By Olaf Hansen (NHC Fellow, 1983–84) Addressing vital issues in the current revision of American literary studies, Olaf Hansen carries out an exposition of American writing as a philosophical tradition. His broad and comparative view of American culture reveals the importance of the American allegory as a genuine artistic and intellectual style and as a … Continued
By Richard Moran (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy’s understanding of itself. Today the idea of ”first-person authority” — the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life — has been challenged from a number of directions, … Continued
By Lee Clark Mitchell (NHC Fellow, 1986–87) Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands … Continued
By Béatrice Longuenesse (NHC Fellow, 2015–16) Béatrice Longuenesse presents an original exploration of our understanding of ourselves and the way we talk about ourselves. In the first part of the book she discusses contemporary analyses of our use of 'I' in language and thought, and compares them to Kant's account of self-consciousness, especially the type … Continued
By Christopher Gill (NHC Fellow, 1981–82) This is a major study of conceptions of selfhood and personality in Homer, Greek tragedy, and philosophy. The focus is on norms of personality in Greek psychology and ethics. The key thesis is that, to understand Greek thinking of this type, we need to counteract the subjective and individualistic … Continued
Edited by Laura Engelstein (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) and Stephanie Sandler Russians have often been characterized as people with souls rather than selves. Self and Story in Russian History challenges the portrayal of the Russian character as selfless, self-effacing, or self-torturing by exploring the texts through which Russians have defined themselves as private persons and shaped … Continued
By Mitchell S. Green (NHC Fellow, 2001–02) Mitchell S. Green presents a systematic philosophical study of self-expression – a pervasive phenomenon of the everyday life of humans and other species, which has received scant attention in its own right. He explores the ways in which self-expression reveals our states of thought, feeling, and experience, and … Continued
Edited by David Warren Sabean (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) and Malina Stefanovska The notion of ‘selfhood’ conjures up images of self-sufficiency, integrity, introspectiveness, and autonomy – characteristics typically associated with ‘modernity.’ The seventeenth century marks the crucial transition to a new form of ‘bourgeois’ selfhood, although the concept goes back to the pre-modern and early modern … Continued
By John M. Doris (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) The unconscious, according to contemporary psychology, determines much of our lives: very often, we don't know why we do what we do, or even exactly what we are doing. This realization undermines the philosophical-and common sense-picture of human beings as rational, responsible, agents whose behavior is ordered by … Continued
By Anna K. Nardo (NHC Fellow, 1981–82) This book argues that play offered Hamlet, John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne a way to live within the contradictions and conflicts of late Renaissance life by providing a new stance for the self. Grounding its argument in recent theories of play … Continued