Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Philosophy and Autobiography

Reflections on Truth, Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Others

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Christopher Hamilton

    1. Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Explores how philosophy and autobiography are dimensions of each other
  • Approaches the work of Stanley Cavell from a new, unique perspective
  • Discusses the autobiographies of Benjamin, Weiss, Sartre, Orwell, Gosse and Camus

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 16.99 USD 79.99
Discount applied Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 16.99 USD 99.99
Discount applied Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Opening: The voice off in Philosophy

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 1-7

  3. Introduction: Who Is Speaking and to Whom?

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 9-38

  4. ‘The god of the city’: Walter Benjamin, Enchantment and the Material Subject

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 39-59

  5. ‘An immense expenditure of energy come to nothing’: Philosophy, Literature and Death in Peter Weiss’ Abschied von den Eltern

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 61-74

  6. ‘Someone is missing’: Jean-Paul Sartre, comédie and the Longing for Necessity

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 75-94

  7. ‘How terrible is the deterioration in myself!’: Childhood, Middle Age and the Redemption of a Humanist in George Orwell’s ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 95-116

  8. ‘Little soft oases’: Edmund Gosse, the Hard-Driven Soul and Inconsolability

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 117-138

  9. ‘This book should be heavy with things and flesh’: The Body, Sensation and Love of the World in Camus’ Le Premier homme

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 139-162

  10. Closing (Beginning with an Abandoned Opening)

    • Christopher Hamilton
    Pages 163-181

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 183-194
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book, taking its point of departure from Stanley Cavell’s claim that philosophy and autobiography are dimensions of each other, aims to explore some of the relations between these forms of reflection, first by seeking to develop an outline of a philosophy of autobiography, and then by exploring the issue from the side of five autobiographical works. Christopher Hamilton argues in the volume that there are good reasons for thinking that philosophical texts can be considered autobiographical, and then turns to discuss the autobiographies of Walter Benjamin, Peter Weiss, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Orwell, Edmund Gosse and Albert Camus. In discussing these works, Hamilton explores how they put into question certain received understandings of what philosophical texts suppose themselves to be doing, and also how they themselves constitute philosophical explorations of certain key issues, e.g. the self, death, religious and ethical consciousness, sensuality, the body. Throughout, there is an exploration of the ways in which autobiographies help us in thinking about self-knowledge and knowledge of others. A final chapter raises some issues concerning the fact that the five autobiographies discussed here are all texts dealing with childhood.

Reviews

‘In this absorbing book Christopher Hamilton brings together themes including the importance of a personal voice in philosophy, philosophy’s self-image (and its need to be reawakened to its humanity), and the intricacies of truth and truthfulness in autobiography. Drawing important insights from autobiographical works by Benjamin, Sartre, Orwell, Edmund Gosse, Camus, and others, Hamilton explores the revealing way that the significance of a text can change for a reader over time; how undisclosed states of being remain hidden within, of all things, an autobiography; and how the voice of a text possesses a special power to draw us in. A brilliant and thought-provoking piece of work on a topic of deep human interest.’
— Garry L. Hagberg, author of Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness (2008), and Living in Words: Literature, Autobiographical Language, and the Composition of Selfhood (forthcoming).


‘Philosophy and Autobiography is a truly excellent book--for its elegant, lively, and precise writing, for its lovely concreteness often achieved by intricate figures, for its lucid explanations, and for its timely and compelling argument. Hamilton manages to defend a difficult thesis about the autobiographical nature of philosophy not by analysis so much as by intimate and complex display of how autobiography affectively embodies processes of complex thinking.’


— Charles Altieri, Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Christopher Hamilton

About the author

Christopher Hamilton is Reader in Philosophy at King’s College London, UK. He is the author of five previous books, including A Philosophy of Tragedy (2016), as well as articles in ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Philosophy and Autobiography

  • Book Subtitle: Reflections on Truth, Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Others

  • Authors: Christopher Hamilton

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70657-9

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-70656-2Published: 14 November 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-70659-3Published: 14 November 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-70657-9Published: 13 November 2021

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 194

  • Topics: Philosophy of Mind, Aesthetics

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation