Exploring the connections between autobiography and postmodernism, this book addresses self-representation in a variety of literatures - Native American, British, Chicana, immigrant, and lesbian, among others - in genres as diverse as poetry, naming, confession, photography, and the manifesto. The essays examine how different writers respond to the culturally specific pressures of genre, how these constraints are negotiated, and what self-representation reveals about the politics of identity.

Autobiography and Teacher Development in China investigates the roles of autobiography in teacher education, as several scholars in China recontextualize Western conceptions of teacher development, combining them with uniquely Chinese cultural conceptions to articulate a reconceptualization of teacher development that holds worldwide significance. Framed by the work of Zhang Hua and William F. Pinar, these theoretical and practical essays point to an internationally inflected reconceptualization of teachers' professional development, pre-service and in-service. This volume addresses multiple movements of teacher (...) education reform worldwide, focused on crafting a nationally distinctive course not only internationally, but also culturally, historically, and locally. (shrink)

In this fascinating autobiography from the foremost genius of twentieth-century physics, Max Planck tells the story of his life, his aims, and his thinking. Published posthumously, the papers in this volume were written for the general reader and make accessible his scientific theories as well as his philosophical ideals, including his thoughts on ethics and morals. Max (Karl Ernst Ludwig) Planck was a German physicist and philosopher known for his quantum theory, for which he won the Nobel Prize in (...) Physics in 1918. Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, in 1858 to an academic family, and he valued education from a young age. He attended the Universities of Munich and Berlin to study physics under the great scientific leaders Kirchhoff and Helmholtz. His early work mainly focused on the study of thermodynamics, and in 1900 he published a paper on his quantum theory that would change the face of modern physics. Planck worked as a professor at Berlin University his entire life, and he also served as the president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Science. During World War II, Planck experienced great hardships while he remained in Germany but openly opposed the Nazi regime. One of his two sons was executed during this time for an unsuccessful attempt on Hitler's life, and Planck's home in Berlin was eventually bombed. He continued to write on physics and philosophy until his death in 1947. (shrink)

Au xvie siècle, l’autobiographie et le récit de voyage étaient étroitement liés et suivirent pendant quelques décennies une évolution parallèle. Thomas Platter l’aîné essaya de fournir dans sesMémoires la description d’une vie exemplaire retraçant ses expériences multiples sur les routes d’Europe. Son fils Felix nous laissa un ouvrage disparate (un mélange de journal, de récit de voyage et de mémoires) où l’auteur paraît omniprésent. Sa conception de l’écriture autobiographique rappelle celle de Montaigne. Le jeune frère Thomas suivit rigoureusement les règles (...) émises par les théoriciens du voyage, condamnant toute opinion subjective. Les ouvrages des Platter nous donnent le meilleur exemple de l’évolution du genre (auto-)biographique entre la Renaissance classique et le Baroque dit sauvage. (shrink)

This early work by Robin G. Collingwood was originally published in 1939 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'An Autobiography' is the story of Collingwood's personal and academic life. Robin George Collingwood was born on 22nd February 1889, in Cartmel, England. He was the son of author, artist, and academic, W. G. Collingwood. He was greatly influenced by the Italian Idealists Croce, Gentile, and Guido de Ruggiero. Another important influence was his father, a (...) professor of fine art and a student of Ruskin. He published many works of philosophy, such as Speculum Mentis (1924), An Essay on Philosophic Method (1933), and An Essay on Metaphysics (1940). (shrink)

