The Problem of Free Will in David Foster Wallace
eBook - ePub

The Problem of Free Will in David Foster Wallace

  1. 286 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Problem of Free Will in David Foster Wallace

About this book

This book argues that David Foster Wallace failed to provide a response to the existential predicament of our time. Wallace wanted to confront despair through art, but he remained trapped, and his entrapment originates in the "existentialist contradiction": the impossibility of affirming the meaningfulness of life and an ethics of compassion while believing in free will.

To substantiate this thesis, the analysis reads Wallace in conversation with the existentialist philosophers and writers who influenced him: Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It compares his non-fiction with the sociologies of Christopher Lasch, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, and Anthony Giddens. And it finds inspiration in Giacomo Leopardi, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Emanuele Severino to conclude that the philosophy which pervades Wallace's works entails despair and represents the essence of our civilization's interpretation of the world.

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Yes, you can access The Problem of Free Will in David Foster Wallace by Paolo Pitari in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Littérature & Critique littéraire moderne. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2024
Print ISBN
9781032676678
eBook ISBN
9781040044650
Topic
Littérature
Subtopic
Critique littéraire moderne

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Endorsements Page
  3. Half-Title Page
  4. Series Page
  5. Title Page
  6. Copyright Page
  7. Contents
  8. Preface: The problem of free will
  9. Introduction: The problem of free will in David Foster Wallace
  10. PART I Literary truth according to David Foster Wallace
  11. PART II The problem of free will in David Foster Wallace’s literary sociology
  12. PART III The problem of free will in David Foster Wallace’s fiction: A comparative reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky and David Foster Wallace
  13. Afterword: A response to criticism
  14. Acknowledgments
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index