Contingencies of Value

Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory

Barbara H. Smith

    1. Fixed Marks and Variable Constancies: A Parable of Value

    Evaluating Shakespeare's Sonnets

    Critical Problematics

    2. The Exile of Evaluation

    Fact and Value in the Literary Academy

    The Politics of Evaluative Criticism

    An Alternative Project

    3. Contingencies of Value

    Contingency and Interdependence

    Matters of Taste

    Processes of Evaluation

    The Dynamics of Endurance

    4. Axiologic Logic

    Hume's Natural Standard

    Kant's Pure Judgments

    Logical Tastes and The Other's Poison

    Three Postaxiological Postscripts

    5. Truth/Value

    Judgment Typology and Maclntyre's Fall

    Value without Truth-Value

    Changing Places: Truth, Error, and Deconstruction

    6. The Critiques of Utility

    Humanism, Anti-Utilitarianism, and the Double Discourse of Value

    Bataille's Expenditure

    Endless (Ex)Change

    7. Matters of Consequence

    Critiques and Charges: The Objectivist Generation of "Relativism"

    Quietism and the Active Relativist

    Community, Solidarity, and the Pragmatist's Dilemma

    Politics and Justification

    Conceptual Tastes and Practical Consequences

    Notes

    Index

  • Cover: Contingencies of Value

Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University, where she is also Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory.