Mulhall The Wounded Animal

J. M. Coetzee and the Difficulty of Reality in Literature and Philosophy
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3753-3
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Web PDF

In 1997, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. Coetzee, invited to Princeton University to lecture on the moral status of animals, read a work of fiction about an eminent novelist, Elizabeth Costello, invited to lecture on the moral status of animals at an American college. Coetzee's lectures were published in 1999 as The Lives of Animals, and reappeared in 2003 as part of his novel Elizabeth Costello; and both lectures and novel have attracted the critical attention of a number of influential philosophers--including Peter Singer, Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, and John McDowell.


In The Wounded Animal, Stephen Mulhall closely examines Coetzee's writings about Costello, and the ways in which philosophers have responded to them, focusing in particular on their powerful presentation of both literature and philosophy as seeking, and failing, to represent reality--in part because of reality's resistance to such projects of understanding, but also because of philosophy's unwillingness to learn from literature how best to acknowledge that resistance. In so doing, Mulhall is led to consider the relations among reason, language, and the imagination, as well as more specific ethical issues concerning the moral status of animals, the meaning of mortality, the nature of evil, and the demands of religion. The ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature here displays undiminished vigor and renewed significance.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mulhall, Stephen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Semiotik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften, Biologie: Sachbuch, Naturführer
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Tier- und Umweltschutz

Inhaltsverzeichnis

ABBREVIATIONS ix

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: The Ancient Quarrel 1

PART ONE: THE LIVES OF ANIMALS 19

CHAPTER TWO: Elizabeth Costello's Lecture: Stories, Thought-Experiments, and Literal-Mindedness 21

CHAPTER THREE: Elizabeth Costello's Lecture: Three Philosophers and a Number of Apes 36

CHAPTER FOUR: Food for Thought: Two Symposia 58

CHAPTER FIVE: Food for Thought: A Third Symposium 69

CHAPTER SIX: Food for Thought: An Uninvited Guest? 95

CHAPTER SEVEN: Elizabeth Costello's Seminar: Two Poets and a Novelist 110

CHAPTER EIGHT: Elizabeth Costello's Seminar: Primatology and Animal Training, Philosophy and Literary Theory 122

PART TWO: ELIZABETH COSTELLO 137

CHAPTER NINE: Realism, Modernism, and the Novel 139

CHAPTER TEN: Costello's Realist Modernism, and Coetzee's 162

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Body in Africa 184

CHAPTER TWELVE: Evil as Obscenity 203

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Two Embodiments of the Kafkaesque 214

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Conclusion: Three Postscripts 231

BIBLIOGRAPHY 253

INDEX 257

Über Autor(innen)

Stephen Mulhall is fellow and tutor in philosophy at New College, University of Oxford. His books include On Film, The Conversation of Humanity, and Philosophical Myths of the Fall (Princeton).