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7Modernism, ethics and the political imagination: living wrong life rightlyPalgrave MacMillan. 2017.In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today's emancipatory struggles. Modernism in this assessment is characterized not only by a concern with language and aesthetic creativity, but also by a preoccupation with the question of how to live. Investig…Read more
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Wittgenstein's apocalyptic subjectivityIn Robert Chodat & John Gibson (eds.), Wittgenstein and Literary Studies, Cambridge University Press. 2022.
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5Find It New: Aspect-Perception and Modernist EthicsIn Sebastian Sunday Grève & Jakub Mácha (eds.), Wittgenstein and the Creativity of Language, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 238-263. 2016.In an essay entitled ‘The Nobility of Sight’, Hans Jonas argues that ‘[s] ince the days of Greek philosophy sight has been recognized as the most excellent of senses’ (Jonas, 1954, p.507). Seeking to account for the historical elevation of vision over other forms of sensory engagement with the world, Jonas contends that ‘[t]he unique distinction of sight consists in what we may call the image performance, where “image” implies three characteristics: (1) simultaneity in the presentation of a mani…Read more
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Excremental Happiness: From Neurotic Hedonism to Dialectical PessimismCollege Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies 2 (45): 198-221. 2018.This essay resists steering an unhappy third-way between avowedly “critical” approaches to happiness (Freud, Žižek) and more “positive” perspectives (Benjamin, Badiou), and instead turns the tables. In the first half, focusing upon Thomas Mann’s short story “The Will to Happiness,” it examines neurotic hedonism—a more sophisticated variant of the hysteric’s old game of deriving satisfaction from unsatisfied desire itself—and some of the “necessary fictions” which undergird it. In the second half…Read more
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32Francis Bacon: Painting, Philosophy, PsychoanalysisThames & Hudson. 2019.The latest book in a series that seeks to illuminate Francis Bacon's art and motivations and open up fresh and stimulating ways of understanding his paintings.
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1In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today’s emancipatory struggles. Modernism in this assessment is characterized not only by a concern with language and aesthetic creativity, but also by a preoccupation with the question of how to live. Investig…Read more
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Tragic-Dialectical-Perfectionism: On the Ethics of Beckett's 'Endgame'College Literature 42 (1): 3-21. 2015.
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40Ethics and the Literary in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-PhilosophicusJournal of the History of Ideas 72 (4): 595-611. 2011.
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6Dialectic of the Ladder: Wittgenstein, the 'Tractatus' and ModernismBloomsbury Academic. 2015.Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) remains one of the most enigmatic works of twentieth century thought. In this bold and original new study, Ben Ware argues that Wittgenstein's early masterpiece is neither an analytic treatise on language and logic, nor a quasi-mystical work seeking to communicate 'ineffable' truths. Instead, we come to understand the Tractatus by grasping it in a twofold sense: first, as a dialectical work which invites the reader to overcome certain '…Read more
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4Seeing the Everyday Otherwise: Vision, Ethics and Utopia in Wittgenstein's Philosophical InvestigationsCritical Quarterly 56 (1): 23-39. 2014.
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