This paper examines epistemic injustice in knowledge production concerning autism. Its aim is to further our understanding of the distinctive shapes of the kinds of epistemic injustices against autists. The paper shows how Ian Hacking’s work on autistic autobiography brings into view a form of hermeneutical injustice that autists endure with respect to their firsthand accounts of their experiences of autism. It explores how understanding the distinctive shape of this hermeneutical injustice can help us further appreciate dangers and harms (...) of using interpretive frameworks for autistic experience that neglect autists’ own contributions to the formation of words and concepts for capturing their experiences. In particular, the paper argues that even when autists are included in knowledge production concerning autistic experience, they remain vulnerable to forms of hermeneutical marginalization that can stifle the coming into being of autistic experience. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell remains one of the greatest philosophers and most complex and controversial figures of the twentieth century. Here, in this frank, humorous and decidedly charming autobiography, Russell offers readers the story of his life – introducing the people, events and influences that shaped the man he was to become. Originally published in three volumes in the late 1960s, _Autobiography_ by Bertrand Russell is a revealing recollection of a truly extraordinary life written with the vivid freshness and clarity that (...) has made Bertrand Russell’s writings so distinctively his own. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 and died in 1970. One of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, he transformed philosophy and can lay claim to being one of the greatest philosophers of all time. He was a Nobel Prize winner for Literature and was imprisoned several times as a result of his pacifism. His views on religion, education, sex, politics and many other topics, made him one of the most read and revered writers of the age. This, (...) his autobiography, is one of the most compelling and vivid ever written. This one-volume, compact paperback edition contains an introduction by the politician and scholar, Michael Foot, which explores the status of this classic nearly 30 years after the publication of the final volume. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de préciser la relation entre l'épanouissement de l'autobiographie allemande de la fin du XVIIIe siècle et l'essor de la bourgeoisie en s'appuyant sur la notion de carrière de Luhmann. Cette notion rend compte de la nécessité pour l'individu, dans la société fonctionnelle bourgeoise, de trouver une identité personnelle et sociale grâce à la description de sa vie sous forme orale ou écrite. L'autobiographie de Jung-Stilling, publiée au fur et à mesure de son ascension sociale, montre bien (...) le rôle extraordinaire de ce récit dans la constitution de l'identité et l'amélioration des chances pratiques de son auteur. Au contraire, le roman psychologique, Anton Reiser, de K. P. Moritz décrit l'impossibilité du héros à poursuivre une carrière et à construire son identité à cause de son imagination débordante. L'autobiographie du XVIIIe siècle s'avère ainsi être l'autopoïesis littéraire de l'individualité concrète de ses auteurs. (shrink)

The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico is significant both as a source of insight into the influences on the eighteenth-century philosopher's intellectual development and as one of the earliest and most sophisticated examples of philosophical autobiography. Referring to himself in the third person, Vico records the course of his life and the influence that various thinkers had on the development of concepts central to his mature work. Beyond its relevance to the development of the New Science, the Autobiography (...) is also of interest for the light it sheds on Italian culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Still regarded by many as the best English-language translation of this classic work, the Cornell edition was widely lauded when first published in 1944. Wrote the Saturday Review of Literature: "Here was something new in the art of self-revelation. Vico wrote of his childhood, the psychological influences to which he was subjected, the social conditions under which he grew up and received an education and evolved his own way of thinking. It was so outstanding a piece of work that it was held up as a model, which it still is.". (shrink)

Der Band bietet die erstmalige Edition der handschriftlich überlieferten Autobiographie des mystischen Spiritualisten Friedrich Breckling (1629-1711). Die Quelle, die detailliert kommentiert wird, enthält exakte genealogische Daten zu Brecklings familiären Verhältnissen sowie zu seinem Lebenslauf und gibt u.a. Aufschluss über die Beschaffenheit von Brecklings dichtem Kommunikationsnetz. Autobiographie, Chronik und apokalyptischer Traktat verbinden sich in dieser Schrift zu einer literarischen Mischgattung, die unter den frühneuzeitlichen "Ego-Dokumenten" eine wenn nicht einzigartige, so doch besondere Stellung einnehmen dürfte. Detaillierte Register erschließen das Werk.

Cet article tente de répondre à la question suivante : en quoi et comment une autobiographie, en tant que récit de vie (life story) écrit par un auteur en vue de raconter son histoire (life history), peut-elle livrer à ses lecteurs une définition de l’identité personnelle de son rédacteur ? Partant d’une conception des temporalités comme modes de temporalisation, l’article distingue le temps (présent) de la narration, le temps (passé) de l’expérience vécue et remémorée et le « tiers-temps » (futur) (...) du projet « d’interprétation de soi par soi-même », inhérent à l’identité narrative, cœur d’une l’identité personnelle mise en récit, selon Ricœur. S’appuyant sur quatre autobiographies, l’article repère des formules argumentaires pouvant s’appliquer à l’« identité personnelle » de leurs auteurs : « Je suis innocent » (Rousseau) ; « Je suis ma névrose » (Sartre) ; « Je suis quelqu’un » (Beauvoir) ; « Je suis un universitaire issu des classes populaires anglaises » (Hoggart). Après avoir clarifié les liens entre « formes identitaires » et « identité personnelle », l’article montre les contradictions qui surgissent lorsqu’on veut combiner les déterminations de l’identité sociale avec les décisions singulières inhérentes à une identité personnelle. (shrink)

J. S. Mill was the greatest British philosopher of the nineteenth century. Mill's purpose in writing his Autobiography was to set down his own struggle for individuality, and vindicate his life to himself and others.

