Rereading Oscar Wilde’s Intentions for ‘The Importance of Doing Nothing’

Abstract

Although Oscar Wilde’s criticism has received little attention, a close reading of the essays in Intentions reveals that these seemingly languid and playful critical writings is a serious defense of the importance of critical thinking and its power to develop not only the individual but also national life; they also expose Wilde’s sense of the importance of the act of criticism for reshaping global politics along more equitable lines. The essays in Intentions repudiate an instrumental mode of criticism, instead championing the critical act as a defense against all forms of social coercion. Hence it may be possible to employ Wilde’s Intentions, with its utopian vision of critical thinking, rejection of social coercion, and formal strategies to evade the censoring effect of consensus, to construct a reinvigorated defense of the Humanities today.