Understanding
Introduction:
Understanding is variously figured in the
writings of the eighteenth century: most often as a stand-in for the
intelligence of the reasoning mind, but also as an amicable relation (a
sympathy, community, or agreement) between persons. We use our faculties
of understanding to know the world and to direct our action: this much is
agreed upon. The literature of sensibility posits that the emotions and
the imagination are a crucial guide in this endeavor. Kant, on the other
hand, argues that we are lost without reason and that feeling cannot help
us in this predicament, primarily because feelings are idiosyncratic,
particular, and fluctuating, while reason is a stable universal, a
capacity for which will bring intelligent beings to consensus about what
is right, true, or good. A battle ensues between those who regard the
rational mind as the ultimate judge of right and virtue, those who would
depend on the heart, and those, like Sterne, who sense that one is
impossible without the other, that reason and feeling are like two sides
of a piece of paper: it is impossible to crumple one without effecting the
other.
- Joseph Addison, "The Pleasures of the
Imagination"
Addison discusses the body and soul in
imagination.
- Joseph Addison,
"Taste"
Addison discusses the body and soul in
imagination.
- Anonymous, Review of A Simple Story
- Hugh Blair, A Critical Dissertation on
the Poems of Ossian, the Son of Fingal
Ossian is
primitive and refined.
- George Cheyne, An Essay on Health and
Long Life
Cheyne discusses the body/soul relationship in terms of a musical
metaphor.
- George Cheyne, An Essay on Health and
Long Life
Cheyne comments on
three types of sensibility.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The
Sorrows of Young Werther
Werther, Lotte and 'Klopstock!'
- David Hume, Inquiry into the Principles of
Morals
Feeling as an active agent in judgement.
- Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles
of the Metaphysics of Ethics
Moral action arises from
duty, not from a "moral sense."
- Samuel Richardson, Clarissa
Clarissa describes the rakes.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Preface to La
Nouvelle Heloise
Sensibility and seclusion in the
country.
- Shaftesbury, Third Earl of (Anthony
Ashley Cooper). Characteristicks
The "moral sense"
is independent of ideas about God.
- Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein
Walton writes to his sister Margaret.
- Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein
Walton talks about his guest.
- Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein
The monster confesses to Walton.
- Frances Sheridan, Memoirs of Miss
Sidney Bidulph
Sidney casts Faulkland from her heart.
- Laurence Sterne, Tristram
Shandy
The author conveys impressions of Uncle Toby.
- Laurence Sterne, Tristram
Shandy
Sterne looks at the mind/body split in the rumpled jerkin.
- Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub
Reader and author meet in the garret.
a dictionary of sensibility
term list
source
bibliography
critical bibliography
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