York, [2019]

Summary:

"We have long lived in a world made by global connections. Our products, our travels, our ideas--all of these have their origins in places and peoples both near and far. But when scholars narrate the history of the modern self, they ignore these connections and focus on changes in European science and philosophy. In this provocative new book, Avram Alpert argues that we need to rethink the story of the modern self as a global history. He first shows how canonical European thinkers like Michel de Montaigne, René Descartes, and Immanuel Kant explicitly formed their ideas of selfhood in relation to the travel accounts flooding into Europe from colonial missionaries. He then pushes this history beyond Europe, showing how a diverse series of writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Léopold Senghor, Frantz Fanon, and D.T. Suzuki, critiqued these ideas of global selfhood with their own creative responses. Spanning four continents and four centuries, the book argues that all of these writers partake of a shared global history forged in the violence of colonial rule. The resulting narrative shows that the modern self is not a European invention, but a global, evolving, and fraught attempt to make ourselves the kinds of beings who can live with the complexity of a world that is at once connected and never fully knowable"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Montaigne and the other history of modernity

Foundations of universalist global thought : Rousseau and Kant

Aesthetic visions of the global self : Schiller and Senghor

Dialectics and its discontents : Hegel, Marx, Fanon

Radical pluralism I : Emerson

Radical pluralism II : Du Bois

Emptying the global self : Suzuki

Coda : being-towards-bequeathment.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781438473864

1438473869