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The Self in Moral Space: Life Narrative and the Good

The Self in Moral Space: Life Narrative and the Good

by David B. Parker (Author)

  • New

    Hardcover 2007

    $82.02
Synopsis

All of us take our moral bearings from a conception of the good, or a range of goods, that we consider most important. We are in this sense selves in moral space. Building on the work of the philosopher Charles Taylor, among others, David Parker examines a range of classic and contemporary autobiographies-including those of St. Augustine, William Wordsworth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Gosse, Roland Barthes, Seamus Heaney, and J. M. Coetzee-to reveal a whole domain of life narrative that has been previously ignored, one that enables a new approach to the question of what constitutes a good life narrative. Moving from an ethics toward an aesthetics of life writing, Parker follows Wittgenstein's view that ethics and aesthetics are one.

The Self in Moral Space is distinctive in that its key ethical question is not What is it right for the life writer to do? but the broader question What is it good to be? This question opens up an important debate with the dominant postmodern paradigms that prevail in life writing studies today. In Parker's estimation, such paradigms are incapable of explaining why life writing matters in the contemporary context. Life narrative, he argues, faces readers with the perennial ethical question How should a human being live? We need a new reconstructive paradigm, as offered by this book, in order to gain a fuller understanding of life narrative and its humanistic potential.

$82.02

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 208
 Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 12 Apr 2007
ISBN 10: 0801445612
ISBN 13: 9780801445613

Media Reviews

David Parker demonstrates the fruitfulness of an ongoing conversation between literature and philosophy. Moral philosophers are paying increasing attention to literary texts for insights that some argue are not to be gained elsewhere. The Self in Moral Space shows that literary theorists may learn equally from philosophers.

-- Samantha Vice * Times Literary Supplement *

David Parker works from a full and clear understanding of current positions in autobiography theory in order to argue that identity, as expressed in life narratives, is invariably situated and determined in moral space, and further, that the quality of that moral space contributes quite significantly to the aesthetic quality of the work. The Self in Moral Space blends philosophy and literary criticism with a richness and finesse that will alter the way we read autobiography.

-- Susanna Egan, University of British Columbia

In a series of inspired and compelling readings David Parker maps an ethicist approach to autobiography that is both illuminating and wise. This fine and powerful book establishes ethics as not only central but also necessary to our understanding of life writing.

-- Paul John Eakin, editor of The Ethics of Life Writing

In this original and important book, David Parker calls for a new paradigm for comprehending life writing and demonstrates what it would look like. His writing is clear and crisp and moves along quickly. The Self in Moral Space will be of immediate interest to literary critics and scholars of life writing but will also appeal greatly to philosophers and scholars of religious studies, because Parker directly engages the theoretical issues related to ethical criticism.

-- John D. Barbour, Martin Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy, St. Olaf College
Author Bio
David Parker is Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of several books, including Ethics, Theory, and the Novel and coeditor of Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Philosophy, and Theory.