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Klappentext In this provocative and incisive book the author re-examines Samuel Johnson's major texts, focusing on his famous review of Soame Jenyns's A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil as a principal source of insight and innovation. He offers a lucid exposition of its ideas and methods, defining for the first time its relation to an important strand in eighteenth-century intellectual history, and assessing its implications for Johnson's moral vision. Hinnant's book will be an indispensable guide for anyone interested in understanding what is most modern in Johnson's thought and writings. Zusammenfassung In this provocative and incisive book the author re-examines Samuel Johnson's major texts! focusing on his famous review of Soame Jenyns's A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil as a principal source of insight and innovation. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface - List of Abbreviations - Johnson and Newton: Dismantling the Plenum - Vacuity, Time and Happiness in Johnson's Moral Psychology - Desire, Emulation and the Dialectic of Domination and Servitude in Irene - The Decline of the Heroic: from London to The Vanity of Human Wishes - 'The Maze of Variation': Johnson's Philosophy of Language in the Plan and Preface to The Dictionary - The Choice of Life: Art and Nature in Rasselas - The Anthropology of Natural Scarcity in A Journey to the Western Islands - Conclusion - Index
List of contents
Preface - List of Abbreviations - Johnson and Newton: Dismantling the Plenum - Vacuity, Time and Happiness in Johnson's Moral Psychology - Desire, Emulation and the Dialectic of Domination and Servitude in Irene - The Decline of the Heroic: from London to The Vanity of Human Wishes - 'The Maze of Variation': Johnson's Philosophy of Language in the Plan and Preface to The Dictionary - The Choice of Life: Art and Nature in Rasselas - The Anthropology of Natural Scarcity in A Journey to the Western Islands - Conclusion - Index
