The Mess Inside

The Mess Inside by Peter Goldie

Peter Goldie explores the ways in which we think about our lives--our past, present, and future--in narrative terms. The notion of narrative is highly topical, and highly contentious, in a wide range of fields including philosophy, psychology and psychoanalysis, historical studies, and literature. The Mess Inside engages with all of these areas of discourse, and steers a path between the sceptics who are dismissive of the idea of narrative as having any worthwhile use at all, and those who argue that our very selfhood is somehow constituted by a narrative. After introducing the notion of narrative, Goldie discusses the way we engage with the past in narrative terms. This involves an exploration of the essentially perspectival nature of narrative thinking, which gains support from much recent empirical work on memory. Drawing on literary examples and on work in psychoanalysis, Goldie considers grief as a case study of this kind of narrative thinking, extending to a discussion of the crucial notion of 'closure'. Turning to narrative thinking about our future, Goldie discusses the many structural parallels between our imaginings of the future and our memories of the past, and the role of our emotions in response to what we imagine in thinking about our future in the light of our past. This is followed by a second case study--an exploration of self-forgiveness. In this ground-breaking book, Goldie supports scepticism about the idea that there is such a thing as a narrative self, but argues that having a narrative sense of self, quite distinct from any metaphysical notion of selfhood, is at the heart of what it is to think of ourselves, and others, as having a narratable past, present, and future.

Peter Goldies final book is an important and insightful addition to the ever-growing literature on the nature of narrative and its role in our psychology... a deceptively simple and immensely readable work; the kind of philosophical book that is a genuine pleasure to peruse, and one that will inform narrative theory for the foreseeable future. * Roman Altshuler, Philosophy in Review *

Peter Goldie was the Samuel Hall Chair in Philosophy at the University of Manchester. His main philosophical interests were the philosophy of mind, ethics, and aesthetics, and particularly questions concerning value and how the mind engages with value. He is the author of The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration (OUP, 2000), and On Personality (Routledge, 2004), co-author of Who's Afraid of Conceptual Art? (Routledge, 2010), editor of Understanding Emotions: Mind and Morals (Ashgate, 2002), and The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion (OUP, 2010), and co-editor of Philosophy and Conceptual Art (OUP, 2007), Empathy (OUP, 2011), and The Aesthetic Mind (OUP, 2011).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780198707660
ISBN 10	0198707665
Title	The Mess Inside
Author	Peter Goldie
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	2014-07-03
Number of pages	200
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable