Dear Colleagues,<\/p>\n
You are warmly welcomed to attend the following talk; refreshments and sandwiches will be available.<\/p>\n
Upcoming CCI Colloquium Series Talk:<\/p>\n
Friday, March 11th, 12:40 G-160<\/p>\n
Thomas Manganaro, Duke University, Department of English Literature<\/p>\n
\u201cAkrasia in the Age of Reason\u201d:<\/p>\n
This talk focuses on the condition of acting against better judgment, or failing to do what you know you ought to do \u2014 a condition classically called \u201cakrasia\u201d by the ancient Greeks. This phenomenon becomes particularly interesting in the philosophy and literature of the eighteenth century \u2014 the \u201cage of reason.\u201d As philosophy in this period increasingly depicts minds and bodies like systems or machines, it has difficulty describing akrasia \u2014 namely, how someone can want to do something and yet not be able to get themselves to do it. Because it is so difficult to explain, akrasia becomes a very rich topic for literary experimentation in this period; we see this in particular in narratives by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Laurence Sterne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Colleagues, You are warmly welcomed to attend the following talk; refreshments and sandwiches will be available. Upcoming CCI Colloquium Series Talk: Friday, March 11th, 12:40 G-160 Thomas Manganaro, Duke University, Department of English Literature \u201cAkrasia in the Age of Reason\u201d: This talk focuses on the condition of acting against [\u2026] <\/p>\n