ANNOUNCEMENTS
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PhD minor in Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts begins this year! Click here for details.
02.18.16: Oren Izenberg (English, Irvine) will speak about lyric and the "Cosmoscope." More...
04.04.16: roundtable on literature and philosophy, with Alexander Key, Michelle Karnes, Amir Eshel, and R. Lanier Anderson. More...
04.27.16: lecture by Kendall Walton (Philosophy, U Michigan). Details TBA. More...
05.16.16: lecture by Toril Moi (Literature/PAL, Duke). More...
Now available for viewing / listening -- video and audio recordings of Philosophy and Literature events, including Michael Emerson, The Philosophy of LOST.
Videos from the "Narrative Self, Lyric Self, Absent Self" conference (February, 2013) are now available here.
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:
