Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals

by Mark Edmundson

Overview

An ARTery Best Book of the Year
An Art of Manliness Best Book of the Year

In a culture that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, the desires of the individual self stand supreme, Mark Edmundson says. We spare little thought for the great ideals that once gave life meaning and worth. Self and Soul is an impassioned effort to defend the values of the Soul.

“An impassioned critique of Western society, a relentless assault on contemporary complacency, shallowness, competitiveness and self-regard…Throughout Self and Soul, Edmundson writes with a Thoreau-like incisiveness and fervor…[A] powerful, heartfelt book.”
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post

“[Edmundson’s] bold and ambitious new book is partly a demonstration of what a ‘real education’ in the humanities, inspired by the goal of ‘human transformation’ and devoted to taking writers seriously, might look like…[It] quietly sets out to challenge many educational pieties, most of the assumptions of recent literary studies—and his own chosen lifestyle.”
—Mathew Reisz, Times Higher Education

“Edmundson delivers a welcome championing of humanistic ways of thinking and living.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674984004
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	07/02/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	589,387
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mark Edmundson is University Professor and Professor of English at the University of Virginia. A Guggenheim fellow, he is author of more than a dozen books, including Self and Soul, Why Teach? and Nightmare on Main Street.

Table of Contents

Main Sources Cited in the Text ix

Polemical Introduction: The Triumph of Self 1

I Ancient Ideals

1 The Hero 19

2 The Saint 51

3 The Thinker 100

II Ideals in the Modern World

4 Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self 137

5 The Poet 185

6 Freud and the Ideal Self 217

Polemical Conclusion: In the Culture of the Counterfeit 247

Bibliography 261

Acknowledgments 279

Index 281

Editorial Reviews

An impassioned critique of Western society, a relentless assault on contemporary complacency, shallowness, competitiveness, and self-regard… Throughout Self and Soul, Edmundson writes with a Thoreau-like incisiveness and fervor… [A] powerful, heartfelt book.
-- Michael Dirda Washington Post

[Edmundson’s] bold and ambitious new book is partly a demonstration of what a ‘real education’ in the humanities, inspired by the goal of ‘human transformation’ and devoted to taking writers seriously, might look like… [It] quietly sets out to challenge many educational pieties, most of the assumptions of recent literary studies—and his own chosen lifestyle.
-- Mathew Reisz Times Higher Education

Edmundson’s essays are smart and to the point, and there are some very good turns, as when he lists all the positive things that come from a life devoted to contemplating the ideal… Edmundson delivers a welcome championing of humanistic ways of thinking and living.
-- Kirkus Reviews

There are few writers whom I turn to more eagerly than Mark Edmundson, one of our most perceptive voices on the subjects of teaching, learning, the humanities, and the conduct of a meaningful life. Edmundson believes, against the tide of the culture, that there is something more to existence than getting and spending (i.e., living half-awake for as long as possible), and in Self and Soul he shows us what that something might be. He is an idealist in an age of cynicism, a thinker in an age of surfaces. You won’t regret a minute that you spend in his company.
-- William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

Self and Soul is a series of secular hymns to the soul-saving idealists who shaped Western literature and spiritual philosophy—from Homer to Shakespeare and Blake, Jesus to Emerson and Freud. Let Mark Edmundson be your guide to these wise ones, and whether you thought you knew them well, or have scarcely made their acquaintance, you will be revivified through his telling of a quest for salvation in classic texts that enshrine a trinity of ideals now under threat: courage, compassion, and contemplation.
-- Megan Marshall, author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life

Mark Edmundson’s Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals is in every way a wonderful and highly original book.
-- J. Hillis Miller, author of Communities in Fiction

With this book Edmundson takes his place as one of the really remarkable contemporary cultural critics. The book, which is written with Edmundson’s incredible lucidity and incisiveness, is really about its title: about what ideals mean and how they work. Ideals that inspire rather than humiliate; that intrigue rather than persecute.
-- Adam Phillips, author of On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored

From the Publisher

With this book Edmundson takes his place as one of the really remarkable contemporary cultural critics. The book, which is written with Edmundson’s incredible lucidity and incisiveness, is really about its title: about what ideals mean and how they work. Ideals that inspire rather than humiliate; that intrigue rather than persecute.

Adam Phillips

Mark Edmundson’s Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals is in every way a wonderful and highly original book.

