000			a
999			_c33782 _d33782
008			250320b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9781503636866
082			_a809.93353 _bCON
100			_aConnor, Steven
245			_aStyles of seriousness
260			_bStanford University Press, _c2023 _aStanford :
300			_a240 p. ; _c23 cm
365			_b26.00 _c$ _d90.60
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520			_aBeing serious demands serious kinds of work. In Styles of Seriousness, Steven Connor reflects on the surprisingly various ways in which a sense of the serious is made and maintained, revealing that while seriousness is the most powerful feeling, it is also the most poignantly indeterminate, perhaps because of the impossibility of being completely serious. In colloquy with philosophers such as Aristotle, Nietzsche, James, Sartre, Austin, Agamben and Sloterdijka and writers like Shakespeare, Byron, Auden and Orwell, Connor considers the linguistic and ritual behaviors associated with different modes of seriousness: importance; intention, or ways of really 'meaning things'; sincerity; solemnity; urgency; regret; warning; and ordeal. The central claim of the book is human beings are capable of taking things seriously in a way that nonhuman animals are not, for the unexpected reason that human beings are so much more versatile than most animals at not being completely serious. One always in fact has a choice about whether or not to take seriously something that is supposed to be so. As a consequence, seriousness depends on different kinds of formalization or stylized practice. Styles of seriousness matter, Connor shows, because human beings are incapable of simply and spontaneously existing. Being a human means having to take seriously one's style of being.
650			_aLiterary criticism
650			_aSeriousness
650			_aBartholomew Fair
650			_aGoose step
650			_aNarcissism
650			_aPascal Bruckner
650			_aPeter Sloterdijk
650			_aPhenomenology
942			_2ddc _cBK