Melville's Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale: Philosophical Perspectives

"This volume contributes to a growing body of interdisciplinary work on Melville's philosophical thought. While Moby-Dick has long been recognized as a philosophical novel, the nature of its philosophy remains a matter of lively interpretive debate. The broadest object of Melville's philosophizing, engaged by all the authors in this volume, is significance or meaning, along with the closely related question of value or worth. What gives things their significance on their own and in relation to other things? Ishmael avers that either all things have significance or none do - that is the overall gambit of Moby-Dick; either a position we might call panvaluism or the nihilism of a cold colorless world of atoms and void. With this either-or Melville comes close in spirit to the transcendental philosophy of the modern Kantian tradition, and most of these essays do relate Moby-Dick to German idealism, American transcendentalism, or to the thinkers (Nietzsche, Heidegger) who rebelled against idealism. The authors in his volume draw out the philosophy from the text and showing how the novel engages philosophical questions about agency, ethics, and metaphysics. One need not have studied philosophy to appreciate the philosophy in Moby-Dick; one needs only to be open to thinking with Melville about the problems of the universe"-- Provided by publisher.