A fruitful consideration of the interplay of hermeneutic theory and rhetorical practice in communicationJohn Arthos discovers and promotes an organic reciprocity between rhetoric as a humanist practice and hermeneutics as a theoretical comportment. Although these two traditions have a long and rewarding collaboration, it is only now that we begin to realize their potential for radically remaking the way we think and speak as social animals. Arthos marries the perfo...

Originally published in 1963, this is a study of the greatness of Dante, Michelangelo and Milton, and of the differences in the power and effect of their work. This book shows how differing philosophical commitments help explain differences in the character of their greatness. The ancient treatise On the Sublime provides the starting point for these studies and in an introductory essay the author examines Longinus’ obligations to Platonic and Stoic philosophy. In the essays which relate th...

Originally published in 1956, this scholarly study of Spenser’s poetry shows how the conceptions of his earlier work in complaints, visions and pastorals were of continuing importance to the development of The Faerie Queene. Following on from Bishop Hurd’s Letters on Chivalry and Romance, John Arthos discusses the congeniality of romance and allegory. The form and substance of Spenser’s lyrical and meditative poetry were combined with his interest in romances to govern the progress of the ...

Originally published in 1949, this title was written in order to help establish a better understanding of the ‘stock diction’ of eighteenth-century English poetry, and, in particular, of the diction commonly used in the description of nature. The language characteristic of so much of the poetry of this period had been severely criticized for a long time. But in the twenty or thirty years prior to publication some effort had been made to review the subject and the problem. However, several ...

There has been a renaissance of interest in the work and thought of Paul Ricoeur, one of the great hermeneutic scholars of the twentieth century. It is time to assess the future landscape for hermeneutics as a scholarly field and an educational curriculum after the momentous impact of Paul Ricoeur, who extended and deepened its trans-disciplinary reach, and pushed its profile substantially beyond its German legacy. There exists a misunderstanding that his thought is simply an extension or ...

This edited work is spurred by the 30-year anniversary of the groundbreaking work by Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (1986)—and the 40-year anniversary of the original lectures (1975). Ricoeur took these concepts that continue to be enormously important in social and political analysis and connected them in a uniquely intricate dance. The ensuing interplay of these concepts provides a framework for a more deft and subtle evaluation than is common. Little has been done to enga...

The New York Times –bestselling author and social philosopher explores the function of ethics and morality in the human psyche: "A fascinating volume . . . magnificent in its implications" ( Saturday Review ).Are we primarily determined by nature or nurture? What are the best ways that people can live productively? In Man for Himself, renowned social philosopher Erich Fr...

In Dworkin’s master work, the central thesis is that all areas of value depend on one another. This is one, big thing that the hedgehog knows, in contrast to the fox, who knows many little things. Dworkin’s understanding of the relationship—between ethics, morality, and political morality—is significantly revised and also greatly elaborated. He argues that “dignity” is the essential core of living well and that a satisfactory account of dignity would, in turn, point to two principles. The ...

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55), one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century, wrote widely on religious, psychological, and literary themes. This book shows how Kierkegaard developed his views in emphatic opposition to prevailing opinions. It describes his reaction to the ethical and religious theories of Kant and Hegel, and it also contrasts his position with doctrines advanced by men like Feuerbach and Marx. Kierkegaard's seminal diagnosis of the human condition, which emphas...

Bringing his perennially popular course to the page, Yale University Professor Paul H. Fry offers in this welcome book a guided tour of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. At the core of the book's discussion is a series of underlying questions: What is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose?Fry engages with the major themes and strands in twentieth-century literary theory, among them hermeneutics, modes of formalism, sem...

Iris Murdoch was one of the great philosophers and novelists of the twentieth century and The Sovereignty of Good is her most important and enduring philosophical work. She argues that philosophy has focused, mistakenly, on what it is right to do rather than good to be and that only by restoring the notion of ‘vision’ to moral thinking can this distortion be corrected. This brilliant work shows why Iris Murdoch remains essential reading: a vivid and uncompromising style, a commitment to fo...