New Book | Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude
The eighteenth century comes into the argument primarily only through Kant, but there might be wider implications: might the Rococo serve as a useful counter-example to the upright independence that Cavarero sees in Kant? –CH
Published in November by Stanford UP:
Adriana Cavarero, Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 208 pages, ISBN: 978 08047 92189 (cloth), $70 / ISBN: 978 15036 00409 (paperback), $20.
In this new and accessible book, Italy’s best known feminist philosopher examines the moral and political significance of vertical posture in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of inclination. Contesting the classical figure of homo erectus or ‘upright man’, Adriana Cavarero proposes an altruistic, open model of the subject—one who is inclined toward others. Contrasting the masculine upright with the feminine inclined, she references philosophical texts (by Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Elias Canetti, and others) as well as works of art (Barnett Newman, Leonardo da Vinci, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Alexander Rodchenko) and literature (Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf).
Adriana Cavarero is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Verona. Her books in English include For More than One Voice (2005) and Horrorism (2008).
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