The Nonsense of Kant and Lewis Carroll ─ Unexpected Essays on Philosophy, Art, Life, and Death

Imagine if it were Kant and not Alice that fell into the rabbit’s hole. This is the challenge of the lead essay in Ben-Ami Scharfstein’s outstanding new collection of essays. In exploring such a comical possibility, Scharfstein discovers unexpected and remarkable parallels between Kant and Lewis Carroll as authors, and their most famous works. He thus sets the stage for his wide-ranging approach to comparative philosophy in which context is everything but always incomplete and elusive. Thus the essays tackle the question of how philosophers’ lives affect their philosophies, the commonalities of Eastern, South Asian, and Western aesthetics and art, and a whole range of issues central to Scharfstein’s profoundly humanistic and human outlook. The result is a volume that will introduce readers to an approach to philosophy and a philosopher they will never forget.

Ben-Ami Scharfstein is professor emeritus of philosophy at Tel-Aviv University. He is the author many books, including Of Birds, Beasts, and Other Artists and Art Without Borders, also published by the University of Chicago Press.