Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith

Edmond Wright

Videos of the author introducing the book

'Wright offers a highly illuminating take on the way stories inform and inflect our everyday lives - from ordinary speech and jokes to high-risk politics and faith. A philosophical eye-opener for experts and amateurs alike'.

- Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy, Boston College

'...a banquet of intellectual nourishment on matters of logic, language, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and religion, showing how inquiries in these several domains intercalate against the backdrop of the uses of narrative. This is no ordinary philos ophy book. It will remain on the book shelves for some time to come.'

- Calvin O. Schrag, The George Ade Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Purdue University

'Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith is a work of startling ingenuity and originality. This is quite simply a tour de force. Edmond Wright's thoughtful, engaging and erudite book transcends the conventional barriers that have long divid ed semiotics from pragmatism, analytic from normative philosophy, materialist realism from social constructivism. At once charming and deeply serious, in his journey from the structure of the joke to the nature of ethical being Wright finds intellectual c onnections where nobody has even thought of looking. This study will be recognized as a major contribution not only to philosophy, but also to the broader field of social and cultural theory.'

- Philip Smith, Department of Sociology, Yale University, USA

There have been many voices in disciplines as various as philosophy, history, psychology, hermeneutics, literary theory, and theology that have claimed that narrative is fundamental to all that is human. Here is a book that, in an engaging and amusing way, presents a coherent thesis to that effect, connecting the Joke and the Story (with all that comedy and tragedy imply) not only with our sensing and perceiving of the world, but with our faith in each other, and what the character of that faith should be. Although at one level it could be said to draw ethics, logic, metaphysics and aesthetics in a highly original argument, it deliberately does not move outside the scope of the understanding of the ordinary reader. It is not too much to say that, shoul d its claims prove justifiable, not only will the basis of science have to be rethought but our policies with regard to fundamentalism, xenophobia and the like will have to be transformed.

The Joke
The Story
A Theory of Perception
A Triangle with Fuzzy Corners
Language
Faith

Edmond Wright held degrees in both English and Philosophy. His doctoral thesis was on metaphor. He has edited The Ironic Discourse (Poetics Today, 1983), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception (Avebury, 1993), and has co-edited with his wife Elizabeth Wright The Zizek Reader (Blackwell, 1999). He published over sixty articles on language, perception, epistemology and narrative, as well as two books of poetry.

October 2005

Hardback - £50.00 - 1-4039-9067-0

Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith

Contents