In making the condition for its own possibility its deepest concern, philosophy is necessarily about itself—it is autobiographical. The first part of The Autobiography of Philosophy interprets Heidegger's Being and Time, Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, Aristotle's Metaphysics, and Plato's Lysis as examples of the implicitly autobiographical character of philosophy. The second part is a reading of Rousseau's The Reveries of the Solitary Walker.

Influential libertarians from diverse backgrounds and professions who have worked toward a freer society across the globe share their personal and intellectual journeys, including what their lives and thoughts were before they embraced libertarianism; which people, texts, or events most inspired them; what experiences, challenges, tribulations, and achievements they have had as participants or leaders in this movement, and how this philosophy has affected their private and professional lives. The volume’s 80 contributors span the political-philosophical spectrum of libertarianism, including anarcho-capitalists, (...) monarchists, constitutionalists, classical liberals, and thick libertarians. Their essays express different perspectives on many issues even while articulating such core principles as an appreciation for individual liberty, private property rights, the rule of law, and free enterprise. Together, they represent myriad individual journeys toward libertarianism, however defined. By bringing together a range of contemporary voices from outside the dominant left-right paradigm, this book aims to contribute to the viewpoint diversity that is crucially needed in today’s public discourse. These autobiographies not only offer compelling insights into their individual authors and the state of the world today, but may also inspire the next generation to make our society a freer one. (shrink)

We emerge into everythingness. The senses mingle incestuously. Nothing is distinct or differentiated. Everything is no-thing. How is it we come to be as distinct entities? Let me personalize: In what manner did I become an "I"? Is the motive force behind this much-maligned, much-altered, much-abused body my soul? my genes? me?

Moving from a purely religious rebirth to works grounded in a personal philosophy or aesthetic vocation, the autobiographies considered in this book stand as episodes in a genealogy of conversion.

Most philosophical writing is impersonal and argumentative, but many important philosophers have nevertheless written accounts of their own lives. Filling a gap in the market for a text focusing on autobiography as philosophy, this collection discusses several such autobiographies in the light of their authors' broader work, and considers whether there are any philosophical tasks for which life accounts are particularly appropriate. Instead of the common impersonal and argumentative forms of ordinary philosophical discussion, these autobiographical texts are deeply personal (...) and largely narrative or explanatory. The contributors to this book examine the philosophical significance of philosophers’ autobiographies and whether or not there are broadly philosophical tasks for which this sort of writing is particularly suited. _Autobiography as Philosophy_ contains a general discussion about the relation between philosophical and autobiographical writing, and essays on the specific writings of Augustine, Abelard, Montaigne, Descartes, Vico, Hume, Rousseau, Newman, Mill, Nietzsche, Collingwood and Russell by specialists on the works of these individuals. Original and distinctive in its efforts to think about the writings of historically recognized philosophers as communicative acts governed by their own distinctive interests and purposes, the book reveals that it is as much about the texts and the authors as it is about their doctrines and arguments. As a result the book steps back from many of the issues of substantive philosophical discussion to reflect on certain forms of writing as means to philosophical ends, to consider what those ends have included. (shrink)

Bibliography (p. xxiv-xxv)--Autobiography.--Thoughts on poetry and its varieties.--Bentham.--Coleridge.--Nature.--On liberty.

In this autobiography, Fellmann’s personal experiences obtain in the light of philosophical themes a general significance. His connections to famous authors from the past and present situate his thought in a historical context. The focus of his Philosophy of Life is Eros; the Erosopher is the one who shares his wisdom of living. This book appeals to a broad public interested in the contemporary currents of philosophical reflection.

The work of Jacques Derrida can be seen to reinvent most theories. In this book Robert Smith offers both a reading of the philosophy of Derrida and an investigation of current theories of autobiography. Smith argues that for Derrida autobiography is not so much subjective self-revelation as relation to the other, not so much a general condition of thought as a general condition of writing - what Derrida calls the 'autobiography of the writing' - which mocks any (...) self-centred finitude of living and dying. In this context, and using literary-critical, philosophical, and psychoanalytical sources, Smith thinks through Derrida's texts in a new, but distinctly Derridean, way, and finds new perspectives to analyse the work of classical writers including Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, and de Man. (shrink)

