Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Mind's World: Imagination and Subjectivity from Descartes to Romanticism (Literary Conjugations) Hardcover – August 14, 2009
Purchase options and add-ons
Winner of the 2009 International Conference on Romanticism's Jean-Pierre Barricelli Award for the best book in Romanticism studies
As the mental faculty that mediates between self and world, mind and body, the senses and the intellect, imagination is indispensable for modern models of subjectivity. From René Descartes's Meditations to the aesthetic and philosophical systems of the Romantic period, to think about the subject necessarily means to address the problem of imagination. In close readings of Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hardenberg (Novalis) and Coleridge, and with a sustained return to the origins of the discourse about imagination in Greek antiquity, Alexander Schlutz demonstrates that neither the unity of the subject itself, nor the unity of the philosophical systems that are based on it, can be conceptualized without recourse to imagination. Yet, philosophers like Descartes and Kant must deny imagination any such foundational role because of its dangerous connection to the body, the senses and the unruly passions, which threatens the desired autonomy of the rational subject. The modern subject is simultaneously dependent upon and constructed in opposition to imagination, and the resulting ambivalence about the faculty is one of the fundamental conditions of modern models of subjectivity.
Schlutz's readings of the Romantic poet-philosophers Coleridge and Hardenberg highlight that also their texts are not free of fears about the faculty's disruptive potential and its connection to the body. While imagination is now openly enlisted to produce the aesthetic unity of subjectivity, it still threatens to unravel and destroy a subject that needs to keep the body and its desires at bay in order to secure its rational and moral autonomy. The dark abyss of a self not in control of its thoughts, feelings, and desires is not overcome by the philosophical glorification of the subject's powers of imagination.
- Print length344 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity of Washington Press
- Publication dateAugust 14, 2009
- Dimensions6 x 0.88 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100274715953
- ISBN-13978-0295988924
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is a powerful and exciting book, one that will be of interest not just to scholars of Romanticism, but to all readers interested in the history of the concept of the imagination and the relationship of that history to philosophy, religion, and the process of secularization."―Robert Mitchell, Studies in Romanticism, Spring 2012
"The clarity and precision with which Mind's World addresses philosophical constructions of the imagination and their implications for theories of the subject make it an invaluable resource."―David M. Baulch, Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, Vol. 57-58, 2010
"Schlutz's book is a tour de force through some very difficult patches of intellectual history. Throughout he is as clear and surefooted as the subject matter permits. Recommended."―Choice
"One of the seminal studies of Western intellectual history to appear in the last decade, Schlutz's book moves through literature and philosophical texts in French, German, and English in a cross-linguistic and multi-disciplinary look at the roots of Romantic imagination and its paradoxes."―Prism(s)
"Mind's World offers a distinguished, thoughtful, and highly accomplished account of one of the thornier and seemingly intractable concepts in modernity. The range of texts chosen, the entirely responsible method of treatment, and the clarity of the presentation all make Schlutz's study a most impressive and desirable contribution to the study of Romantic theory and poetics."―Thomas Pfau, Duke University
"This book is an original and valuable contribution to the intellectual history of the Enlightenment and early Romanticism and to the history of literary theory: intelligently ambitious in scope, genuinely comparative in approach. Schlutz is adept at juxtaposing texts that are usually examined in isolation from one another."―Nicholas Halmi, University of Oxford
About the Author
Alexander M. Schlutz is associate professor of English at John Jay College, City University of New York.
Product details
- ASIN : 0295988924
- Publisher : University of Washington Press (August 14, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 344 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0274715953
- ISBN-13 : 978-0295988924
- Item Weight : 1.38 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.88 x 9 inches
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon