Henry James and the Art of Impressions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Scholar
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Henry James ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
William James ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
History Of

Henry James and the Art of Impressions examines the concept of the ‘impression’ in the essays and late novels of Henry James. Although Henry James criticized the impressionism which was revolutionizing French painting and French fiction, and satirized the British aesthetic movement which championed impressionist criticism, he placed the impression at the heart of his own aesthetic project, as well as his narrative representation of consciousness. This book tries to understand the anomaly that James represents in the wider history of the impression. To do this it charts an intellectual and cultural history of the ‘impression’ from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, drawing in painting, philosophy (John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, J.L Austin), psychology (James Mill, J.S. Mill, William James, Ernst Mach, Franz Brentano), literature (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde), and modern critical theory (Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Judith Butler, J. Hillis Miller). It then offers close readings of James’s non-fictional and fictional treatments of the impression in his early criticism and travel writing (1872–88), his prefaces to the New York Edition (1907–9), and the three novels of his major phase, The Ambassadors (1903), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and The Golden Bowl (1904). It concludes that the term ‘impression’ crystallizes James’s main theme of the struggle between life and art. Coherent philosophical meanings of the Jamesian impression emerge when it is comprehended as a family of related ideas about perception, imagination, and aesthetics—bound together by James’s attempt to reconcile the novel’s value as a mimetic form and its value as a transformative creative activity.

Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Wolff ◽  
G. A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Volume Editor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of History

G. A. Cohen was one of the leading political philosophers of recent times. He first came to wide attention in 1978 with the prize-winning book Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. In subsequent decades his published writings largely turned away from the history of philosophy, focusing instead on equality, freedom, and justice. However, throughout his career he regularly lectured on a wide range of moral and political philosophers of the past. This volume collects these previously unpublished lectures. Starting with a chapter centered on Plato, but also discussing the pre-Socratics as well as Aristotle, the book moves to social contract theory as discussed by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume, and then continues with chapters on Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The book also contains some previously published but uncollected papers on Marx, Hobbes, and Kant, among other figures. The collection concludes with a memoir of Cohen written by the volume editor who was a student of Cohen's. A hallmark of the lectures is Cohen's engagement with the thinkers he discusses. Rather than simply trying to render their thought accessible to the modern reader, he tests whether their arguments and positions are clear, sound, and free from contradiction. Ultimately, his lectures teach us not only about some of the great thinkers in the history of moral and political philosophy, but also about one of the great thinkers of our time: Cohen himself.

Contexts (I)

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-94
Author(s):  
John Scholar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
William James ◽  
History Of ◽  
Franz Brentano ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

Chapter 2 begins the book’s intellectual history of the impression from the seventeenth century to the twentieth (which continues in Chapter 3). These contexts come from two movements, empiricism and aestheticism. Chapter 2 explores empiricist contexts, arguing that James’s impression owes much to empiricist philosophy (John Locke, David Hume), and nineteenth-century empiricist psychology (James Mill, J. S. Mill, Franz Brentano, Ernst Mach, William James). By tracking the word ‘impression’, we can see that Locke and Hume’s stress on first-hand observation, and on thought as a kind of perception, are contexts for James’s conception of the imaginative but observant novelist, for the epistemological demands he makes on his readers, and for the way he represents his characters’ consciousnesses, especially in recognition scenes. Nineteenth-century empiricists’ divergence as to the agency of the subject in consciousness is reflected in James’s characters whose impressions by turns assault them from the exterior, or are partly fictions of their own making.

Louis Menand: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. 2001. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 546 pp.

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-204
Author(s):  
Lance Kenney
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
William James ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Charles Peirce ◽  
The Cold War

Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, daunting in its choice of subject matter, closely aligns itself with the ancient sense of the word ‘history’ as a fluid, almost epic narrative. The Metaphysical Club of the title was a conversation group that met in Cambridge for a few months in 1872. Its membership roster listed some of the greatest intellectuals of the day: Charles Peirce, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chauncey Wright, amongst others. There is no record of the Club’s discussions or debates—in fact, the only direct reference to the Club is made by Peirce in a letter written thirty-five years later. Menand utilizes the Club as a jumping-off point for a sweeping analysis of the beliefs of the day. The subtitle of the book belies its true mission: ‘a story of ideas in America.’ Menand discusses the intellectual and social conditions that helped shape these men by the time they were members of the Club. He then shows the philosophical, political, and cultural impact that these men went on to have. In doing so, Menand traces a history of ideas in the United States from immediately prior to the Civil War to the beginning of the Cold War.

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