Self-Knowledge in the Age of Theory

by Ann Hartle Emory University

Overview

The philosophical ideal of self-knowledge has been all but forgotten in what Walker Percy calls "the age of theory." Hartle attempts to recover that ancient philosophical task and to articulate what that ideal could mean in the context of our historical situation. She considers and rejects claims that we can attain self-knowledge through theory, anti-theory, or narrative and she defends philosophy as a humanistic, rather than scientific, endeavor. Self-Knowledge in the Age of Theory will be of great interest not only to philosophers but to scholars of literature and other humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780847684182
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/30/1996
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.78(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ann Hartle is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Emory University and the author of Death and the Disinterested Spectator and The Modern Self in Rousseau's Confessions.

Editorial Reviews

This volume is both helpful for those who have never met the writings of Feuerbach and worthy of those who have long appreciated his thought.

March 1998 Review of Metaphysics

This volume is both helpful for those who have never met the writings of Feuerbach and worthy of those who have long appreciated his thought.

March 1998 Review Of Metaphysics

Thoroughly engaging.
— John C. McCarthy

Reason Papers

Here is a book well worth coming to grips with. ...it is a virtue, the virtue of corageous helpfulness, in a thinking writer to get right to the subject on her own and in her own terms, as Ann Hartle does. In divorcing herself to some degree from what might be called the traditional strain in the interpretation of modernity, Ann Hartle gains a footing in the time which she confronts; this is not a book written by a would-be temporal outsider but by one who shares the reason-caused quandaries with which this 'demented' age i beset. It is this, I think, which gives the book its engaging character. readers will find themselves grappling with her terms because behind their explanatory interest is her own passionate philosophizing...

New Vico Studies - Eva T.H. Brann

SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE AGE OF THEORY is both provocative and profound. .. provocative in its argument that philosophical self-knowledge is acquired neither through a theory about the self nor through an anti-theory that dissolves the self. It is profound in its exploration of the way self is displayed in narrative and in its search for an even deeper, interior sel-knowledge in philosophical conversation.

Gilbert Meilaender

Thoroughly engaging.

Reason Papers - John C. McCarthy

This book is an impressive and important contribution. . .The book contains some fine analyses and helpful examples. .. especially helpful in the present quarrel about the limits of theory, and her critique deserves to be studied by anyone who has interest in these important matters.

Michael Gelven

This volume is both helpful for those who have never met the writings of Feuerbach and worthy of those who have long appreciated his thought.

Review of Metaphysics