TY - JOUR
T1 - What do we mean when we talk about transcendence? Plato and Virginia Woolf
AU - Baker, Robert
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Plato lends expression to an Axial Age understanding of transcendence: a philosopher, if virtuous, can be released from bodily and temporal existence. Virginia Woolf lends expression to a Romantic or Modernist understanding of transcendence: an artist, if gifted, can be released from the cramped condition of ordinary existence. In this essay, borrowing a concept from Charles Taylor, I argue that Plato and Woolf show us what an immanent transcendence involves: the reach of a soul transformed by an ideal or a vision it lives by. In Plato, in Woolf, what is at stake is poise, openness of mind, largeness of perspective.
AB - Plato lends expression to an Axial Age understanding of transcendence: a philosopher, if virtuous, can be released from bodily and temporal existence. Virginia Woolf lends expression to a Romantic or Modernist understanding of transcendence: an artist, if gifted, can be released from the cramped condition of ordinary existence. In this essay, borrowing a concept from Charles Taylor, I argue that Plato and Woolf show us what an immanent transcendence involves: the reach of a soul transformed by an ideal or a vision it lives by. In Plato, in Woolf, what is at stake is poise, openness of mind, largeness of perspective.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076001566&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1353/phl.2019.0026
DO - 10.1353/phl.2019.0026
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85076001566
SN - 0190-0013
VL - 43
SP - 312
EP - 335
JO - Philosophy and Literature
JF - Philosophy and Literature
IS - 2
ER -