Reading as a Philosophical Practice

✍ Scribed by Robert Piercey

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 142
• Series: Anthem Studies in Bibliotherapy and Well-Being
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Reading as a Philosophical Practice asks why reading―everyday reading for pleasure―matters so profoundly to so many people. Its answer is that reading is an implicitly philosophical activity. To passionate readers, it is a way of working through, and taking a stand on, certain fundamental questions about who and what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things. The book examines the lessons that the activity of reading seems to teach about selfhood, morality and ontology, and it tries to clarify the sometimes paradoxical claims that serious readers have made about it. To do so, it proposes an original theoretical framework based on Virginia Woolf’s notion of the common reader and Alasdair MacIntyre’s conception of practice. It also asks whether reading can continue to play this role as paper is replaced by electronic screens.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Front Matter
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapters 1-7
1. Philosophizing about Reading: The Very Idea
Reading Matters
Reading as a Philosophical Activity
Haven’t I Read This Story Before?
Fanfare for the Common Reader
Two Objections
2. The Reading Self
Lost in a Book
Describing the Act of Reading
Further Steps
3. The Reading Life
About a Boy
What to Read
Rereading
How to Feel about Oneself as a Reader
Stories and Quests
4. Ethics from Reading?
Improving Reading
The Supply-Side Approach
The Conversational Approach
A Hermeneutical Approach
Where This Leaves Us
5. Ethics of Reading?
Responsible Readers
Two Kinds of Responsibilities
A Deontological Approach
An Alterior Approach
A Eudaimonistic Approach
Practices, Traditions and History
6. Reading Things
Here’s the Thing
Relating to Books
Collecting the Virtual
Collecting Writ Large
Collecting the Collectors
7. The Future of the Common Reader
A Digital Future?
Changing Practices
Changing the Questions
Changing Philosophy
End Matter
Notes
Chapter 1 Philosophizing about Reading: The Very Idea
Chapter 2 The Reading Self
Chapter 3 The Reading Life
Chapter 4 Ethics from Reading?
Chapter 5 Ethics of Reading?
Chapter 6 Reading Things
Chapter 7 The Future of the Common Reader
Bibliography
Index