Philosophy as a Literary Art Making Things Up

Despite philosophers’ growing interest in the relation between philosophy and literature in general, over the last few decades comparatively few studies have been published dealing more narrowly with the literary aspects of philosophical texts. The relationship between philosophy and literature is too often taken to be "literature as philosophy" and very rarely "philosophy as literature." It is the dissatisfaction with this one-sidedness that lies at the heart of the present volume. Philosophy has nothing to lose by engaging in a serious process of literary self-analysis. On the contrary, such an exercise would most likely make it stronger, more sophisticated, more playful and especially more self-reflexive. By not moving in this direction, philosophy places itself in the position of not following what has been deemed, since Socrates at least, the worthiest of all philosophical ideals: self-knowledge. This book was originally published as a special issue of The European Legacy.

1. Introduction: Unorthodox Remarks on Philosophy as Literature Costica Bradatan 2. Of Poets and Thinkers. A Conversation on Philosophy, Literature and the Rebuilding of the World Costica Bradatan, Simon Critchley, Giuseppe Mazzotta and Alexander Nehamas 3. Hunting Plato’s Agalmata Matthew Sharpe 4. The Nexus of Unity of an Emerson Sentence Kelly Dean Jolley 5. The Concept of Writing Mark Cortes Favis 6. An Inhumanly Wise Shame Brendan Moran 7. Stanley Cavell and Two Pictures of the Voice Adam Gonya 8. Philosophy, Poetry, Parataxis Jonathan Monroe 9. Emphasising the Positive: The Critical Role of Schlegel’s Aesthetics James Corby

Costica Bradatan isa Professor of Honors at Texas Tech University, USA. He is the author or editor (co-editor) of several books, including Philosophy, Society and The Cunning of History in Eastern Europe (2012) and most recently Dying for Ideas. The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (2014), and has written for such publications as the New York Times, The New Statesman, Dissent, and Times Literary Supplement.