Milton and Self-Knowledge

PMLA ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert W. Fields
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
External World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Self Examination

Milton's notion of self-knowledge places him in the Socratic-Christian tradition which distinguishes between man's rational part, or self-like-God, and his passional nature, the aspect of self most easily subverted by Satan. Only the self-knowing man, by introspection and by seeing the reflection of self in the mirror of the world's stage, achieves a harmony between the two aspects of self. Milton's concept of self-examination, apparent in his prose and verse, is symbolically represented in Paradise Lost. The world of Adam-Eve mirrors both God's realm of pure truth and reason and Satan's realm of unreason and unrestrained passion. These realms represent those aspects of self that man must necessarily discover within. The Fall is inevitable and irrevocable in the creation of self: in Adam's discovery of his obligation to know himself “aright,” he understands that his rational self-like-God must rule the darker passionate self. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes also represent man as achieving self-knowledge by the twofold means of introspection and viewing the reflection of himself in the external world.

The Chronology of Milton's Major Poems

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 345-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Shawcross
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
Important Study

The conclusion of Ants Oras as to the chronology of Milton's major poems, based on his important study of the blank vejse, is, I believe, in serious error. Examining strong pauses, both terminal and medial, the distribution of medial pauses over the pentameter line, run-on lines, feminine and masculine pauses, the distribution of polysyllables over the verse line, feminine endings, rhythmical expressions creating shifted stresses, syllabized “-ed” endings, and pyrrhic verse endings, Oras concludes that the traditional chronology for Paradise Lost (from Book I through Book XII), Paradise Regained (from Book I through Book IV), and Samson Agonistes is correct. As a prosodical study, the statistical data presented lead us to a greater understanding of the aforementioned verse techniques as used by Milton than we have heretofore known. Professor Oras' inferences of dated practice are, however, another matter.

Self-Knowledge in Personality Disorder: Self-Referentiality as a Stepping Stone for Psychotherapeutic Understanding

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Strijbos ◽  
Gerrit Glas
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
The Self ◽  
Stepping Stone ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Framework ◽  
Self Knowledge

This article provides a philosophical framework to help unpack varieties of self-knowledge in clinical practice. We start from a hermeneutical conception of “the self,” according to which the self is not interpreted as some fixed entity, but as embedded in and emerging from our relating to and interacting with our own conditions and activities, others, and the world. The notion of “self-referentiality” is introduced to further unpack how this self-relational activity can become manifest in one's emotions, speech acts, gestures, and actions. Self-referentiality exemplifies what emotions themselves implicitly signify about the person having them. In the remainder of the article, we distinguish among three different ways in which the self-relational activity can become manifest in therapy. Our model is intended to facilitate therapists’ understanding of their patients’ self-relational activity in therapy, when jointly attending to the self-referential meaning of what their patients feel, say, and do.

XVII.—Samson Agonistes Again

PMLA ◽  
1921 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paull Franklin Baum
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
The World ◽  
Suspension Of Disbelief ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Obiter Dictum

Although Dr. Johnson is one of our best English critics, he has left much that the world would willingly let die. But alas ! the written word is imperishable, and will every now and then repair its drooping head, in spite of the opportunities of oblivion. Johnson's strictures on the shorter poems of Milton have now for a good while been taken for what they are worth; even his severity with Comus is recognized as more than half perversely irrelevant. I say nothing of Paradise Lost, for no other poem so inexorably demands the willing suspension of disbelief which Johnson was incapable of. But recently his obiter dictum that Samson Agonistes is not a dramatic whole in the Aristotelian sense, having a beginning, a middle, and an end; that “ the intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor retard the catastrophe ” has re-entered the listed field. And “ these shifts ” must be “refuted.”

How to Rule the World: An Introduction to Xenophon'sThe Education of Cyrus

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT C. BARTLETT
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Excellence ◽  
Self Knowledge

As a contribution to the study of empire and imperial ambition, the present study considers the greatest analysis—Xenophon'sThe Education of Cyrus—of one of the greatest empires of antiquity—the Persian. Xenophon's lively and engaging account permits us to watch Cyrus as he builds a transnational empire, at once vast and stable. Yet Xenophon is ultimately highly critical of Cyrus, because he lacks the self-knowledge requisite to happiness, and of the empire, whose stability is purchased at the price of freedom. Cyrus finally appears as a kind of divinity who strives to supply the reward for moral excellence that the gods evidently do not. Xenophon implies that any truly global empire would have to present itself as a universal providential power capable of bestowing on human beings a blessed happiness that as such transcends our very mortality.

