126 research outputs found
Samuel Johnson and the vocation of the author
No full textMuch has been written about Samuel Johnson as a Christian, and much about him as an author; this study is about where the two meet, in the idea of the literary vocation. Though Johnson only uses the word âvocationâ a handful of times, it holds both the quotidian sense of a job and the more exalted notion of a divine call, a tension which informs Johnsonâs thinking.
I begin with Johnsonâs development as a religious writer, influenced by William Lawâs contention that any form of life can be devout and holy, and by Bernard Mandevilleâs unsentimental candour. Johnsonâs writing bears the marks of both. He revised Irene, for instance, to make it less overtly Christian: a reminder that Johnsonâs religious convictions bring an invisible pressure to bear on apparently secular works. In his early years on the Gentlemanâs Magazine Johnson develops the principle that authorship, being a public act, carries great responsibilities.
It is, in fact, a vocation, and unpacking this concept takes up Chapter 2. Johnson sees writing as a potential form of public service, adding that a solitary writer ânaturally sinks from omission to forgetfulness of social dutiesâ. Too few commentators have grasped that Johnson sees morality in social terms â as a matter of answering the needs of others, according to oneâs place in an order overseen by divine providence. But again and again he refers to the human need âto seek from one another assistance and supportâ (Rambler 104). Instances of mutual help âby frequent reciprocations of beneficence unite mankind in society and friendshipâ. Johnsonâs well-known emphasis on friendship is only one expression of this deeper sense that society is held together by trust; and therefore, by the truth. Writersâ communication of truth defines their own social duties.
While Johnson can sound close to Shaftesbury when he writes of mankindâs sociability, there is really a significant gap between them, because Johnsonâs view of human nature is more jaded. He expects people to hurt each other for the same reasons they help each other; and he recognises a strong tendency towards pride and superiority â especially among writers, who are tempted to cut themselves off from society.
Chapter 3 deals in more depth with a writerâs social role, which is simply expressed as the ability to put the truth memorably. Borrowing from a tradition which stretches back to Seneca at least, Johnson believes that a writer becomes a âbenefactor of mankindâ by putting the useful, but readily forgotten, principles of the good life into memorable forms. Drawing on Lockeâs account of the memory, and deviating from Lockeâs account of moral action, he suggests that literature has a power to move the reason and the passions at once â hence his demand that poetry be both true and pleasurable. While this resembles the Horatian formula of dulce et utile, Johnson added to it a sense of writersâ and readersâ experience of the text: how âimpressionsâ are transferred from the world, via the writer, to the text, and so to the reader. Learning how to persuade the audience, however, necessitates first-hand acquaintance with the world.
Hence the subjects of Chapters 4 and 5, which are pride and humility respectively. Pride separates the author from the social world, making them ineffectual and unable to communicate truth. The âLivesâ of Swift and Milton establish this partly through their ridicule of the two subjects: though Johnson did not think ridicule established truth, it did restore a balance upset by an authorâs singularity.
âSingularityâ is the word Johnson uses to encapsulate Swiftâs faults: he was âfond of singularity, and desirous to make a mode of happiness for himself, different from the general course of things and order of Providenceâ. Milton, too, is condemned for his arrogance â but even more in order to correct the idolatry of his admirers. Johnson believes that Milton is being written about with absurd reverence, and so puts him back in his place â as just another member of society, with a role to fulfil.
Accepting that place involves a measure of humility. The question of the âdignity of literatureâ, a contested point during the nineteenth century, was alive in Johnsonâs time, and through his associations with what he himself called âGrub Streetâ, he lived and worked among many writers who might be thought undignified. Yet in the obscurity of the hacks Johnson found something to praise â an industrious, humble service opposed to the âletterâd arroganceâ of self-satisfied authors. â[T]he humble author of journals and gazettes must be considered as a liberal dispenser of beneficial knowledgeâ (Rambler 145). By stooping to be merely useful, journalists become great. Particularly in the Journey to the Western Islands, Johnson divests himself of authorial dignity, drawing attention to his own mistakes and omissions.
Such a humdrum view of the writerâs role, which placed the emphasis on the reader, put Johnson at odds with most of the prominent Romantics â and the scale of their revulsion from Johnson needs two chapters to be dealt with. Chapter 6 argues that their critique, especially that of Hazlitt and Coleridge, was above all about the question of the writerâs vocation: and for that reason, Shakespeare was the most contested ground â for Coleridge, Johnsonâs Shakespeare criticism was impertinent âfilthâ aimed at âthe greatest man that ever put on and put off mortalityâ. But that was exactly the kind of idolatrous view of authorship â what Hazlitt called approvingly âoverstrained enthusiasmâ â which Johnson wanted to challenge.
However, many of the Romanticsâ criticisms misrepresented Johnson; he was a more flexible thinker than they realised. In a final chapter, I look at the aftermath of the Romantics: how their accusation that Johnson was too narrow and bigoted to understand Shakespeare is echoed in Macaulay, and even in sympathetic readers like Matthew Arnold, and has dogged Johnson all the way to the present day. And I point out that the Romantic exaltation of the author has faced its own backlash, in ways that suggest Johnson might have seen more clearly than the Romantics thought.</p
Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett y Harris: El nuevo ateísmo
No full textRichard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great, and Sam Harris’ The End of Faith were published from 2004 to 2007. The new atheism was widely spread by these books. Compared to other atheisms, the particularity of this movement is rooted in its motivations, which are in a sense mostly cultural and political, rather than strictly circumscribed to philosophical issues. The goal of this note is to characterize the new atheism through the arguments given by the four referred book
Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett y Harris: El nuevo ateísmo
No full textRichard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, Christopher Hitchen’s God is not Great, and Sam Harris’ The End of Faith were published from 2004 to 2007. The new atheism was widely spread by these books. Compared to other atheisms, the particularity of this movement is rooted in its motivations, which are in a sense mostly cultural and political, rather than strictly circumscribed to philosophical issues. The goal of this note is to characterize the new atheism through the arguments given by the four referred books.De 2004 a 2007 se dio la aparición de cuatro libros que han contribuido a difundir el nuevo ateísmo a gran escala y dar a conocer su agenda político-social: The God Delusion de Richard Dawkins, Breaking the Spell de Daniel Dennett, God is not Great de Christopher Hitchens y The End of Faith de Sam Harris. La particularidad del nuevo ateísmo radica en sus motivaciones, las cuales, antes que meramente filosóficas, son en considerable medida culturales y políticas. La presente nota tiene por objeto caracterizar este movimiento delineando la argumentación de los cuatro libros en referencia
A post-structural theological critique of the perspectives of Christopher Hitchens on vicarious redemption.
