Yoav Ashkenazy

The central topic of this book is the individual’s attempt to understand and create her own inner consciousness which constitutes her moral vision. Questions regarding the inner essence of our existence as human beings, and the meaning of life and self are discussed in detail. At the heart of this work is the idea that morality is not a detached rule guided by procedure, but a very personal discourse that involves the whole being of the individual, specific upbringing, social context, and above all inner selfhood, a unique way of seeing and picturing life with individuals in the world. Within this work an attempt was made to walk the fine line between philosophy and literature, borrowing from the first its metaphorical and technical arsenal that allows us to generally evaluate our inner and outer experience with individuals, and from the second its ability to imitate and present the inner and outer life of individuals on the background of a rich and concrete social context. Central to the philosophical position proposed here is the claim that when dealing with morality, metaphysical neutrality is a virtual impossibility. The individual must accept a set of moral concepts and metaphors before she can clarify and elucidate her moral experience in the world. Indeed, ethics carries within itself a circularity that cannot be avoided. Another claim is that inner and outer moral and aesthetic visions constitute seeing in the literal sense of the word, and changes in them, such as the change or the dawning of an aspect, carry with them an air of a personal conversion. At the center of the literary attempt is the intuition that any attempt to investigate and explain the nature and meaning of aspect changes leads to the type of literature that allows us to see individuals in a rich and concrete context (The novel). Here, the literary interpretation constitutes a way of tacking and exploring the evasive line between the inner and the outer realms of our lives. It also allows us to focus on the therapeutic powers of reading and writing philosophy and literature for both reader and writer as essential ways of self-healing and self-creation.