Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is the quintessential philosophical outsider. Affiliated to no institution, and associated with no traditional school, in his prose fiction and poetry, Pessoa invented a new philosophy of the human subject, arguing that imagination is key to human flourishing and human self-enrichment. Each of us, he claimed, can use our powers of imagination to “pluralise ourselves;” that is to say, to live, simultaneously and in sequence, as a plurality of distinct subjects. Calling these artefact minds “heteronyms”, Pessoan synthetic selves are new ways poetically to experience the world.
In this study of the philosophical thought of Pessoa, philosopher Jonardon Ganeri highlights connections between Pessoa with earlier philosophical poets, from Keats to Shakespeare and from Coleridge to Whitman. Ganeri emphasises Pessoa's originality in his theory of the human subject as a radical departure from the history of Christian or Islamic thought, highlighting affinities with ideas from works of philosophical fiction in classical India through an examination of Pessoa's own engagement with Indian poetry and philosophy. Ganeri convincingly argues for the need to consider Pessoa's writings as a philosopher, both on their own terms and as in deep conversation with the tradition of Indian thought.
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Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Poets And Plurals
Chapter 1: Be Plural! A Poet's Creed
Chapter 2: Self-Estrangement
Part II: Varieties of Heteronymous Experience
Chapter 3: Artefact Minds
Chapter 4: A Life Lived in Serial, And In Parallel
Part III: Make-Believe and The Moksopaya
Chapter 5: Reality++
Chapter 6: Names Used Twice Over
Part IV: Pessoa's Imaginary India
Chapter 7: Pessoa in India
Chapter 8: 'One Intellectual Breeze'
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
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Jonardon Ganeri is the Bimal. K. Matilal Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. His work draws on a variety of philosophical traditions to construct new positions in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His books include The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person Stance (2010); Attention, Not Self (2017); The Concealed Art of the Soul (2012), Virtual
Subjects, Fugitive Selves (2020), and Inwardness: An Outsider's Guide (2021). He joined the Fellowship of the British Academy in 2015 and won the Infosys Prize in the Humanities the same year.
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Selling point: Presents the thought of Fernando Pessoa
Selling point: Highlights the importance of imagination
Selling point: Reveals deep affinities between Pessoa and Indian philosophy
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780197636688
Publisert
2024
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press Inc
Vekt
336 gr
Høyde
213 mm
Bredde
148 mm
Dybde
17 mm
Aldersnivå
UP, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
176
Forfatter