Writing cogito : Montaigne, Descartes, and the institution of the modern subject
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Writing cogito : Montaigne, Descartes, and the institution of the modern subject
（SUNY series, the margins of literature）
State University of New York Press, c1997
- : hbk
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-206) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Combining literary theory and history with detailed textual analysis, Melehy examines a series of events at the outset of modernity involving both literature and philosophy. Through the work of Michel de Montaigne and Rene Descartes, Melehy considers the question of the foundation of the human subject, in the context of contemporary debates in literature and philosophy. Montaigne, through writing, examines the many possibilities of subjective experience, and finds that the subject takes shape in writing. Descartes comes to the subject in search of a principle to circumvent the uncertainty of language--"I think, therefore I am," the cogito. But Descartes, Melehy shows, must continually depend on literary devices, on the properties of language whose effects he is so eager to escape--also deploying the devices to disguise the fact that they permeate his work.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I Beginning
1. Institution
2. The Cartesian Web-Derrida and Foucault
Part II Montaigne's Writing
3. Montaigne's "I"
4. The Essay: The Writing of the Subject
Part III Descartes's Cogito
5. The Method: The Writing of the Subject
6. Descartes's Books
Part IV Ending
7. The Rest of the Cogito
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"