Introduction: A Wilde Mind: The Witty Aesthete and Serious Thinker, or the Witty Thinker and Serious Aesthete?

Abstract

Over the past few decades, Oscar Wilde scholars have become increasingly aware of Wilde’s love for and intimate knowledge of philosophy. Wilde’s Oxford notebooks and his soon-to-be-published “Notebook on Philosophy” all point to him not just as a decadent aesthete, but also as a serious thinker. It appears on the surface that—especially with his Society Plays—Wilde gave in to pleasure in his writings, particularly if one thinks of them through the lens of being “comedies of manners.” However, given the fact that De Profundis was written after his Society Plays and serves, in a sense, as a reflection of his life and career, Wilde’s suggestion in De Profundis that he intertwined art and philosophy (“I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art…”) I believe merits some serious attention.