The Ethics of Immediacy: Dangerous Experience in Freud, Woolf, and Merleau-Ponty
(Hardback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
The Ethics of Immediacy: Dangerous Experience in Freud, Woolf, and Merleau-Ponty
By (Author) Dr. Jeffrey McCurry
Series edited by Professor Esther Rashkin
Series edited by Professor Mari Ruti
Series edited by Professor Peter L. Rudnytsky
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
2nd November 2023
United States
Classifications
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Literary theory
Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology
128
Physical Properties
Hardback
224
Width 140mm, Height 216mm
Description
Drawing connections between Freudian psychoanalysis, Virginia Woolfs criticism and fiction, and Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenology, The Ethics of Immediacy recounts the far-reaching consequences of the modern turn towards a new ethics of immediacy. During the first half of the 20th century, a profound transformation an existential revolution took place in European culture in how human beings conceived of themselves. Inspired by Freuds psychoanalysis, a newfound appreciation for the realm of immediate experience in human life emerged. With Freud himself making a signal contribution to this existential revolution, and with Woolf and Merleau-Ponty taking up Freuds ideas in their own unique ways, all three figures began to regard first-order, spontaneous, direct, unselfconscious, concrete experience of self and world as standing at the heart of what it means to be human. Jeffrey McCurry describes how this new state of affairs stood in contrast to how immediate experience had been historically dismissed, devalued, repressed, and even negated in the fields of psychology, literature, and philosophy. This experience posed dangers to psychological stability, social order, and philosophical certainty. McCurry examines how Freuds psychoanalytic theory, Woolfs modernist criticism and fiction, and Merleau-Pontys phenomenology, psychology, literature, and philosophy in turns embraced the risks and dangers of putting immediate experience as the center of humanity, of respecting, understanding, appreciating, and following the lead of immediate, spontaneous, pre-reflective, pre-evaluative, concrete experience in human life.
Author Bio
Jeffrey McCurry is Director of the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Philosophy, Duquesne University, USA. He is also a member of the faculty at the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center.
