Frankenstein, the Frankfurt School, and the Domination of Nature

IF 0.1 3区文学 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM

PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE Pub Date : 2022-01-26 DOI:10.1353/phl.2021.0021

Sid Simpson

引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract:Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has been read and reread for decades as a cautionary myth about science. The interpretation is well known: a gentler, gradualist science is preferable to the aggressive Enlightenment rationality that spawned the Creature. However, I argue in this essay that such a distinction between "safe" and "dangerous" science is largely effaced in the novel itself. By reading Frankenstein alongside Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, I aim to demonstrate that Shelley levels a radical critique of how modern science mediates our moral world by dissolving the boundaries between civilization and nature, enlightenment and barbarism.

查看原文本刊更多论文

弗兰肯斯坦，法兰克福学派，以及对自然的统治

摘要:几十年来，玛丽·雪莱的《弗兰肯斯坦》作为一部警世神话被人们反复阅读。这种解释是众所周知的:一种温和的、渐进的科学比孕育了《生物》的激进的启蒙理性更可取。然而，我在这篇文章中认为，这种“安全”和“危险”科学之间的区别在小说本身中很大程度上被抹去了。通过与阿多诺和霍克海默的《启蒙辩证法》一起阅读《弗兰肯斯坦》，我旨在证明雪莱对现代科学如何通过消解文明与自然、启蒙与野蛮之间的界限来调解我们的道德世界进行了激进的批判。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE Multiple-

CiteScore

0.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： For more than a quarter century, Philosophy and Literature has explored the dialogue between literary and philosophical studies. The journal offers a constant source of fresh, stimulating ideas in the aesthetics of literature, theory of criticism, philosophical interpretation of literature, and literary treatment of philosophy. Philosophy and Literature challenges the cant and pretensions of academic priesthoods by publishing an assortment of lively, wide-ranging essays, notes, and reviews that are written in clear, jargon-free prose. In his regular column, editor Denis Dutton targets the fashions and inanities of contemporary intellectual life.