Kazuo Ishiguro and Ethics
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published:9th Dec '24
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Kazuo Ishiguro and Ethics addresses the philosophical issues that lie at the heart of Ishiguro’s fiction, shedding light on the moral condition of his characters – their sense of responsibility and pride in service, their attempts at self-determination and the value they assign to loyalty, love and friendship. Ethics in Ishiguro’s work is structured around the tension between the limits of the characters’ agency and their striving towards the good. Ishiguro’s novels are shown to tackle fundamental questions posed by ancient Greek philosophers, especially Plato, and modern Western ones, from Adam Smith through Jean-Paul Sartre to Martha Nussbaum. What is the human soul? What is dignity? What does it mean to be human? These issues are expressed in his narrative world through the universal and timeless language of myths, allegories and images that are both ancient and modern as well as cross-cultural.
Deftly exploring its philosophical underpinnings, Laura Colombino’s incisive study addresses a central question in Ishiguro’s work: how to live ethically in a politically perilous and psychologically obdurate world. Colombino offers a profound meditation on Ishiguro’s career-long unflinching investigation of this most compelling of unresolved questions.
— Andrew Bennett, Professor of English, University of Bristol, UK
Laura Colombino’s Kazuo Ishiguro and Ethics is a rich and indispensable work for all those who, working at the intersection of philosophy and literature, want to explore the ethical questions and dilemmas posed by the work of Kazuo Ishiguro. Covering virtually the entirety of Ishiguro’s work to date, it is a rare combination of thematic depth, precision of thought, and a delightful attention to the stylistic specificities of one of our greatest living writers. It is deeply original and a pleasure to read. I can’t recommend it enough.
— Miguel de Beistegui, ICREA Professor of Philosophy, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
… no previous study has tackled these questions with such range, such depth, such focus and such elegance as Colombino's; if others have gestured towards the ethical impasses of Ishiguro's morally fractious worlds, her deft and intellectually agile book provides the definitive handbook to Ishiguro and philosophy … The book is insightful, engagingly written, and most importantly articulates with great delicacy some of the unspoken conceptual and emotional subtleties of some of the most important novels in the contemporary canon.
— Peter Sloane, English Studies
Kazuo Ishiguro and Ethics (Routledge, 2025) is a highly nuanced, original, and riveting exploration of the philosophical dilemmas pertinent to Ishiguro’s fictional imaginings…. Employing a whole array of philosophical perspectives, in order to display Ishiguro’s profound interest in ethics as the foundation of our human existence, Colombino organizes her material in a punctiliously methodological and effective manner. Her book is a timely call on us to review the values we live by. It comes as a rare gift amidst the present-day chaos, geopolitical anxiety, and the weakening of the solid ethical ground, on which we can stand….In sum, this stylish interdisciplinary book is an irreplaceable contribution to contemporary ethics, trauma studies, intercultural studies, philosophy of literature, and philosophy in literature. It is a captivating read that provokes us to stretch our imagination and reflect anew on the issues of dignity, responsibility, pride, loyalty, and the depth and importance of human relationships.
— Małgorzata Hołda, Phainomena: Journal of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics
ISBN: 9781032660677
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 440g
194 pages