The Philosopher S Song

The Philosophy of Modern Song is Bob Dylan’s first book of new writing since 2004’s Chronicles: Volume One—and since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work’s transcendence. In 2020, with the release of his outstanding album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan became the first artist to have an album hit the Billboard Top 40 in each decade since the 1960s. The Philosophy of Modern Song contains much of what he has learned about his craft in all those years, and like everything that Dylan does, it is a momentous artistic achievement.

Cover songs are a familiar feature of contemporary popular music. Musicians describe their own performances as covers, and audiences use the category to organize their listening and appreciation. However, until now philosophers have not had much to say about them. In A Philosophy of Cover Songs, P.D. Magnus demonstrates that philosophy provides a valuable toolbox for thinking about covers; in turn, the philosophy of cover songs illustrates some general points about philosophical method. Lucidly written, the book is divided into three parts: how to think about covers, appreciating covers, and the metaphysics of covers and songs. Along the way, it explores a range of issues raised by covers, from the question of what precisely constitutes a cover, to the history and taxonomy of the category, the various relationships that hold between songs, performances, and tracks, and the appreciation and evaluation of covers. This unique and engaging book will be of interest to those working in philosophy of art, philosophy of music, popular music studies, music history, and musicology, as well as to readers with a general interest in popular music, covers, and how we think about them.

The Philosopher's Song explores the complex and fruitful relation between the great poets of Greek culture and Plato's invention of philosophy, especially as this bears on Plato's treatment of justice. The author shows how the poets helped shape the development of Plato's thinking throughout the course of his philosophical career.

In Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction, Jeanette Bicknell explores key aesthetic, ethical, and other philosophical questions that have not yet been thoroughly researched by philosophers, musicologists, or scientists. Issues addressed include: The relationship between the meaning of a song’s words and its music The performer’s role and the ensuing gender complications, social ontology, and personal identity The performer’s ethical obligations to audiences, composers, lyricists, and those for whom the material holds particular significance The metaphysical status of isolated solo performances compared to the continuous singing of opera or the interrupted singing of stage and screen musicals Each chapter focuses on one major musical example and includes several shorter discussions of other selections. All have been chosen for their illustrative power and their accessibility for any interested reader and are readily available.

Korean Women Philosophers and the Ideal of a Female Sage introduces the lives and ideas of two female Korean Confucian philosophers from the late Joseon Dynasty (18th-19th century), Im Yunjidang (1721-1793) and Gang Jeongildang (1772-1832), examining how their writings contribute to contemporary philosophical inquiry. Both philosophers are known for arguing that women are as capable as men of attaining the highest forms of intellectual and moral achievement and thereby can become female sages (yeoseong), with their reasoning building on distinctively Confucian philosophical claims about the original, pure moral nature shared by all human beings. Hwa Yeong Wang and Philip J. Ivanhoe provide an analysis of the social, political, and historical factors that surrounded these women and informed their writing. This volume explores how these female philosophers navigated the challenges presented by the extensively patriarchal culture in which they lived. Im Yunjidang and Gang Jeongildang's resistance and response to the patriarchal context of late Joseon society informs the content and style of their writing, producing original philosophical ideas that remain of great value to the field today. By providing elegant English translations, thorough annotations, and analysis of the cultural and historical context of these writings, Wang and Ivanhoe provide a nuanced, informative, and invaluable look at the work of these two notable Korean female philosophers. This volume is certain to appeal to readers across the areas of Women's Studies, Philosophy, East Asian Studies, Literature, and more, diversifying the current canon and providing perspectives on philosophy that have for far too long been overlooked.

Humour.

This collection contains 13 essays on modern and contemporary Taiwanese philosophy, written by outstanding scholars working in this field. It highlights the importance of Taiwanese philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. While the Chinese conceptual tradition (especially Confucianism) fell out of favor from the 1950s onwards and was often banned or at least severely criticized on the mainland, Taiwanese philosophers constantly strove to preserve and develop it. Many of them tried to modernize their own traditions through dialogs with Western thought, especially with the ideas of the European Enlightenment. However, it was not only about preserving tradition; in the second half of the 20th century, several complex and coherent philosophical systems emerged in Taiwan. The creation of these discourses is evidence of the great creativity and innovative power of many Taiwanese theorists, whose work is still largely unknown in the Western world.

Roger T. Ames's A Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy is a companion volume to his Conceptual Lexicon for Classical Confucian Philosophy. It includes texts in the original classical Chinese along with their translations, allowing experts and novices alike to make whatever comparisons they choose. In applying a method of comparative cultural hermeneutics, Ames has tried to let the tradition speak on its own terms. The goal is to encourage readers to move between the translated text and commentary, the philosophical introduction that attempts to sensitize them to the interpretative context, and the companion Lexicon of key philosophical terms, with the expectation that in the fullness of time they will be able to appropriate the original Chinese terminologies themselves. Armed with their own increasingly robust insight into these philosophical terms, readers will be able to carry this nuanced understanding over into their critical reading of other available translations. Ultimately, for students who would understand Chinese philosophy, tian 天 must be understood as tian 天, and dao 道 must be dao 道.