En s’appuyant sur les autobiographies de douze élèves « à problèmes », l’auteure interroge deux paradigmes de la psychanalyse contemporaine. Le paradigme archéologique, cherchant à découvrir le latent derrière le manifeste, se situe du côté d’une logique orientée vers le passé. A l’opposé, le paradigme transformatif, dont le but est de développer la « musculature psychique », vise l’ouverture à une pluralité de possibles résidant dans l’avenir. L’auteure montre l’intérêt de dialectiser ces deux approches, tant dans la clinique que dans (...) l’approche des productions culturelles, autobiographie comprise. Les enjeux éthiques découlant de l’intervention de l’analyste/interprète prennent une importante centrale. (shrink)

Même si l’on connaît surtout Ecce homo, l’une de ses dernières œuvres, dans laquelle Nietzsche nous livre une véritable autobiographie intellectuelle, le philosophe allemand s’est en réalité très tôt plu à la pratique de l’autobiographie. L’autoréflexion qu’il présente de son devenir fut ensuite une constante, notamment dans les Préfaces qu’il ajouta par la suite à ses plus fameux ouvrages. Mais cette constante est d’autant plus étonnante chez un auteur qui dit d’une part ne s’être jamais que médiocrement réfléchi, et d’autre (...) part qu’il ne faut pas soupçonner le moins du monde qui l’on est pour être en mesure de devenir soi. Nous tâchons ici de dépasser cette contradiction apparente en proposant une interprétation de ce geste nietzschéen de l’autobiographie et nous nous demandons en même temps si cette pratique ne constitue et ne construit pas davantage le soi à un moment donné, peut-être même à titre d’illusion, plutôt qu’elle ne le saisit véritablement. (shrink)

In “Autobiography as Mystery: Father Brown and the Case of G.K. Chesterton,” Chene Heady argues that G.K. Chesterton’s Autobiography (1936) complicates common scholarly assumptions about both genre and literary authorship. The popular Edwardian writer G.K. Chesterton produced an improbably vast and diffuse literary oeuvre. Chesterton’s scholarly advocates have typically defending him by redefining him in more specialized and more manageable terms; he becomes either the sage-like nonfiction writer who wrote Orthodoxy or the mystery writer who invented Father Brown. (...) However, Chesterton himself derided the cult of the expert, and mocked the tendency towards literary specialization as elitist. In his Autobiography, he refuses basic genre distinctions by insisting that the work should be read as a detective novel; the work’s climax reverses the relationship between creator and creation, as Father Brown solves the mystery of G.K Chesterton. By making this structural equation between autobiography and mystery, Chesterton asserts the fundamental identity between these hermeneutical enterprises. The Autobiography ultimately posits a fundamental equivalence between all the cultural practices by which we find meaning in the world around us, a premise that serves both to justify Chesterton’s eclectic model of authorship and to enable him to hope for cultural unity in deeply divided interwar Britain. (shrink)

It is common for stand-up comedians to tell stories as well as, or instead of, jokes. Stories bring something extra to the performance, and when presented as true add a further layer of appeal. However, most stories told as if true by comedians are not true. A categorizing of forms of comedic story is presented involving the dimensions of grammatical person and truthfulness. Some advantages of comedians’ employing true first-person stories are discussed, and these considerations are then explored through the (...) role of autobiography in the work of Doug Stanhope. Many aspects of Stanhope’s life find their way into his shows, and true stories and his personality more broadly are folded into other elements of his act. Links are made with Søren Kierkegaard’s notion of “inwardness,” and it’s argued that authenticity is a prerequisite for the quality of self-disclosure that is basic to Stanhope’s excellence. (shrink)

An autobiographic instinct may be as old as Man Writing; but only since 1800 has Western Man placed a premium on autobiography. A bibliography of all autobiographic writing prior to that time would be a small fascicule; a bibliography since 1800 a thick tome. The ground behind this simpleminded assertion of a quantitative measure cannot be explained away by easy reference to the mass literacy of the modern world or the greater ease of publishing. It is as much a (...) fact of cultural conditions as is the significant relation of rhetoric to the intense public mindedness of classical men, the relative insignificance of tragedy in a thoroughly Christianized world view, the disappearance of epic from a nonaristocratic world, or the powerful assertion of the novel in an age of burghers. The usage of the term "autobiography" itself is suggestive, although this mode of historical explanation is always defective in the sense that such older terms as "hypomnemata," "commentarii," "vita," "confessions," or "memoirs" may well have covered the functions subsequently encapsulated in a newly fashionable term. In German the term makes its appearance shortly before 1800; the Oxford English Dictionary attributes first English usage to Southey in an article on Portuguese literature from the year 1809. Karl J. Weintraub, Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of History and dean of the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, is the author of Visions of Culture and numerous articles. His introduction to a new edition of Goethe's Autobiography will prove of special interest to our readers. (shrink)

In this fascinating autobiography from one of the foremost geniuses of twentieth-century physics, Max Planck tells the story of his life, his aims, and his thinking. Published posthumously, the papers in this volume were written for the general reader and make accessible Planck's scientific theories as well as his philosophical ideals, including his thoughts on ethics and morals.

