Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature

Rating:
Summary: Taking stories seriously
Review: A collection of essays all of which present us with possibilities -- stories as moral teachers. We all learn from, care about, and revel in the stories that we read. Nussbaum takes seriously our ability to approach fiction with care and convincingly argues that we can extend this mode of being as ethical. If we approached the world with the care and attention we do characters in a book, we would be excercising a instinctively human morality. Beautifully written -- it can change your outlook on how we should see ourselves and the world.

Rating:
Summary: Almost unintelligible
Review: A previous review says that this book is about the "human heart trying to understand itself", but I found it daunting for my human heart to understand this book. I was assigned this text book in college, and I suspect in that in academia there is a "Emperor Has No Clothes" phenomenon, where people are averse to criticising badly written books for fear of appearing intellectually deficient. While I do not doubt Ms. Nussbaum's intellectual capabilities, she needs to adopt a more clear writing style.

Rating:
Summary: Taking stories seriously
Review: A previous review says that this book is about the "human heart trying to understand itself", but I found it daunting for my human heart to understand this book. I was assigned this text book in college, and I suspect in that in academia there is a "Emperor Has No Clothes" phenomenon, where people are averse to criticising badly written books for fear of appearing intellectually deficient. While I do not doubt Ms. Nussbaum's intellectual capabilities, she needs to adopt a more clear writing style.

Rating:
Summary: required reading
Review: This collection of essays is not only a first-rate work in the philosophy of literature, but it goes beyond the limits of that heading to sound out the philosophical implications of the literary works themselves. It begins by raising the question, so often unhappily answered without analysis, of what form of writing is most hospitable to the raising of philosophical questions. The answer, developed over the course of the essays, is that "literary" authors often present a more intricate and acute consideration of philosophical issues, especially those pertaining to human beings as emotional and moral agents; and this implies a thorough critique of not only the writing style most fashionable in philosophy but also the writers most often studied by those who consider themselves philosophers. A number of the essays assume familiarity with works by, for example, James, Proust, and Beckett, while others are more general in their scope. Anyone who feels that important philosophical issues are raised in literary texts, which deserve a careful, intelligent, and non-formulaic (or "theoretical") reading, ought to read this book. Anyone who has the suspicion that love is something that we ought to try to understand in all of its complexity and fullness, ought to read it as well. It might just restore your faith in novels, in philosophy, and in the human heart striving to understand itself.