1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910785470103321

Autore

Kramnick Jonathan Brody

Titolo

Actions and objects from Hobbes to Richardson [[electronic resource] /] / Jonathan Kramnick

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Stanford, Calif., : Stanford University Press, c2010

ISBN

0-8047-7512-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (320 p.)

Disciplina

820.9/384

Soggetti

English literature - 18th century - History and criticism

English literature - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism

Act (Philosophy) in literature

Philosophy of mind in literature

Causation in literature

Philosophy, English - 17th century

Philosophy, English - 18th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Actions and Objects from Hobbes to Richardson -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Nothing from Nothing -- 1. Actions, Agents, Causes -- 2. Consciousness and Mental Causation: Lucretius, Rochester, Locke -- 3. Rochester’s Mind -- 4. Uneasiness, or Locke among Others -- 5. Haywood and Consent -- 6. Action and Inaction in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

How do minds cause events in the world? How does wanting to write a letter cause a person's hands to move across the page, or believing something to be true cause a person to make a promise? In Actions and Objects, Jonathan Kramnick examines the literature and philosophy of action during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when philosophers and novelists, poets and scientists were all concerned with the place of the mind in the world. These writers asked whether belief, desire, and emotion were part of nature—and thus subject to laws of cause and effect—or in a special place outside the natural order. Kramnick puts particular emphasis on those who tried to make actions compatible with external determination and to blur the



boundary between mind and matter. He follows a long tradition of examining the close relation between literary and philosophical writing during the period, but fundamentally revises the terrain. Rather than emphasizing psychological depth and interiority or asking how literary works were understood as true or fictional, he situates literature alongside philosophy as jointly interested in discovering how minds work.