Choosing a captain back for Egypt: Milton and the Restoration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren Chernaik
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
The One

Milton as a republican viewed the restoration of kingship in 1660 with dread. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, like the last two books of Paradise Lost, have a specific Restoration historical context, at a time of persecution of former commonwealthsmen and religious Dissenters. In Samson Agonistes, Milton’s protagonist struggles against despair, the feeling that he has been abandoned by God, while recognizing his own responsibility for the humiliating slavery into which he has been plunged. Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained, published in a single volume in 1671, in their different ways both concern themselves with the problems and temptations facing those who seek to serve God in a hostile, unjust society. The two works explore alternative paths for ‘the spirits of just men long opprest’: in the one case, patience, suffering, bearing ‘tribulations, injuries, insults’ courageously, not expecting redress, and in the other, violent resistance, the slaughter of one’s enemies, in an ending of Milton’s tragedy which has often puzzled and disturbed readers.

BENEFIT OR HARM FROM PHILOSOPHY: REFLECTIONS OF 19TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHERS (I. M. Skvortsov, V. N. Karpov, P. I. Linitsky)

2020 ◽  
pp. 114-118
Author(s):  
Olga Machkarina
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Personality ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Eternal Law ◽  
Xix Century

The author reveals the views of I. M. Skvortsov, V. N. Karpov, P. I. Linitsky – Russian religious philoso-phers of the XIX century on the role of philosophy in the knowledge of the world around him in its integri-ty and comprehension of the "eternal law", on the connection of philosophy with private sciences and determination of the place of philosophy in the system of education, its influence on the formation of the thought culture of the student's personality, on the role of philosophy in the self-knowledge and upbring-ing of the moral personality.

John Milton: Paradise Lost (1935); Paradise Regained, Minor Poems and Samson Agonistes (1937)

1938 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 432
Author(s):  
B. A. Wright ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Merritt Y. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained

Scepticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Inductive Reasoning ◽  
External World ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
The World ◽  
Epistemic Appraisal ◽  
Sceptical Argument ◽  
Rule Out

Simply put, scepticism is the view that we fail to know anything. More generally, the term ‘scepticism’ refers to a family of views, each of which denies that some term of positive epistemic appraisal applies to our beliefs. Thus, sceptical doctrines might hold that none of our beliefs is certain, that none of our beliefs is justified, that none of our beliefs is reasonable, that none of our beliefs is more reasonable than its denial, and so on. Sceptical doctrines can also vary with respect to the kind of belief they target. Scepticism can be restricted to beliefs produced in certain ways: for example, scepticism concerning beliefs based on memory, on inductive reasoning or even on any reasoning whatsoever. And sceptical views can be restricted to beliefs about certain subjects: for example, scepticism concerning beliefs about the external world, beliefs about other minds, beliefs about value and so on. Solipsism – the view that all that exists is the self and its states – can be seen as a form of scepticism based on the claim that there are no convincing arguments for the existence of anything beyond the self. The philosophical problem of scepticism derives from what appear to be very strong arguments for sceptical conclusions. Since most philosophers are unwilling to accept those conclusions, there is a problem concerning how to respond to the arguments. For example, one kind of sceptical argument attempts to show that we have no knowledge of the world around us. The argument hinges on the claim that we are not in a position to rule out the possibility that we are brains-in-a-vat being artificially stimulated to have just the sensory experience we are actually having. We have no basis for ruling out this possibility since if it were actual, our experience would not change in any way. The sceptic then claims that if we cannot rule out the possibility that we are brains-in-a-vat, then we cannot know anything about the world around us. Responses to this argument often fall into one of two categories. Some philosophers argue that we can rule out the possibility that we are brains-in-a-vat. Others argue that we do not need to be able to rule out this possibility in order to have knowledge of the world around us.

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