J. Hillis Miller

Self and Soul is a series of secular hymns to the soul-saving idealists who shaped Western literature and spiritual philosophy—from Homer to Shakespeare and Blake, Jesus to Emerson and Freud. Let Mark Edmundson be your guide to these wise ones, and whether you thought you knew them well, or have scarcely made their acquaintance, you will be revivified through his telling of a quest for salvation in classic texts that enshrine a trinity of ideals now under threat: courage, compassion, and contemplation.

Megan Marshall

There are few writers whom I turn to more eagerly than Mark Edmundson, one of our most perceptive voices on the subjects of teaching, learning, the humanities, and the conduct of a meaningful life. Edmundson believes, against the tide of the culture, that there is something more to existence than getting and spending (i.e., living half-awake for as long as possible), and in Self and Soul he shows us what that something might be. He is an idealist in an age of cynicism, a thinker in an age of surfaces. You won’t regret a minute that you spend in his company.

William Deresiewicz

[Edmundson’s] bold and ambitious new book is partly a demonstration of what a ‘real education’ in the humanities, inspired by the goal of ‘human transformation’ and devoted to taking writers seriously, might look like… [It] quietly sets out to challenge many educational pieties, most of the assumptions of recent literary studies—and his own chosen lifestyle.

Times Higher Education - Mathew Reisz

An impassioned critique of Western society, a relentless assault on contemporary complacency, shallowness, competitiveness, and self-regard… Throughout Self and Soul, Edmundson writes with a Thoreau-like incisiveness and fervor… [A] powerful, heartfelt book.

Washington Post - Michael Dirda

09/01/2015
Edmundson (English, Univ. of Virginia; Why Football Matters) here contends our culture has abandoned its ideals and we are worse off for it. Comprised of six chapters—the first three on ancient ideals, the last three on threats to ideals—and bookended by a short introduction and conclusion, Edmundson's narrative claims that we've become practical, materialistic, and skeptical and that few of us live up to ideals, such as those represented by Homer's Achilles, who sought greatness, and Hector, who sought to serve. But if we are truly as he says then it seems we live up to a different Homeric ideal—that of Odysseus, cunning, persevering, and determined. The author blames today's economic, environmental, and social problems on our failure to live up to the principles of greatness, sacrifice, and compassion, but he offers no substantive argument for this. Ironically, though, we do strive to be like Achilles—to be great—but for many, their Achilles' heel is the unwavering assumption that they are already great and need not change. VERDICT Because of the aforementioned flaws, this title is not recommended.—William Simkulet, Univ. of Wisconsin-Marshfield/Wood Cty., Marshfield

Library Journal

2015-06-30
What happens in the rush to gain the world? We lose our souls, of course—and, Edmundson (English/Univ. of Virginia; Why Football Matters, 2014, etc.) adds, our ideals to boot. "The profound stories about heroes and saints are passing from our minds," writes the author on the first page. They're passing from our minds because we are so occupied with making money, that most realistic of endeavors, that we have forgotten even the barest outlines of how to be idealistic. If this seems a grumpy-old-man jeremiad, Edmundson avoids get-off-my-lawn, Harold Bloom-ian impulses by almost immediately settling on a most unlikely culprit: namely, William Shakespeare, whom he credits for putting our minds onto the matters of the bourgeois age so thoroughly that he finds, and we find, "little use for chivalry and the culture of heroic honor." Other players in Edmundson's drama of the great states of Self and Soul include Freud, Plato, Blake, Tolstoy, Buddha, Jesus, and Donne, to say nothing of Frye and Pound. In short, it's the usual who's who of the Humanities 101 of yore, though that course has now given way to less heady surveys. Edmundson identifies three central virtues: courage, compassion, and contemplation. Each has found numerous interpretations; the author, for example, contrasts Achilles and Hector in the Homeric poems, the former as an example of self-interest, the latter as one of self-sacrifice, each addressing the matter of courage in different ways. Edmundson's essays are smart and to the point, and there are some very good turns, as when he lists all the positive things that come from a life devoted to contemplating the ideal. A big-screen TV is not among them, but, he counsels by way of consolation, "having freed yourself, you will make others free." Though Shakespeare fans may feel defensive, Edmundson delivers a welcome championing of humanistic ways of thinking and living.

Kirkus Reviews