The Self and its Shadows

Stephen Mulhall is a Professor of Philosophy, and a Tutorial Fellow of New College, Oxford. He was previously a Prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a Reader in Philosophy at the University of Essex.

• Contents ; Introduction ; Dramatis Personae ; Exemplars of Identity: The Bearing of Proper Names in the Philosophical Investigations ; Smoking in Wartime: Sartrean Scenes I ; Orchestral Metaphysics: The Birth of Tragedy Between Drama, Opera and Philosophy ; The Metaphysics of (Secret) Agency Or: Three Ways of Not Being James Bond ; The Gamblers of Roulettenburg: Sartrean Scenes II ; The Melodramatic Reality of Film and Literature Or: Elizabeth Costello's Cinematic Sisters ; Fetters, Shadows and Circles: Freedom and Form in Human, All Too Human ; The Trials of Desire: Sartrean Scenes III ; Countering the Ballad of Co-Dependency: The Realistic Spirit of David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ; The Promising Animal: The Art of Reading On the Genealogy of Morality as Testimony ; The Decipherment of Signs: Sartrean Scenes IV ; Quartet: Wallace's Wittgenstein, Moran's Amis ; Bibliography ; Filmography

In this brilliant collection of essays, Mulhall uncovers core concerns of philosophical writers ... Readers interested in philosophy, literature, and film will benefit greatly from the guidance and verve of Britain's finest philosopher writing today.