The Mysteries of Attention

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Imitation and the Image of Man (Cultura Ludens)

(In the Imitation and the Image of Man James S. Hans prese...)

In the Imitation and the Image of Man James S. Hans presents his conception of the mimetic. His primary goal to this study is to broaden several kinds of discourse: first, to redfine our conception of the literary; second, to expand our ideas of the kinds of things that can be treated together; third, to enrich our understanding of the possibilities of the form of the essay; and fourth, to articulate the need for these changes in terms of a non-linear theory of imitation.

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Socrates and the Irrational

( Traditionally, Socrates has been linked to the view of ...)

Traditionally, Socrates has been linked to the view of reason as the most important element in human behavior, the means through which our irrational capacities are tamed. Yet, one might ask, if his legacy were solely derived from his having been a master reasoner, why would he have been able to maintain his place in our imaginations for so long? In Socrates and the Irrational, James Hans argues that when Socrates speaks for himself, he reveals a far more complex portrait of the nature of human existence than the Platonic conception of him has conveyed. Exploring Socratic thought through four key dialogues―the Ion, the Apology, the Phaedrus, and the Republic―Hans offers a larger vision of both Socrates and human potential that goes beyond the reductive placement of reason on the side of the good and unreason on the side of the bad. Embracing Socrates’ reverence for poets, his reliance on feeling and intuition, his attitude toward death, and his defense of prophecy and love, Hans shows how thoroughly the Socratic idea of reason is based on the affective aspects of bodily existence that traditional approaches to his thought ignore. For those who have a philosophical interest in the foundation of Western thought as well as those whose interests in the humanities encompass the nature of the examined life, Socrates and the Irrational is both an accessible and an erudite journey into the mind of this central figure of our civilization.

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The Question of Value: Thinking through Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Freud

( A consideration of the ethical implications of an aesth...)

A consideration of the ethical implications of an aesthetic view of life, The Question of Value reintroduces the Nietzschean imperative to weigh the things of the world anew. James S. Hans assumes that we must and do value the world we live in every day. Rejecting the deconstructionist view, which is always willing to defer the question of value because there are no grounds for considering it, he argues that we continue to measure the world in spite of the apparent lack of reason for doing so, and that we ought therefore to give serious thought to the way we make our choices. The book begins with the premise that the major task Nietzsche set for the Western world has yet to be undertaken in its fullest sense and connects this task to Heidegger’s mode of questioning in his later work and to Freud’s reflections on the death instinct and the pleasure principle. The study’s central premise is that Nietzsche was correct in diagnosing the ills of our culture and in prescribing a cure because he came to recognize the essential connection between time and revenge. He saw that the desire for revenge stems from our disgust at being temporal creatures and that a new system of values will only be possible once we overcome that self-loathing and the endless acts of revenge that stem from it. This is the most difficult of human tasks, but it is the only one worth attempting once one is able to see the full consequences of the human desire for revenge. Instead of being a critical discussion of Nietzsche’s, Heidegger’s, or Freud’s work, then, The Question of Value is an attempt to think through their ideas and to implement them in our world in a new way. It establishes the necessity to affirm the value of time and seeks to provide a framework through which such an affirmation of temporality can take place on a larger ethical scale.

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The Sovereignty of Taste

(Challenging prevailing trends toward aesthetic neutrality...)

Challenging prevailing trends toward aesthetic neutrality, James S. Hans argues that there is such a thing as good and bad taste, that taste is something one is born with, and that it is firmly rooted in the mechanics of biology. Taste is everything, Hans says, for it produces the primary values that guide our lives. Taste is the fundamental organizing mechanism of human bodies, a lifelong effort to fit one's own rhythms to the rhythms and patterns of the natural world and the larger human community. It is an aesthetic sorting process by which one determines what belongs in - a conversation, a curriculum, a committee, a piece of art, a meal, a logical argument - and what should be left out. On the one hand, taste is the source of beauty, justice, and a sense of the good. On the other hand, as an arbiter of the laws of fair and free play, taste enters into more ominous and destructive patterns - but patterns nonetheless - of resentment and violence.Hans develops his conception of taste through astute readings of five literary landmarks: Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", Sophocles' "Oedipus the King", William Faulkner's "Light in August", and the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz. These texts explore the art of soulmaking and the quest for personal expression: the costs as well as the fruits that come from acceding to the imperatives of one's being. They also reveal how the collision of personal and collective rhythms, whether in the Greek citadel or the Mississippi countryside, leads to violence and ritualized sacrifice. Elegant, principled, and provocative, "The Sovereignty of Taste" is an essential book that restores taste to its rightful place of influence, shoring up the ground beneath civilization's feet and offering hope for the future of integrity, value, and aesthetic truth.

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The Site of Our Lives: The Self and the Subject from Emerson to Foucault (Suny Series, the Margins of Literature)

(From the back of the book: This book addresses the quest...)

From the back of the book: This book addresses the question of human uniqueness at a time when academic discourse has all but abandoned its long-held commitment to the value of individuality. Through an appraisal of the works of Emerson, Nietzsche, Heideggar, Derrida, and Foucault, the author establishes the ways in which the current critique of the self has grossly distorted the nature of the debate by reducing it to a simple choice between essential or constructed selves. Hans argues that the tradition that emerges from Emerson's work is based on a rational sense of the individual as much as it is devoted to the premise that we all have a specific form of integrity. Likewise, even though Nietzsche's critique of the fictional nature of the subject is the origin of contemporary visions of the fabricated self, Nietzsche is equally insistent that each of us is a productive uniqueness: we are all principles of selection whose links to the world embrace more than the social circumstances around us. Nietzsche's vision of our productive uniqueness is carried on in larger and smaller ways by Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault, each of whom entertains a far more complex vision of the individual than those that currently dominate our ways of talking about what it means to be human.

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