Background
Cohen, Ted was born on December 13, 1939 in Danville, Illinois, United States. Son of Sam and Shirley E. (Nimz) Cohen.
( In Thinking of Others, Ted Cohen argues that the abilit...)
In Thinking of Others, Ted Cohen argues that the ability to imagine oneself as another person is an indispensable human capacity--as essential to moral awareness as it is to literary appreciation--and that this talent for identification is the same as the talent for metaphor. To be able to see oneself as someone else, whether the someone else is a real person or a fictional character, is to exercise the ability to deal with metaphor and other figurative language. The underlying faculty, Cohen argues, is the same--simply the ability to think of one thing as another when it plainly is not. In an engaging style, Cohen explores this idea by examining various occasions for identifying with others, including reading fiction, enjoying sports, making moral arguments, estimating one's future self, and imagining how one appears to others. Using many literary examples, Cohen argues that we can engage with fictional characters just as intensely as we do with real people, and he looks at some of the ways literature itself takes up the question of interpersonal identification and understanding. An original meditation on the necessity of imagination to moral and aesthetic life, Thinking of Others is an important contribution to philosophy and literary theory.
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Cohen, Ted was born on December 13, 1939 in Danville, Illinois, United States. Son of Sam and Shirley E. (Nimz) Cohen.
AB, University of Chicago, 1962; Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1965; Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1972.
Professor philosophy, University of Chicago, since 1967; department chairman philosophy, University of Chicago, 1974-1979.
( In Thinking of Others, Ted Cohen argues that the abilit...)
Board directors Center Rehabilitation and Training Disabled, B'nai Brith Hillel Foundation of University Chicago, KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation, Chicago, since 1980, member faculty religious school. Chairman committee general studies humanities University Chicago, since 1991. Member of American Philosophical Association (vice president 2005, president-elect 2005, president 2006-2007), American Society Aesthetics since 1997, Phi Beta Kappa (visiting scholar 2000-2001).
Married Julie Simon, April 18, 1940 (divorced 1992). Children: Shoshannah, Amos. Married Ann Rutherfurd Collier Austin, 1994.