Understanding The Wilde Philosophy

This unique edition includes: Biographical Summary to get to know the great character and life of Wilde. Introduction to his philosophy; a walkthrough to his works defining the most important concepts and formulating the necessary questions that will be answered. The keystone unabridged works of Oscar Wilde about his philosophy "The Art of Lying" (1889), "The Critic as Artist" (1891) and "The Soul of a Man"(1891). Complete Analysis and Discursion: to see his ideas clearly exposed and to contrast what Wilde claimed with other points of view, drawing a more panoramic and open view about this eternal discursion. First of all, what are æsthetics? The hallmark of a band led by Oscar Wilde who committed many whimsical extravagances? We present a comprehensive and complete view of the philosophy of art and life of Wilde, which will answer in his witty and stylish way fundamental questions as: "Is lying a fundamental principle of Art?," "Must there be a divorce between Ethics and Aesthetics?" And "Ought we, beneath the flowery mask of a borrowed smile, allow ourselves to be carried away by all the waves of instinct?" "I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

This book is the first collection of essays to discuss Oscar Wilde’s love and vast knowledge of philosophy. Over the past few decades, Oscar Wilde scholars have become increasingly aware of Wilde’s love and intimate knowledge of philosophy. Wilde’s “Oxford Notebooks” and his soon-to-be-published “Notebook on Philosophy” all point to Wilde not just as an aesthete, but also as a serious philosophical thinker. The aim of this collection is not to make the statement that Wilde was a philosopher, or that his works were philosophical tracts. Rather, it provides a space to explore any and all linkages between Wilde’s works and philosophical thought. Addressing a broad spectrum of philosophical matter, from classical philology to Daoism, ethics to aestheticism, this collection enriches the literature on Wilde and philosophy alike.

Brown (English, Boston U.) places Wilde in the continuum of continental philosophy from Kant and Schiller through Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Benjamin and Adorno, discussing his conception of art, its meaning, and the contradictory relations between art and the sphere of the ethical everyday. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book is the first collection of essays to discuss Oscar Wilde's love and vast knowledge of philosophy. Over the past few decades, Oscar Wilde scholars have become increasingly aware of Wilde's love and intimate knowledge of philosophy. Wilde's "Oxford Notebooks" and his soon-to-be-published "Notebook on Philosophy" all point to Wilde not just as an aesthete, but also as a serious philosophical thinker. The aim of this collection is not to make the statement that Wilde was a philosopher, or that his works were philosophical tracts. Rather, it provides a space to explore any and all linkages between Wilde's works and philosophical thought. Addressing a broad spectrum of philosophical matter, from classical philology to Daoism, ethics to aestheticism, this collection enriches the literature on Wilde and philosophy alike.

This volume presents interpretive essays utilizing a variety of approaches to honor the 160th anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s birth, celebrating the writer’s genius. This unique collection of scholarship explores a broad spectrum of subjects, including his travels, sexuality, children’s literature, jail writings, novel, poetry, individualism, masks, homosexuality, influence on others, and morality. It offers historical, biographical, psychological and sociological perspectives written by international experts and features a broad spectrum of subjects which will appeal to a range of scholars seeking original and alternative approaches to understanding Oscar Wilde, his aesthetics and his influence in a variety of genres in the twenty-first century. The multiplicity of interest in the writer expands across genres, disciplines, cultures and time. Quintessential Wilde examines his intellectual strength in “His Worldly Place,” analyzes his ingenious thoughts in “His Penetrating Philosophy,” and recounts his enduring place in “His Influential Aestheticism.”

This text attempts to define Wilde's conceptions of what art is and is not, what the experience of art means, and the relations between the work of art and the sphere of the ethical everyday. It traces his thought from its resonance in his life through its development within aesthetic philosophy.

Oscar Wilde is more than a name, more than an author. From precocious Oxford undergraduate to cause celebre of the West End of the 1890s, to infamous criminal, the proper name Wilde has become an event in the history of literature and culture. Taking Wilde seriously as a philosopher in his own right, Whiteley's groundbreaking book places his texts into their philosophical context in order to show how Wilde broke from his peers, and in particular from idealism, and challenges recent neo-historicist readings of Wilde which seem content to limit his irruptive power. Using the paradoxical concept of the simulacrum to resituate Wilde's work in relation to both his precursors and his contemporaries, Whiteley's study reads Wilde through Deleuze and postmodern philosophical commentary on the simulacrum. In a series of striking juxtapositions, Whiteley challenges us to rethink both Oscar Wilde's aesthetics and his philosophy, to take seriously both the man and the mask. His philosophy of masks is revealed to figure a truth of a different kind - the simulacra through which Wilde begins to develop and formulate a mature philosophy that constitutes an ethics of joy.

A book that penetrates the surface of the Oscar Wilde mythos to uncover the radical politics that propelled his art.