| Description |
1 online resource (254 pages) |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Contents |
Cover; The Enlargement of Life; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part One The Ideal; 1. Reflective Self-Evaluation; 1.1 From Autonomy to Reflective Self-Evaluation; 1.2 The Problem of Exclusion; 1.3 The Problem of Morality and Responsibility; 1.4 The Problem of Moral Obtuseness; 1.5 The Balanced Ideal; 1.6 Imagination; 2. Moral Imagination; 2.1 Characteristics; 2.2 Possibilities and Limits; 2.3 Reason and the Voluntarist Ideal; 2.4 Moral Imagination and the Good; 2.5 Overview; Part Two The Corrective Imagination; 3. Understanding Life Backward. |
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3.1 Mill's Case3.2 Limitations; 3.3 Sincerity; 3.4 Promethean Romanticism; 3.5 Transcending Limits; 3.6 The Need for Balance; 4. From Hope and Fear Set Free; 4.1 Myth and Reality; 4.2 Contingency; 4.3 Oedipus's Achievement; 4.4 Coping with Contingency; 4.5 Is Realism Enough?; 5. All Passion Spent; 5.1 Responsibility and Fulfillment; 5.2 Living Responsibly; 5.3 Opting for Responsibility; 5.4 Going Deeper; 5.5 Shortchanged by Morality; 5.6 Overview; Part Three From Exploratory to Disciplined Imagination; 6. Registers of Consciousness; 6.1 The Approach; 6.2 The General Imbroglio. |
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6.3 The Failure and Its Sources6.4 Aesthetic Romanticism and Its Snares; 6.5 Exploratory Imagination and Aesthetic Romanticism; 7. This Process of Vision; 7.1 Halfway to Fulfillment; 7.2 Growing in Appreciation of Life; 7.3 Seeing Things as They Are; 7.4 Integrated Lives; 7.5 An Honorable Failure; 8. An Integral Part of Life; 8.1 Self-Transformation; 8.2 A Book Consubstantial with Its Author; 8.3 Innocence and Reflection; 8.4 Growing Inward; 8.5 Living Appropriately; 8.6 Overview; Part Four The Disciplined Imagination; 9. Toward a Purified Mind; 9.1 Purity; 9.2 Two Kinds of Purity. |
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9.3 Transcendental Romanticism9.4 Reflective Purity; 9.5 Reflective Purity and the Balanced Ideal; 10. The Self's Judgment of the Self; 10.1 The Standard View; 10.2 Doubts about the Standard View; 10.3 The Revised View; 10.4 Doubts about the Revised View; 10.5 Shame and the Balanced Ideal; 11. The Hardest Service; 11.1 Reason and Reflective Self-Evaluation; 11.2 The Uses of Reason; 11.3 Reason in Reflective Self-Evaluation; 11.4 Wrestling with Truth; 11.5 Overview; Notes; Works Cited; Index. |
| Summary |
Moral imagination, according to John Kekes, is indispensable to a fulfilling and responsible life. By correcting a parochial view of the possibilities available to us and overcoming mistaken assumptions about our limitations, moral imagination liberates us from self-imposed narrowness. It enlarges life by enabling us to reflect more deeply and widely about how we should live. The material for this reflection, Kekes believes, is supplied by literature. Each of the eleven chapters of the book focuses on a novel, play, or autobiography that exemplifies the protagonist's reflective self-evaluation. Kekes shows the enduring significance of these protagonists' successes or failures and how we might apply what they teach to our very different characters and circumstances. Kekes discusses John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, the Oedipus tragedies by Sophocles, Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Henry James's The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl, Montaigne's Essays, a story by Herodotus, and Arthur Koestler's Arrival and Departure. Throughout, Kekes shows that moral thought must be concrete, not abstract; that good reasons for or against how we live and what choices we make are available but must be particular, not universal; and that the rigid separation of literature, psychology, and moral thought is detrimental to all three. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Imagination.
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Imagination. |
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Autonomy.
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Autonomy. |
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Self.
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Self. |
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Conduct of life.
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Conduct of life. |
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Self-realization -- Moral and ethical aspects.
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Self-realization -- Moral and ethical aspects. |
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Self-realization. |
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Imagination in literature.
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Imagination in literature. |
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Conduct of life in literature.
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Conduct of life in literature. |
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Self-realization in literature.
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Self-realization in literature. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Kekes, John. Enlargement of Life : Moral Imagination at Work. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, ©2018 9780801445118 |
| ISBN |
9781501732232 (electronic book) |
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1501732234 (electronic book) |
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