Exemplarity and Singularity: Thinking through Particulars in Philosophy, Literature, and Law

Synopsis

This book pursues a strand in the history of thought – ranging from codified statutes to looser social expectations – that uses particulars, more specifically examples, to produce norms. Much intellectual history takes ancient Greece as a point of departure. But the practice of exemplarity is historically rooted firmly in ancient Roman rhetoric, oratory, literature, and law – genres that also secured its transmission. Their pragmatic approach results in a conceptualization of politics, social organization, philosophy, and law that is derived from the concrete. It is commonly supposed that, with the shift from pre-modern to modern ways of thinking – as modern knowledge came to privilege abstraction over exempla, the general over the particular – exemplarity lost its way. This book reveals the limits of this understanding. Tracing the role of exemplarity from Rome through to its influence on the fields of literature, politics, philosophy, psychoanalysis and law, it shows how Roman exemplarity has subsisted, not only as a figure of thought, but also as an alternative way to organize and to transmit knowledge.

Copyright:

2015

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

212 Pages

ISBN-13:

9781317696391

Related ISBNs:

9781138241749, 9781315778419, 9781138020498

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

10/12/22

Copyrighted By:

Selection and editorial matter, Mich

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Language Arts, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics, Philosophy

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Edited by:

Michele Lowrie

Edited by:

Susanne Lüdemann