No full textThesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.The guarded mind-set with which this study was initially constructed , was influenced by the notion that all that could have been said on the subject of vicarious redemption within the Judeo-Christian belief system, has been produced through scholarly research on the theories, doctrinal positions, and systems of belief, around the constructs of redemption and vicarious redemption within the Judeo-Christian worldview. However this study is premised on the view that there is a noticeable gap in the body of scholarship around the critique of the Christian belief system, and in particular, one of its doctrinal pillars, that of vicarious redemption. This thesis argues that this gap is being confronted by the resurgence of new challenges to the proposition of redemption, as raised from within the New Atheist movement, in which the late British-American author and public figure, Christopher Hitchens became the central and leading figure.
A theological critique of the construct and doctrine of vicarious redemption, as undertaken by Christopher Hitchens, forms the core academic focus of this study; which is conducted within a post-structural theoretical framework. The study, whilst examining the archaeology and architecture of the idea of vicarious redemption within the theological superstructure of Christendom and its founding doctrinal formations and theories, does represents an intentional step outside of the conventional trajectory of theological scholarship and analysis. In this latter regard, and alongside conventional literary resources on the subject, this study, has been inspired and informed by the convergence of, online New Media as a rich set of resource platforms for new research on this important subject. Given these new opportunities for research, alongside conventional research methods, this study captures the outright rejection, by Christopher Hitchens, of the doctrine of vicarious redemption; in what could be argued to represent a Kairos moment in biblical interpretation and criticism on the idea of redemption; a crucial and opportune moment in scholarly theological reflection, to which the special insights, hermeneutics and life and work of Christopher Hitchens has made an indelible contribution
Ateísmo posmoderno: análisis y crítica de sus argumentos
No full textThis article presents an analytical summary of three authors about their conceptions of God today.
They are André Glucksmann, Michel Onfray, both French and, Christopher Hitchens, an
English author. In the conclusion, the author offers his assessment of the summary presented.Este artículo presenta un resumen analítico del pensamiento de tres escritores contemporáneos
con respecto de la concepción de Dios en la actualidad, André Glucksmann, Michel Onfray, ambos
franceses y Christopher Hitchens, inglés. Al final el autor ofrece también su evaluación del
resumen presentado
ATEÍSMO POSMODERNO: ANÁLISIS Y CRÍTICA DE SUS ARGUMENTOS
No full textEste artículo presenta un resumen analítico del pensamiento de tres escritores contemporáneos con respecto de la concepción de Dios en la actualidad, André Glucksmann, Michel Onfray, ambos franceses y Christopher Hitchens, inglés. Al final el autor ofrece también su evaluación del resumen presentado. Abstract This article presents an analytical summary of three authors about their conceptions of God today. They are André Glucksmann, Michel Onfray, both French and, Christopher Hitchens, an English author. In the conclusion, the author offers his assessment of the summary presented
Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal
No full textGregory R. Peterson is a contributing author, Ethics, Out-Group Altruism, and the New Atheism.”
Book description: The term new atheism has been given to the recent barrage of bestselling books written by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and others. These books and their authors have had a significant media presence and have only grown in popularity over the years. This book brings together scholars from religious studies, science, sociology of religion, sociology of science, philosophy, and theology to engage the new atheism and place it in the context of broader scholarly discourses. This volume will serve to contextualize and critically examine the claims, arguments and goals of the new atheism so that readers can become more informed of some of the debates with which the new atheists inevitably and, at times unknowingly, engage.https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/hppr_book/1011/thumbnail.jp
Mesa 3. Nudo 2. Sujeto y saber.-La posibilidad de la filosofía y la contaminación de las disciplinas en el pensamiento de GillesDeleuze
No full textResumen: Este trabajo analizará el conflicto entre ciencia y religión. Más concretamente, en los cuatro representantes más destacados del „nuevo ateísmo‟ en el mundo anglosajón, conocidos como „los cuatro jinetes del ateísmo': el biólogo Richard Dawkins, el filósofo Daniel Dennett, el escritor Christopher Hitchens, y el filósofo Sam Harris. Analizaremos sus argumentos sobre la religión (la necesidad de poder hablar de ella sin miedo y sus ataques a ésta), la moral (posible y necesaria sin la religión), el ateísmo (su aparente reticencia a la palabra ateo), la ciencia (como el mejor método de conocimiento del mundo), etc.Abstract: This paper will analyze the conflict between science and religion. More concretly, in the work of the most distinguished of the representatives of the „new atheism‟ in the Anglo-Saxon world, known as „the four horsemen of the atheism‟: the biologist Richard Dawkins, the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the writer Christopher Hitchens, and the philosopher Sam Harris. We will analyze their arguments on religion (the need to be able to speak about it without fear and their assaults to this one), morality (possible and necessary without religion), atheism (their apparent reticence to the word atheist), science (as the best method of knowledge of the world), etc
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