Power and Imagination
Studies in Politics and Literature
1st Edition
Published on 6. May 2008
XVI, 170 pages
978-1-4539-0318-6 (ISBN)
Description
Classical and modern literature often reveal more about the organized world's forms of power and authority structures than do works of political philosophy. What are the origins of political consciousness? How does our understanding of political power and its exercise originate in literature? Why do the early manifestations of political and religious tolerance appear in utopian literature, rather than in philosophical treatises? Is it possible to do fictionally what others tend to do academically and theoretically? Exploring these questions allows Leonidas Donskis to analyze the relationship between power and imagination, politics and literature, and the principles of reality and imagination.
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05/2008
Peter Lang Verlag
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Person
The Author: Leonidas Donskis is a Lithuanian philosopher, essayist, and critic. He received his first doctorate in philosophy from Vilnius University, Lithuania, and later earned his second doctorate in social and moral philosophy from the University of Helsinki, Finland. His main scholarly interests lie in philosophy of culture, philosophy of literature, philosophy of the social sciences, civilization theory, political theory, and history of ideas. He has researched and lectured in the United States, Great Britain, and continental Europe. Currently, Donskis serves as Professor and Dean of Vytautas Magnus University School of Political Science and Diplomacy in Kaunas, Lithuania. In addition, he acts as Docent of Social and Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Donskis is the author of eleven books, including The End of Ideology and Utopia?; Identity and Freedom; Forms of Hatred; and Loyalty, Dissent, and Betrayal.
Content
- Cover
- Contents
- Foreword (Robert Ginsberg)
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Niccolò Machiavelli: A Demonized Humanistor a Monster of Modern Politics?
- What Do We Learn about Politics from Literature?
- Who Demonized Machiavelli? And Why?
- Stendhal and the Footprints of Machiavelli's Thought
- Will Bravery, Glory, and Honor Be Reborn? The Anatomy of Immorality and Corruption
- 2. Giambattista Vico: Power and Imagination in the Dispute between Ancients and Moderns
- The Late Discovery of a Genius: Giambattista Vico as a Hero of the Nineteenth Century
- Mapping Vico's Thought: Trinitarian Theories of History
- Religion and the Emergence of Modern Society
- How to Make Philology into Philosophy? Vico's Epistemological Challenge
- The Early Voice of Modern Historicism: Three Kinds of Human Nature
- The Struggle over Antiquity: Ancients vs. Moderns
- The Descartes of the Humanities?
- 3. Cervantes vs. Shakespeare: The Sociogenesis of Love and Friendship in Don Quixote and Romeo and Juliet
- A Transitional Era Person
- The Genealogy of Romeo and Juliet
- The Sociogenesis of Modern Sentiment
- Hatred as Depersonalization: A Name in the Place of a Face
- Ambivalence and the Interchangeability of Love and Hatred
- Love and Friendship in Romeo and Juliet and Don Quixote
- Postscript
- 4. Behind Utopias: Where Shall the Conservative Imagination Be Found?
- Prophets of the Past
- Harmonies and Dissonances
- Conservatism and Humanism
- Conservatism and the Moral Imagination
- Utopia and the Conservative Critique of Modernity
- Two Forms of Conservative Sensitivity
- Dystopia and the Conservative Imagination
- 5. Behind Dystopias: Where Shall the Liberal Imagination Be Found?
- The Coming of the Machine: Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell
- Love as a Threat to the New World Order
- Rex Warner
- George Orwell
- Czeslaw Milosz
- Milan Kundera
- Works Cited
- Index
