Description
Book SynopsisFocuses on the phenomenon of self-deception, and proposes a radical revision of our commonplace understanding of it as a token of irrationality. Argues that self-deception can illuminate the rationalistic functions of character.
Trade Review“Raising the scandalous proposition that the ’self-deceiver’ should be seen less as the condemnable antagonist of Reason than as the perpetrator of the active imagination that gives rise to genuine aesthetic experience, Singer tests his claim with a series of brilliant arguments grounded in literary, philosophical, and art studies extending from familiar classics—Parmigianino, Tintoretto, Flaubert, and Hegel—to such moderns as Jeff Wall, Bill Viola, Gerhard Richter, and Peter Greenaway. The Self-Deceiving Muse should add significantly to contemporary debate on the relations between reason, aesthetics, and ethics in a language thoroughly conversant with recent critical theory.”
—Josef Chytry,University of California, Berkeley, and California College of the Arts
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Self-Deceiving Muse
2 Illusionism and the Self-Deceiving I
3 Learning from Self-Deception
4 Being Out of Character / Normativizing Self-Deception
5 Picturing Self-Deception
6 Spelling Out the Viewer
7 Shameless Self-Deception
Notes
Bibliography
Index
