ANNOUNCEMENTS
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5.19.09
A special episode of Robert Harrison's "Entitled Opinions," on the subject of The Re-Enchantment of the World, aired on May 19. The episode is archived on the Entitled Opinions website and in iTunes.

5.04.09
How can we be the poets of our lives? This was the topic of a recent episode of KQED's "Forum" with Michael Krasny. Click here for the archived episode.

5.01.09
Next year's Capstone Seminars will include for the first time a course on the taoist Chuang-Tsu. Details on this and other capstones will be listed here.

2.1.09
Book news: The Re-Enchantment of the World, featuring essays by Andrea Nightingale, Robert Harrison, Sepp Gumbrecht, Joshua Landy, Dan Edelstein, and Michel Serres, is now available.


Every novel says to the reader: ‘Things are not as simple as you think.’ That is the novel's eternal truth, but it grows steadily harder to hear amid the din of easy, quick answers.—Milan Kundera

What is so fascinating about works like Plato's dialogues and Dostoevsky's novels? Can philosophy and literature, in such combinations, achieve more than the sum of the two parts? Can philosophical approaches account for the specific power of literary works, even those that are not overtly philosophical? And can literary devices contribute to philosophical goals—in a way, perhaps, that nothing else could?

Founded in 2004, the initiative in Philosophy and Literature brings together Stanford’s vibrant group of literary scholars and its renowned philosophy department to answer questions like these. The initiative currently comprises a set of undergraduate major tracks, a graduate student workshop, and faculty-led events. Recent interests of participating faculty include:

  • the nature and value of beauty
  • literature and cognitive science
  • literature and the limits of sense
  • irony and ironism
  • literature and self-fashioning
  • intention and interpretation
  • metaphor
  • mimesis and make-believe
  • non-semantic effects of literary texts
  • literature and moral improvement
  • styles and genres of philosophical writing

For representative writings and links by Stanford and non-Stanford writers alike, please browse our library. Here are a few books by affiliated Stanford authors:


Rome la Pluie The Party of Humanity Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Self-Deception and Paradoxes of Rationality Genres in Dialogue Pushkin and Romantic Fiction Production of Presence Taste Philosophy as Fiction Fiction Sets You Free Hermes
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