Weakness: A Literary and Philosophical History

Michael O'Sullivan is Assistant Professor in English at The Chinese University of Hong Kong; He is author of Michel Henry: Incarnation, Barbarism and Belief (Peter Lang, 2006).

• Introduction; Part I: Philosophy; 1. Akrasia and Weakness of the Will; 2. The Flesh is Weak: Incarnating the Word; 3. Daoism and Weakness: "Weakness is the means dao employs":; 4. Kierkegaard's "despair of weakness" - Nietzsche's "metaphysics of weakness"; 5. Gender theory and weakness: is there a "weaker vessel"?; 6. Why is Derrida's sign violent? Radical passivity and givenness; Part II: Literature; 7. Negative Capability and Romantic Indolence; 8. Dickens and the "experience of the common"; 9. Modernist Impotence in Joyce and Eliot: "Words of Silent Power"; 10. The Beckettian body: "The authentic weakness of being"; 10. Vulnerability and "the animal" in J. M. Coetzee; Conclusion - Humane Weakness; Bibliography; Index.

'Although Western philosophy has generally appraised weakness negatively as a lack of power or a sign of moral failing, in this book Michael O'Sulllivan joins a number of contemporary thinkers (Ricoeur, Derrida, Agamben, Butler, and Nussbaum, among others) who in their own ways have offered a defense of passivity, vulnerability, and the precariousness of life. Through a wide-ranging exploration of the theme of weakness in philosophy, religion, and literature, O'Sullivan identifies a variety of treatments of this theme and ties them all together in the message that weakness is a core feature of our shared humanity. This book thus provides readers with a great starting point for anyone in the humanities who is in search of a new conceptual mapping of the human.'