This chapter explores three answers to the question, What is it to take Mill's Autobiography “as literature”? First, it is to attempt to understand the Autobiography as an artefact, made in a context by an author with particular aims and secrets. Second, it is to place the Autobiography in a generic context, as a paradigm but not defining case. Third and most importantly, it is to pursue the idea that the Autobiography's form is necessary to what (...) it does. In particular, its diachronic, teleological, whole‐life self‐reflective form allows it to do a distinctive kind of ethics: arguing by example for a philosophy of ethical education; searching for a specification of the good life; and helping to educate its readers by developmental practice. (shrink)

Autobiography is a distinctive and valuable kind of reasoning towards ethical knowledge. But how can autobiography be ethical reasoning? I distinguish four ways in which autobiography can be merely involved in reasoning: as clue to authorial intentions; as container for conventional reasoning; as historical data; and as thought experiment. I then show how autobiography can itself be reasoning by investigating its generic form. Autobiographies are particular, enabling vivid display of and education in value-suffused perception. They are (...) diachronic, enabling critique by ironic contrast. And they are compositional, enabling sense-making by placing in a temporal structure. But these features don’t distinguish autobiographies from novels. Should we therefore accept a deflationary account of a fourth generic feature of autobiographies, that they are self-reflective? I instead pursue a more ambitious account of self-reflection and the distinctively autobiographical reasoning it enables, involving a realism constraint, a reflexive explanation constraint, and unique address to first-person problems of the self. I conclude with an interpretation of an example work of autobiographical reasoning, Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of George Sherston, against the idea that self-owning is necessary to the good human life. (shrink)

Au XVIe siècle, l’autobiographie et le récit de voyage étaient étroitement liés et suivirent pendant quelques décennies une évolution parallèle. Thomas Platter l’aîné essaya de fournir dans ses Mémoires la description d’une vie exemplaire retraçant ses expériences multiples sur les routes d’Europe. Son fils Felix nous laissa un ouvrage disparate (un mélange de journal, de récit de voyage et de mémoires) où l’auteur paraît omniprésent. Sa conception de l’écriture autobiographique rappelle celle de Montaigne. Le jeune frère Thomas suivit rigoureusement les (...) règles émises par les théoriciens du voyage, condamnant toute opinion subjective. Les ouvrages des Platter nous donnent le meilleur exemple de l’évolution du genre (auto-)biographique entre la Renaissance classique et le Baroque dit sauvage. (shrink)

R.G.Collingwood's Autobiography is the next of Collingwood's books to be revised for a new edition by Oxford University Press.It will include new manuscript material, include his Log of a Journey to the East Indies In addition there will be a number of scholarly essays relating Collingwood's ideas to his life and broader concerns.It is opportune to make available in English two introductions to the German and Romanian editions of An Autobiography.

When the French philosopher Sarah Kofman committed suicide in 1994 she left behind an impressive oeuvre in which both the autobiographical genre and the treatment of women play a central role. Her theoretical re ections on both topics situate themselves in the interstices between psychoanalysis, feminism and deconstruction and share a common concern: the respect of alterity in all its guises. Kofman's resistance to the authoritative claim of the retrospective closure underlying traditional autobiographies is closely related to her celebration of (...) an e ®criture parricide, a mode of writing which undoes the repression of multiplicity and otherness. Shortly before her death Kofman published an autobiographical account of her own childhood years after the deportation and death of her father in a concentration camp. This article addresses the striking discrepancies between the theoretical positions Kofman defends throughout her philosophical writings and the autobiographical turn of her own last words. (shrink)

The presence of interpretation according to different perspectives in art forms in which we expect the 'truth' about the subject matter, provides an opportunity to understand what truth means in the context of perspectivism, the view that there is no objective standard of truth free from any perspective against which we can measure the veracity of an account. In this article, I explore perspectival truth through Nietzsche's philosophical autobiography, Ecce Homo , and Herzog's films, particularly Little Dieter Needs to (...) Fly. I argue that these artworks both contribute to and exemplify a perspectival truth practice. (shrink)

In this chapter the life, education, scientific path, and research of Ewa Orłowska are presented. Information on her service for the logic community, in particular on activities in scientific organisations, councils, and committees, on membership of editorial boards, and on participation in national and international projects is also mentioned.