After Emerson

John T. Lysaker

Description

John T. Lysaker works between and weaves together questions and replies in philosophical psychology, Emerson studies, and ethics in this book of deep existential questioning. Each essay in this atypical, philosophical book employs recurring terms, phrases, and questions that characterize our contemporary age. Setting out from the idea of where we are in an almost literal sense, Lysaker takes readers on an intellectual journey into thematic concerns and commitments of broad interest, such as the nature of self and self-experience, ethical life, poetry and philosophy, and history and race. In the manner of Emerson, Cavell, and Rorty, Lysaker's vibrant writing is certain to have a transformative effect on American philosophy today.

Acknowledgements
Where Do We Find Ourselves?
Not with Syllables but Men
Essaying America
Living Multiplicity: A Matter of Course
Emerson, Race, & the Conduct of Life
Reforming Ethical Life
Emerson & the Case of Philosophy
Abbreviations for Emerson's Works
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Lycée
• Philosophie
• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Pragmatism
• Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie
• Movements

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253026033
• Langue: English

Extrait

AFTER EMERSON
A MERICAN P HILOSOPHY
John J. Stuhr, editor
E DITORIAL B OARD
Susan Bordo
Vincent Colapietro
John Lachs
No lle McAfee
Jos Medina
Cheyney Ryan
Richard Shusterman
AFTER EMERSON
John T. Lysaker
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by John T. Lysaker
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lysaker, John T., author.
Title: After Emerson / John T. Lysaker.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Series: American philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017017967 (print) | LCCN 2016048147 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253026033 (eb) | ISBN 9780253025982 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253026002 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, American-21st century. | Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Classification: LCC B946 (print) | LCC B946 .L97 2017 (ebook) | DDC 814/.3-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017967
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
For John Stuhr
Against Remorse .-A thinker sees his own deeds as experiments and questions-as the kind of things that bring about disclosures. Above all, success and failure are for him answers . To be annoyed or feel remorse because something goes wrong-that he leaves to those who act because they have received orders and have to reckon with a beating when his lordship is not satisfied with the result.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Where Do We Find Ourselves?
Not with Syllables but Men
Essaying America
Living Multiplicity: A Matter of Course
Emerson, Race, and the Conduct of Life
Reforming Ethical Life
Emerson and the Case of Philosophy
Abbreviations for Emerson s Works
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book, like all books, like all lives, appears with help. Some of that help has been institutional. Four of these essays were published previously, although those versions have been reworked in the context of the whole now assembled, hence new titles for most. Where Do We Find Ourselves appeared as Finding My Way through Moral Space in Epoche: A Journal for the History of Philosophy (vol. 17, no. 1, 2012); Not with Syllables but Men appeared as Not with Syllables but Men: Emerson s Poetics of the Whole in Pragmatism Today (Winter, 2011); Essaying America appeared in Journal of Speculative Philosophy (vol. 26, no. 3, 2012) as did Reforming Ethical Life under the title Praxis and Form: Thirty Notes for an Ethics of the Future (vol. 25, no. 2, 2011). My thanks go to those publications for their support and permission to rework and publish these pieces in the context of a book.
A year s leave at Emory s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry allowed me to finish the old and complete the new in a wonderful group of humanists. I will always remember 2015-2016 as one of the most productive I ever had.
Emory University is generous with its support for research. Funds from the office of Dean Robin Forman allowed me to hire Tony Leyh, who ably corralled several references and helped assemble the bibliography, and Rebekah Spera, who proofread and compiled the index. The Sire Program in undergraduate research also sponsored Vincent Xu, who ably helped me work through Emerson s texts in pursuit of terms such as race, slavery, Negro, etc. That work was integral to what became Emerson, Race, and the Conduct of Life.
My ongoing participation in the American Philosophies Forum has enabled me to be more ambitious as a writer, and one essay in particular, Reforming Ethical Life, began there.
The Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy heard versions of Not with Syllables but Men and Emerson, Race, and the Conduct of Life, and presenting them in that context helped make them better than they otherwise would be. (My first time through the issue of Emerson and race found me in the company of Melvin Rogers, whose deep smarts and learning were an ongoing benefit, particularly when we disagreed.) I am also just grateful that there is a society that welcomes forays into American romanticism.
Erik Vogt invited me to present the Blanchard W. Means Memorial Lecture at Trinity College in 2015. After discussing several topics, we settled on Emerson and race, which led the essay close to its present state. I was and remain grateful for the opportunity to share that work in such a receptive and engaging community.
When Not with Syllables but Men appeared in press, I dedicated it to two poets, Garrett Hongo and Terry Hummer. Both have deepened my ability to work with poetry (and thus with philosophy as well), and that persists, like my gratitude, across this volume. Thanks also to Garrett for inviting me to contribute to a phenomenal festschrift for Charles Wright published by Northwest Review (vol. 49, no. 2, 2011). My contribution has found its way into and enriched Not with Syllables but Men.
Essaying America also had a first run at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy conference alongside papers by Cindy Willett and Shannon Sullivan, both of whom I continue to admire. It was its second run, however, at the Summer Institute of American Philosophy that led me to push it toward the character it now has. Scott Pratt and Erin McKenna were particularly engaged interlocutors, for which I am grateful. And even though we still hear the word America differently, I share the tradition of resistance that they exemplify and have documented, though more as a passive anarchist settling and unsettling a terra infirma than a philosophical citizen of something like America.
Living Multiplicity grew out of what is now fifteen years of work with Paul Lysaker on the nature of schizophrenia and its impact on the course of a life, work that has also impacted, for the better, the course of my own. Thinking in clinical contexts and in the face of profound suffering brought me back to thoughts through which most of this volume flows. This essay significantly revises but remains continuous with what we presented together in chapter 3 of Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self and earlier essays.
Living Multiplicity also reflects a decade of dialogues with Mark Johnson, who exemplifies genuine collegiality and friendship, which is often asymmetrical in its benefits, as in this case-I learned a good deal more than I was able to give.
Where Do We Find Ourselves? began as a paper on the work of my dissertation director, Charles Scott, which I gave at a conference in his honor. I would like that honor to carry over into this version.

