Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, 16th-17th Century French Literature - Literary Criticism, Mind, Philosophy of, General & Miscellaneous French Philosophy, Renaissance Philosophy, Modern Philosophy - General & Miscellaneous, Philosophy - Gener

Writing Cogito

Name: Writing Cogito
Author: Hassan Melehy
ISBN: 9780791435724

by Hassan Melehy

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Overview

Combining literary theory and history with detailed textual analysis, Melehy examines a series of events at the outset of modernity involving both literature and philosophy. Through the work of Michel de Montaigne and Rene Descartes, Melehy considers the question of the foundation of the human subject, in the context of contemporary debates in literature and philosophy. Montaigne, through writing, examines the many possibilities of subjective experience, and finds that the subject takes shape in writing. Descartes comes to the subject in search of a principle to circumvent the uncertainty of language - "I think, therefore I am," the cogito. But Descartes, Melehy shows, must continually depend on literary devices, on the properties of language whose effects he is so eager to escape - also deploying the devices to disguise the fact that they permeate his work.