Contextual Authority and Aesthetic Truth

James S. Hans

Jul 1992 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

This book explores the relationship between authority and context and attempts to establish the ways in which authority is a function of a particular agent or set of agents, and the degree to which it is a product of a context rather than an agent. The work is not a sociological or psychological study but rather a literary/philosophical speculation into the roots of our conceptions of authority. It declares all authority to be aesthetic in nature and is based on an analysis of several key texts from various different cultural backgrounds: Foucault, Weber, Nietzsche, Confucius, and Homer.

About the author

James S. Hans is Professor of English at Wake Forest University. His previous books are The Fate of Desire; The Origins of the Gods; The Value(s) of Literature, all published by SUNY Press; The Play of the World; Imitation and the Image of Man; and The Question of Value: Thinking Through Nietzsche, Heidegger and Freud. He has published numerous essays on modern and contemporary American literature and contemporary literary theory and Continental philosophy.