Source document: Brno studies in English. 2020, vol. 46, iss. 2, pp. 159-179
Extent
159-179
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2020-2-9
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/143212
Type: Article
Language
English
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Abstract(s)
The aim of this article is to analyse the relation between the mind and the body in J. M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K in terms of theories discussed in contemporary philosophy of mind. Although spiritual and bodily aspects are often described in the novel as separate, there is no strong ontological assumption that the spirit can exist independently from the body. References to the spiritual dimension mostly appear in the descriptions of characters' subjective experiences and imagination. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the vision of the world in the novel oscillates between substance dualism and property dualism, but it is not entirely consistent with either of the philosophical views analysed.
Document
References:
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[44] Zimmerman, Dean (2010) From property dualism to substance dualism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXXXIV, 119–150. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00189.x
[2] Attwell, David (2015) J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing. Face-to-Face with Time. New York: Viking – Penguin Random House.
[3] Beckett, Samuel (1965) Three Novels by Samuel Beckett: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. New York: Grove Press, Inc.
[4] Clarkson, Carrol (2017) 'Wisselbare Woorde': J. M. Coetzee and postcolonial philosophy. In: Hayes, Patrick and Jan Wilm (eds.) Beyond the Ancient Quarrel: Literature, Philosophy, and J. M. Coetzee. Oxford University Press. 199–214.
[5] Coetzee, J. M. (1998 [1983]) Life & Times of Michael K. London: Vintage, Random House.
[6] Coetzee, J. M. (1988) The Novel Today. Upstream 6 (1), Summer 1988, 2–5.
[7] Coetzee, J. M. (1992) Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
[8] Coetzee, J. M. (1997) Boyhood. Scenes from Provincial Life. New York: Penguin Books.
[9] Coetzee, J. M. (2001) Stranger Shores. Literary Essays 1986–1999. New York: Penguin Books.
[10] Coetzee, J. M. (2003). Youth. London: Vintage.
[11] Coetzee, J. M. (2017) Late Essays. 2006-2017. New York: Viking.
[12] Cohn, Ruby (1964) Philosophical fragments in the works of Samuel Beckett. Criticism 6(1), 33–43.
[13] Degani-Raz, Irit (2012) Cartesian fingerprints in Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine. Journal of Beckett Studies 21 (2), 223–243. | DOI 10.3366/jobs.2012.0047
[14] Descartes, René (1989[1649]). The Passions of the Soul: An English Translation of Les Passions de l'âme. Indianapolis (IN) & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
[15] Descartes, René (2003[1664]) Treatise of Man. Amherst: Prometheus Books.
[16] Descartes, René (2006[1641]) Meditations, Objections, and Replies. Indianapolis and Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company.
[17] Devarenne, Nicole (2009) Nationalism and the farm novel in South Africa, 1883–2004. Journal of Southern African Studies, 35 (3), 627–642. | DOI 10.1080/03057070903101854
[18] Fletcher, John (1965) Samuel Beckett and the Philosophers. Comparative Literature 17 (1), 43–56. | DOI 10.2307/1769742
[19] Gaynesford, Maximilian de (2017) Attuning philosophy and literary criticism. A response to In the Heart of the Country. In: Hayes, Patrick and Jan Wilm (eds.) Beyond the Ancient Quarrel. Literature, Philosophy, and J. M. Coetzee. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 35–51.
[20] Gordimer, Nadine (1984) The Idea of Gardening. The New York Review of Books. 2 (February 1984), 3–7.
[21] Hayes, Patrick (2010) J. M. Coetzee and the novel. Writing and politics after Beckett. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[22] Hayes, Patrick and Jan Wilm (eds.) (2017) Beyond the Ancient Quarrel. Literature, Philosophy, and J. M. Coetzee. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[23] Head, Dominic (2009) The Cambridge Introduction to J. M. Coetzee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[24] Kafka, Franz (1983) The Complete Stories & Parables. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club.
[25] Kenner, Hugh (1961) Samuel Beckett. A Critical Study. New York: Grove Press.
[26] Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (1983) Books of the times. New York Times, 6 December 1983. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/06/books/books-of-the-times.html. Accessed on 25 March 2020.
[27] Lowe, E. J. (2009) Dualism (property dualism, substance dualism). In: Bonder, Marc D., Hirokawa, Nobutaka and Uwe Windhorst (eds.) Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.1018–1021.
[28] Marais, Michael (1996) The hermeneutics of empire: Coetzee's post-colonial metafiction. In: Huggan, Graham & Watson, Stephen (eds.). Critical Perspectives on J. M. Coetzee. London: Houndmills and New York: Macmillan Press, 66–81.
[29] McCrum, Robert (2003) The voice of Africa. The Guardian. 5 October 2003. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/05/fiction.jmcoetzee. Accessed on 24 March 2020.
[30] McDonald, Ronan (2007) The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[31] Merivale, Patricia (1996) Audible palimpsests: Coetzee' s Kafka. In: Huggan, Graham & Watson, Stephen (eds.) Critical Perspectives on J. M. Coetzee. London: Houndmills and New York: Macmillan Press, 152–167.
[32] Mulhall, Stephen (2009) The Wounded Animal. J. M. Coetzee & the Difficulty of Reality in Literature & Philosophy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
[33] Parry, Benita (1996) Speech and silence in the fictions of J. M. Coetzee. In: Huggan, Graham and Stephen Watson (eds.) Critical Perspectives on J. M. Coetzee. London: Houndmills and New York: Macmillan Press, 37–65.
[34] Plato (2005[1914]) Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
[35] Spinoza, Baruch (2017[1677]) The Ethics. The Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3800/3800-h/3800-h.htm. Accessed on 20 February 2018.
[36] Stoljar, Daniel (2010) Physicalism. New York: Routledge.
[37] Stoljar, Daniel (2015) Physicalism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#SupPhyInt Accessed on 19 April 2019.
[38] Uhlmann, Anthony (2006) Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[39] Vlies, Andrew van der (2016) The novel and apartheid. In: Gikandi, Simon (ed.) The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean Since 1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 181–197.
[40] Weigl, Engelhard (2011) Life & Times of Michael K (1983). In: Mehigan, Tim (ed.) A Companion to the Works of J. M. Coetzee. Rochester: Camden House, 76–90.
[41] Woessner, Martin (2017) Beyond realism. Coetzee's post-secular imagination. In: Hayes, Patrick and Jan Wilm (eds.) Beyond the Ancient Quarrel. Literature, Philosophy, and J. M. Coetzee. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 143–159.
[42] Wildberg, Christian (2011) Neoplatonism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoplatonism/. Accessed on 17 April 2019.
[43] Wilm, Jan (2016) The Slow Philosophy of J. M. Coetzee. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
[44] Zimmerman, Dean (2010) From property dualism to substance dualism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXXXIV, 119–150. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00189.x