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Tracing and re-evaluating the role of cynicism within literature, public moralism, and critical philosophy, this volume discovers how a range of modern writers have engaged with Cynic traditions of thought to test the boundaries of what can be thought and said on matters of general moral concern.
List of contents
- Introduction: The Function of Cynicism
- 1: On Nietzsche and Doing Less with Cynicism
- 2: Speech beyond Toleration: Moral Controversialism Then and Now (Mill v. Carlyle)
- 3: The Freedom of Criticism: Arnold's Cynicisms
- 4: Cosmopolitan Cynicisms: George Eliot and Ford Madox Ford
- 5: In Praise of Idleness? Cynicism and the Humanities (Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Laura Kipnis)
- Coda: Last and First Things
About the author
Helen Small is Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. She is the author of The Value of the Humanities (OUP, 2013) and The Long Life (OUP, 2007) (winner of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism (2008) and the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize (2008)), and editor of The Public Intellectual (Blackwell, 2002). She has written widely on literature and philosophy, nineteenth-century fiction and public moralism, and the relationship between the Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences.
Summary
Tracing and re-evaluating the role of cynicism within literature, public moralism, and critical philosophy, this volume discovers how a range of modern writers have engaged with Cynic traditions of thought to test the boundaries of what can be thought and said on matters of general moral concern.
Additional text
"[Professor Small] puts the breadth of her learning to good use in helping us understand that cynics great and small can serve an important role in tapping the walls of our social edifice for tell-tale signs of hollowness.
