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Reading as a Philosophical Practice
By Robert Piercey
This book asks why reading matters so much to so many people. Its answer is that reading is a philosophical activity: a way of working through, and taking a stand on, fundamental questions about who and what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things.
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About This Book
Reading as a Philosophical Practice asks why reading—everyday reading for pleasure—matters so profoundly to so many people. Its answer is that reading is an implicitly philosophical activity. To passionate readers, it is a way of working through, and taking a stand on, certain fundamental questions about who and what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things. The book examines the lessons that the activity of reading seems to teach about selfhood, morality, and ontology, and it tries to clarify the sometimes paradoxical claims that serious readers have made about it. To do so, it proposes an original theoretical framework based on Virginia Woolf’s notion of the common reader and Alasdair MacIntyre’s conception of practice. It also asks whether reading can continue to play this role as paper is replaced by electronic screens.
Despite the obvious overlap between the concerns of avid readers and the perennial questions of philosophy, most professional philosophers pay little attention to the kinds of reading that are most familiar to most people. They have had almost nothing to say about the activity of reading for pleasure, considered in itself and as such, or about the ways it matters to ordinary readers. For many serious readers, reading offers a way of working through philosophical matters—a way of posing, and sometimes taking a stand on, certain fundamental questions about what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things. This questioning is usually not as explicit or as self-aware as the debates that go on in philosophy journals and seminar rooms. But it has much the same goal and addresses many of the same concerns. Moreover, Reading as a Philosophical Practice argues that it is the “experience” of reading that performs these functions. Reading is not just philosophical on those occasions when we happen to read the works of philosophers or philosophically minded novelists. There is something philosophical about the activity of reading, in itself and as such, and about the experiences people have while engaged in it. The book’s goal is to clarify what this is.
Reviews
“Robert Piercey has written an important, engaging, and accessible book about books – specifically, about why we should all read more books. He argues that reading is a philosophical practice as conceived by Alasdair MacIntyre and that we should think about the benefits of the practice in terms of this conception rather than in the narrower frames of reference currently employed by the disciplines of literary aesthetics and literary criticism. Piercey has the enviable ability to both make an original contribution to academic scholarship across several disciplines and provide an intelligent and lively read for those that care about books outside the academy. To use his own term, this is a book for everyone who has a reading life, whether or not they are aware of it.” — Rafe McGregor, Senior Lecturer, Edge Hill University, UK
“Drawing on rich historical and academic sources, Rob Piercey presents a clear and convincing case as to how reading can be philosophical. At a time when many of us have been brought back to our reading roots, Reading as a Philosophical Practice is the perfect companion in a time of COVID.” — Todd Mei, Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of Kent, UK
Robert Piercey’s Reading as a Philosophical Practice is a humane and generous book—that rare work that doubles as a rewarding scholarly inquiry and an accessible guide for the general reader. Sailing resolutely against the prevailing sentiment that books are an anachronism, Piercey believes that the practice of reading and the reading life offer a precious space of reflection for the cultivation of what is meaningful, and an indispensable element in the constitution of one’s own self. A work clearly written by someone who loves his theme, Piercey elevates the existential claim that books—as a kind of being—have upon us. — John Arthos, Associate Professor of English, Indiana University
Author Information
Robert Piercey is Professor of Philosophy at Campion College, University of Regina, Canada. He is the author of The Uses of the Past From Heidegger to Rorty and The Crisis in Continental Philosophy, and editor of Philosophy in Review.
Series
Anthem Studies in Bibliotherapy and Well-Being
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; 1. Philosophizing about Reading: The Very Idea; 2. The Reading Self; 3. The Reading Life; 4. Ethics from Reading?; 5. Ethics of Reading?; 6. Reading Things; 7. The Future of the Common Reader; Notes; Bibliography; Index.
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