The artistic path to virtue
- Authors: Sher, Gavin
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Aristotle -- Nicomachean ethics , Virtue , Ethics , Fiction , Narration (Rhetoric)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2732 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004370 , Aristotle -- Nicomachean ethics , Virtue , Ethics , Fiction , Narration (Rhetoric)
- Description: Most people share a strong intuition that there is much to be learned from great literature and other forms of narrative art. This intuition is, however, philosophically contentious. Plato was the first to argue against the possibility of learning anything from narrative art, but he founded a tradition that persists to the present day. I will engage in this debate in order to examine the role narratives might be able to play in acquiring virtue on Aristotle's ethical account, as it is presented in Nicomachean Ethics. I will claim that narratives have so long seemed a problematic source of learning because philosophers have traditionally approached the issue in the wrong way. They have typically tried to show how we might acquire propositional knowledge through our engagement with art, but this approach has failed because of insoluble problems involved in satisfying the justification criterion. Fictions may be rescued from their problematic status by realising that what we truly get from them is, instead, a type of knowledge-how. I will argue that Aristotelian virtue is itself a kind of knowledge-how and so the type of learning that takes place in engaging with narratives has a role to play in its acquisition and exercise. Virtue depends on types of reasoning that are themselves kinds of knowledge-how and which are employed and improved in engaging with narrative art. These types of reasoning will be described as conceptual, emotional and imaginative understanding. I will show how each is important in relation to virtue and how each is a kind of knowledge-how that may be improved through exposure to narrative art.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Sher, Gavin
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Aristotle -- Nicomachean ethics , Virtue , Ethics , Fiction , Narration (Rhetoric)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2732 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004370 , Aristotle -- Nicomachean ethics , Virtue , Ethics , Fiction , Narration (Rhetoric)
- Description: Most people share a strong intuition that there is much to be learned from great literature and other forms of narrative art. This intuition is, however, philosophically contentious. Plato was the first to argue against the possibility of learning anything from narrative art, but he founded a tradition that persists to the present day. I will engage in this debate in order to examine the role narratives might be able to play in acquiring virtue on Aristotle's ethical account, as it is presented in Nicomachean Ethics. I will claim that narratives have so long seemed a problematic source of learning because philosophers have traditionally approached the issue in the wrong way. They have typically tried to show how we might acquire propositional knowledge through our engagement with art, but this approach has failed because of insoluble problems involved in satisfying the justification criterion. Fictions may be rescued from their problematic status by realising that what we truly get from them is, instead, a type of knowledge-how. I will argue that Aristotelian virtue is itself a kind of knowledge-how and so the type of learning that takes place in engaging with narratives has a role to play in its acquisition and exercise. Virtue depends on types of reasoning that are themselves kinds of knowledge-how and which are employed and improved in engaging with narrative art. These types of reasoning will be described as conceptual, emotional and imaginative understanding. I will show how each is important in relation to virtue and how each is a kind of knowledge-how that may be improved through exposure to narrative art.
- Full Text:
Unstable ironies: narrative instability in Herman Charles Bosman's "Oom Schalk Lourens" series
- Authors: Davis, Rebecca
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , Irony in literature , Narration (Rhetoric)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2215 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002258 , Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , Irony in literature , Narration (Rhetoric)
- Description: This thesis examines the narrative situation within Herman Charles Bosman’s “Oom Schalk Lourens” series of stories, focussing on the nature of the relationship between author and narrator. In particular, it seeks to trace the source of the multiple ironies at work in the texts. It has been customary for critics in the past to claim that the irony within the stories stems from Bosman, operating authorially ‘above’ Oom Schalk. In terms of this theory, Oom Schalk is read as being largely unaware of the inconsistencies and contradictions within his narrative. It is the claim of this thesis, however, that Oom Schalk is the self-aware creator of the texts’ ironies much of the time. Chapter 1 commences with an attempt at defining irony, and provides a brief overview of the history of its deployment within South African literature before discussing the literary genre which Bosman was to exploit as his ironic vehicle: the “oral-style” short story. Chapter 2 examines Wayne C. Booth’s notions of “stable” and “unstable” irony: the irony of the Oom Schalk stories has, in the past, been classified as belonging to the former category, but this thesis attempts to show that its inconsistent deployment within the stories consigns it more accurately to the latter. Chapter 3 offers an assessment of the extrinsic contexts relevant to the analysis: the context of the stories’ publication, and the likely composition of Bosman’s reading public. Chapter 4 begins to examine the distance between implied author and implied narrator in the stories. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 subject stories dealing with the themes of art, race and land to detailed analysis in order to examine the shifting – and progressively, though unevenly, diminishing – distance between Bosman and Oom Schalk. The thesis concludes that the degree to which the ironic distance between author and narrator fluctuates within, and between, the stories, results in a narrative situation which must be classified as fundamentally unstable.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Davis, Rebecca
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , Irony in literature , Narration (Rhetoric)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2215 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002258 , Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , Irony in literature , Narration (Rhetoric)
- Description: This thesis examines the narrative situation within Herman Charles Bosman’s “Oom Schalk Lourens” series of stories, focussing on the nature of the relationship between author and narrator. In particular, it seeks to trace the source of the multiple ironies at work in the texts. It has been customary for critics in the past to claim that the irony within the stories stems from Bosman, operating authorially ‘above’ Oom Schalk. In terms of this theory, Oom Schalk is read as being largely unaware of the inconsistencies and contradictions within his narrative. It is the claim of this thesis, however, that Oom Schalk is the self-aware creator of the texts’ ironies much of the time. Chapter 1 commences with an attempt at defining irony, and provides a brief overview of the history of its deployment within South African literature before discussing the literary genre which Bosman was to exploit as his ironic vehicle: the “oral-style” short story. Chapter 2 examines Wayne C. Booth’s notions of “stable” and “unstable” irony: the irony of the Oom Schalk stories has, in the past, been classified as belonging to the former category, but this thesis attempts to show that its inconsistent deployment within the stories consigns it more accurately to the latter. Chapter 3 offers an assessment of the extrinsic contexts relevant to the analysis: the context of the stories’ publication, and the likely composition of Bosman’s reading public. Chapter 4 begins to examine the distance between implied author and implied narrator in the stories. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 subject stories dealing with the themes of art, race and land to detailed analysis in order to examine the shifting – and progressively, though unevenly, diminishing – distance between Bosman and Oom Schalk. The thesis concludes that the degree to which the ironic distance between author and narrator fluctuates within, and between, the stories, results in a narrative situation which must be classified as fundamentally unstable.
- Full Text:
- «
- ‹
- 1
- ›
- »