In Other Words: Transpositions of Philosophy in J.M. Coetzee's 'Jesus' Trilogy [Hardcover]

Stephen Mulhall explores how J. M. Coetzee's 'Jesus' Trilogy engages with themes drawn from Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and how Wittgenstein's and Coetzee's thought relates to the critique of modernity elaborated in the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre.J. M. Coetzee's 'Jesus' Trilogy extends and intensifies his long-term interest in engaging with a wide range of texts, themes and assumptions that help constitute the history of Western European philosophy. In this commentary, Stephen Mulhall extends his own earlier work on Coetzee's previous stagings of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature by identifying and following out various ways in which the 'Jesus' Trilogy activates and interrogates themes drawn from Wittgenstein's later philosophy. These themes include rival conceptions of counting and reading, the relation between concepts and wider forms of life, and the intertwined fate of philosophy, literature and religion in a resolutely secular world. In these ways, Wittgenstein's, and so Coetzee's, visions of the world disclose their uncanny intimacy with issues and values central to the critique of modernity elaborated in the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre.IntroductionAcknowledgementsPart OneNovilla: The Deviant PupilPart TwoEstrella: The MarionettePart ThreeEstrella: The OrphanBibliographyIndexStephen Mulhall,Professor of Philosophy and Russell H. Carpenter Fellow in Philosophy, New College, University of OxfordStephen Mulhallis Professor of Philosophy and Russell H. Carpenter Fellow in Philosophy at New College, University of Oxford. He has published many books on the intersection of art and philosophy, includingThe Self and Its Shadows: A Book of Essays on Individuality as Negation in Philosophy and the ArtsandThe Ascetic Ideal: Genealogies of Life-Denial in Religion, Ml+