I am not risk averse. The pages that follow make this plain. But being so is only possible in a larger context of support. One can go it alone for a spell because in general one is not. On many levels, Indiana University Press has supported my work in and now after Emerson. Dee Mortensen in particular has not only received and reviewed that work, improved it, but, in conversation, prodded it down more exciting lines of thought. At a DC meeting of the American Philosophical Association, she threw out the idea of a volume of essays and here we are. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to grow as a thinker and writer in her company. I would have had even less to offer if I had not.
Outside of any conceivable obligation, John Stuhr has always supported me without a glimmer of anticipation for some favor in return. This has allowed me to develop my thought outside the usual modes of specialization expected of those working in contemporary research universities, and with a degree of rhetorical ambition not always sought or rewarded in professional philosophy. This gift-which has given me to myself, and in a manner I find becoming-exceeds measure. I can only receive it in the abandon of an unqualified gratitude, which rises even as I type. As I dedicate this book to him, I hope these deeper currents crest the wave of that gesture.
Several publishers and literary agents have facilitated the reproduction of poems or portions of poems. Excerpts from Shirt from SELECTED POEMS by Robert Pinsky. Copyright 2011 by Robert Pinsky. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Star Turn from NEGATIVE BLUE: SELECTED LATER POEMS by Charles Wright. Copyright 2000 by Charles Wright. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. The Heavens [9 l.] and excerpt of 12 l. from the Flames from THE THRONE OF THE THIRD HEAVEN OF THE NATIONS MILLENNIUM GENERAL ASSEMBLY: POEMS COLLECTED AND NEW by DENIS JOHNSON. Copyright (c) 1969, 1976, 1982, 1987, 1995 by Denis Johnson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpt of fifteen lines from Santa Barbara road from HUMAN WISHES by ROBERT HASS. Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Hass. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Flow Chart by John Ashbery. Copyright 1991 by John Ashbery. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author. All rights reserved. Lines from John Ashbery s FLOW CHART, Carcanet Press Limited, Manchester, 1991, also are reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Limited. The System from Three Poems by John Ashbery. Copyright 1970, 1971, 1972 by John Ashbery. Reprinted by permission of Georges