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Table of Contents | |
| A Retrospective 8 | Literature & the Fight from Determinism 87 |
| The Shibboleth of Reason, and Reality | Freedom and friction |
| Science, Romanticism, and Return to Phenomena | Freedom vs Liberty |
| Goodness, Childhood, the Primitive | An Existential Concept of Mind |
| The Birth of Opposites | Reflective and Pre-Reflective Thought |
| The Realists | The Project |
| The Drive Inward | The Duality of the Negative |
| Impressionism vs. Positivism | The Absence of God |
| The Shifting Locus | Anguish, Forlornness, Despair |
| Philology as Criticism 23 | Existence Precedes Essence |
| Logos & Truth | Original Choice:The Connection Argument |
| Philology vs. Linguistics | The Wish to be God |
| Synecdoche | The "Situation" |
| The Method | Values and Action |
| Stylistics and "Geistesgeschichte" | The Existential "Self" |
| The Circle | Existential "Psycho-analysis" |
| Leo Spitzer: Microlinguistics & Microcosm | The Politics of Prose |
| The Linearity of Positivism | Action by Disclosure |
| The "Inner Click" | The Reader |
| Identification/Artist's "Soul"-The Leap of Faith | Literature and the Idea of Progress |
| The "Zirkel im verstehen" | The Structure of the Unknown 132 |
| The Writer's Innovation | Unification |
| The Method | Language: Meaning and Function |
| Identification vs. Contemplation | The Substance |
| The Marxist Impasse 39 | Objectivity |
| The Conflict | Sign vs. Symbol |
| Art for Art's Sake | The Meaning of Systems |
| The Dialectic | The Cliche' |
| Vulgar Sociology | Chooser, or Chosen |
| The Materials Chain | The Myth of Structure vs the Myth of Inspiration |
| The "Type" | The Structuring Organ |
| Reification | Language Creates Parole |
| Totality | Narrative Sequences |
| Commitment | System, Syntagm, Value |
| Character and Consciousness | Phenomenology as Criticism 156 |
| The Disappearance of the Subject | The Background |
| Tendentiousness | Negation |
| Rebel or Revolutionary | Intentionality |
| Freedom and Friction | Reflective Mind, Pre-Reflective World |
| The Locus of Reality | Identification |
| The Problem of the Self 62 | Holistic Assumption & the Morality of Aesthetics |
| The Hidden and the Apparent | Meaning given or Meaning Taken |
| Predecessors: Earlier Notions of Self & Mind | Logos and Being |
| The shadow of Pessimism | New Criticism-The Paradox of Obscurity 176 |
| Veracity of the Unprovable | The Tyranny of Causes |
| Immutable Instincts | Objectivism |
| Level of Specificity | Immanency and Intent |
| Desire and the Law | Meaning and the Public Domain |
| The Inner Struggle | Poetry as Higher Knowledge |
| The Censor | Intent and the Unconscious-The Paradox of Obscurity |
| The Will | Form, Content, Object |
| "The Psychology of excuse" | Afterword 191 |
| The Reversal of Motive | |
| "Energy" | |
| Pleasure vs. Reality principles | |
| The Poet and Day-Dreaming | |
Comments/Reviews | |
| * "William Gairdner has successfully achieved an original explanation of all the main critical systems which are alive today ... By comparing these various approaches according to their characteristic driving forces and the problems to which they are characteristically blind, The Critical Wager makes it possible for the average reader to understand the whole progression of critical thought since the Romantic period ... Gairdner writes with a rare first-hand immediacy, and an incisive and commonsensical enthusiasm which commands attention and respect." | |
| ~ Professor Ian Watt, Former Chairman, Department of English, Stanford University, and author of many landmark studies, including The Rise of the Novel. | |
| * "While more complex and subtle than a manifesto, The Critical Wager has something of a manifesto's sense of historical moment. Gairdner feels all of the ideologies he examines to be equally interesting [and] to this extent The Critical Wager is an optimistic book. It is also an uncommonly attractive one, argued, as it is, with intelligence, verve, and grace." | |
| ~ David Halliburton, Chairman, Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University | |
| * "...as it stands, his study is one of the most stimulating and intelligent reflections on the nature and function of criticism to have appeared in the last decade. It is lucid, honest, and has the intellectual strength to grasp the field as a whole and to relate the author's findings to clear philosophical positions. As the import of criticism in our society becomes a weightier matter, Mr. Gairdner seems to be among those few eminently suited to construe and to deconstruct for us its claims, its prejudices, and its fruitful imperfections." | |
| ~ Professor Virgil Nemoianu, Catholic University of America | |