Abstract
Hardy’s vision of the world as manifested in a series of his novels, culminating in Jude the Obscure, seemed hopelessly dark, and his views of morality profoundly disturbing, both to lay-readers of his fiction and literary critics. He was, consequently, disparaged as an atheist or a heretic, a determinist or a pessimist. He was castigated for doing what he did as well as for not doing what he never intended to do. His naturalistic metaphysics which is, in fact, the beginning of his melioristic ethics, has been mistaken for the conclusion of his thought, and his unique position as a thinker has eluded the grasp of his critics so far. The basic question, therefore, which we have to ask ourselves and answer is whether or how far Hardy was a philosopher, before we attempt to study his philosophy as it issues from his novels.
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Notes
Hardy, Thomas, General Preface to the Novels and Poems, (Wessex Edition, I, 1912), in Thomas Hardy’s Personal Writings, ed. Harold Orel, Macmillan, London, 1967, pp. 48–9.
Hardy, F.E., The Life of Thomas Hardy —1840–1928, Macmillan, London, 1962, p. 310.
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T. Hardy’s words quoted from Hardy, Evelyn, Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography, The Hogarth Press, London, 1954, p. 200.
Gosse, Edmund, review of Jude the Obscure, in Cosmopolis, January, 1896, i, London, p. 66.
Oliphant, Mrs, review of Tess in Blackwood’s MagaZine, March 1892, cli, London, p. 474.
Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, Macmillan, London, 1957, p. 357.
Hardy, Thomas, The Woodlanders, Macmillan, London, 1936, p. 448.
Lang, Andrew, review of Tess, in New Review, February 1892, vi, p. 247.
Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Macmillan, London, 1963, p. 446.
Hardy, Thomas, ‘Hap’ in Wessex Poems and Other Verses, Macmillan, London, 1923, p. 8.
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Russell, Bertrand, Mysticism and Logic, in Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, Allen & Unwin, London, 1932, p. 24.
Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, Macmillan, London, 1957, pp. 353–4.
Hardy, Thomas, The Dynasts: Part III, Macmillan, London, 1954, p. 525.
Samuel Hynes, ‘The Dynasts as an example’, in Hardy: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.J. Guerard, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963, p. 173.
Pinion, F.B., A Hardy Companion, Macmillan, London, 1968, p. 115.
Hardy, Thomas, The Dynasts, Macmillan, London, 1958, p. 2.
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© 1985 Jagdish Chandra Vallabhram Dave
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Dave, J.C. (1985). Was Hardy a Philosopher?. In: The Human Predicament in Hardy’s Novels. Macmillan Hardy Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07646-8_1
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