Skip to:

Joshua Landy

People

Contact:

104 Pigott Hall
650 723 4914
landy@stanford.edu

Office Hours:

Variable. Information and signup form at http://tinyurl.com/nac68nk

Focal Groups:

Research Groups:

User is not a member of any group.

Affinity links:

re-enchantment
self-deception
self-fashioning
the pragmatics of reading
philosophical aesthetics
Beckett
Proust
Mallarmé
Nietzsche
Plato

Links:

Philosophy and Literature

Joshua Landy

Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French
Professor of Comparative Literature
Chair of Graduate Studies, French

Curriculum Vitae

Joshua Landy is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French, Professor of Comparative Literature, and co-director of the Literature and Philosophy Initiative at Stanford, home to major tracks in Philosophy and Literature.

Professor Landy is the author of Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust (Oxford, 2004) and of How To Do Things with Fictions (Oxford, 2012). He is also the co-editor of two volumes, Thematics: New Approaches (SUNY, 1995, with Claude Bremond and Thomas Pavel) and The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford, 2009, with Michael Saler). Philosophy as Fiction deals with issues of self-knowledge, self-deception, and self-fashioning in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, while raising the question of what literary form contributes to an engagement with such questions; How to Do Things with Fictions explores a series of texts (by Plato, Beckett, Mallarmé, and Mark) that function as training-grounds for the mental capacities.

Professor Landy has appeared on the NPR shows "Forum" and "Philosophy Talk" (on narrative selfhood and on the function of fiction) and has on various occasions been a guest host of Robert Harrison's "Entitled Opinions" (with Lera Boroditsky on Language and Thought, with Michael Saler on Re-Enchantment, with John Perry and Ken Taylor on the Uses of Philosophy, and with Alexander Nehamas on Beauty).

Professor Landy has received the Walter J. Gores Award for Teaching Excellence (1999) and the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching (2001).

COURSES

FRENCH 228E Getting Through Proust
  • Autumn 2014-15

Selections from all seven volumes of "In Search of Lost Time". Focus on issues of personal identity (perspective, memory, life-narrative); interpersonal relations (friendship, love, homosexuality, jealousy, indirect expression); knowledge (objective truth, subjective truth, necessary illusions); redemption (enchantment, disenchantment, re-enchantment); aesthetics (music, painting, fiction); and Proust'™s own style (narrative sequence, sentence structure, irony, metaphor, metonymy, metalepsis). Taught in English; readings in French or English.

ITALIAN 328 Literature, Narrative, and the Self (COMPLIT 328, FRENCH 328)
  • Autumn 2013-14

The role of narrative in the well-lived life. Are narratives necessary? Can they, and should they, be literary? When might non-narrative approaches, whether literary or otherwise, be more relevant? Is unity of self something given, something to be achieved, or something to be overcome? Readings from Aristotle, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, MacIntyre, G. Strawson, Velleman; Ricoeur, Brooks; Shakespeare, Stendhal, Musil, Levi, Beckett, Morrison; film. Taught in English.

FRENCH 328 Literature, Narrative, and the Self (COMPLIT 328, ITALIAN 328)
  • Autumn 2013-14

The role of narrative in the well-lived life. Are narratives necessary? Can they, and should they, be literary? When might non-narrative approaches, whether literary or otherwise, be more relevant? Is unity of self something given, something to be achieved, or something to be overcome? Readings from Aristotle, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, MacIntyre, G. Strawson, Velleman; Ricoeur, Brooks; Shakespeare, Stendhal, Musil, Levi, Beckett, Morrison; film. Taught in English.

COMPLIT 328 Literature, Narrative, and the Self (FRENCH 328, ITALIAN 328)
  • Autumn 2013-14

The role of narrative in the well-lived life. Are narratives necessary? Can they, and should they, be literary? When might non-narrative approaches, whether literary or otherwise, be more relevant? Is unity of self something given, something to be achieved, or something to be overcome? Readings from Aristotle, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, MacIntyre, G. Strawson, Velleman; Ricoeur, Brooks; Shakespeare, Stendhal, Musil, Levi, Beckett, Morrison; film. Taught in English.

DLCL 222 Philosophy and Literature
  • Autumn 2013-14
  • Winter 2013-14

The Focal Group in Philosophy and Literature brings together scholars and students from eight departments to investigate questions in aesthetics and literary theory, philosophically-inflected literary texts, and the form of philosophical writings. Fields of interest include both continental and analytic philosophy, as well as cognitive science, political philosophy, rational choice theory, and related fields.

SLAVIC 181 Philosophy and Literature (CLASSGEN 81, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81)
  • Winter 2013-14

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

ITALIAN 181 Philosophy and Literature (CLASSGEN 81, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
  • Winter 2013-14

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

GERMAN 181 Philosophy and Literature (CLASSGEN 81, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
  • Winter 2013-14

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

FRENCH 181 Philosophy and Literature (CLASSGEN 81, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
  • Winter 2013-14

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

COMPLIT 181 Philosophy and Literature (CLASSGEN 81, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
  • Winter 2013-14

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

ITALIAN 181 Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
  • Winter 2014-15

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

FRENCH 181 Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
  • Winter 2014-15

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

COMPLIT 181 Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
  • Winter 2014-15

(Formerly CLASSGEN 81) Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

PUBLICATIONS