Download or read book Revolt Against Modernity written by Ted V. McAllister and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 1996-01-22 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss are two of the most provocative and durable political philosophers of this century. Ted McAllister's superbly written study provides the first comprehensive comparison of their thought and its profound influence on contemporary American conservatism. Since the appearance in the 1950s of Strauss's Natural Right and History and Voegelin's Order and History, conservatives like Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, and Allan Bloom have increasingly turned to these thinkers to support their attacks on liberalism and the modernist mindset. Like so many conservatives, Strauss and Voegelin rebelled against modernity' amorality-personified by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche-and its promotion of individualism and materialism over communal and spiritual responsibility. While both disdained the reductionist "conservative" label, conservatives nevertheless appropriated their philosophy, in part because it restored theology and classical tradition to the moral core of civil society. For both men, modernity's debilitating disorder revealed surprising and disturbing relations among liberal, communist, and Nazi ideologies. In their eyes, modernity's insidious virus, so apparent in the Nazi and communist regimes, lies incubating within liberal democracy itself. McAllister's thorough reevaluation of Strauss and Voegelin expands our understanding of their thought and restores balance to a literature that has been dominated by political theorists and disciples of Strauss and Voegelin. Neither reverential nor dismissive, he reveals the social, historical, political, and philosophical foundations of their work and effectively decodes their frequently opaque or esoteric thinking. Well written and persuasively argued, McAllister's study will appeal to anyone engaged in the volatile debates over liberalism's demise and conservatism's rise.
Download or read book Thinkers Against Modernity written by Keith Preston and published by . This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bertrand De Jouvenel written by Daniel J. Mahoney and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his effort to detach the indispensable notion of the common good from its historical identification with the more closed, homogeneous, and static societies of the premodern past, the French political philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-87) pointed the way towards a viable conservative liberalism. So argues Daniel J. Mahoney in this compelling introduction to the life and work of Jouvenel, one of twentieth-century France's most profound philosophers and political essayists. Although he vigorously defended the historical achievement of liberal society against its totalitarian critics, Jouvenel also challenged the modern conceit that man is an autonomous being beholden neither to the moral law nor to the humanizing inheritance of the past. Mahoney's study focuses on Jouvenel's three masterworks On Power (1945), Sovereignty (1955), and The Pure Theory of Politics (1963) and on his broader effort to defend civility and social friendship against rationalist individualism and its logical fruit, collectivist politics. Mahoney explores Jouvenel's affinities with and debts to Aristotle, Burke, Rousseau, and Tocqueville, and he contrasts Jouvenel's signal theoretical achievements with the twists and turns manifested in his (sometimes questionable) practical political engagements from the 1930s until his death. Mahoney's characteristically engaging appraisal of this important political philosopher, the fifth entry in the Library of Modern Thinkers series, is the first book on Jouvenel to appear in the English language.
Download or read book Against War written by Nelson Maldonado-Torres and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-09 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVAn analysis of Western attitudes toward war from a subaltern perspective that brings new insights into Western philosophical paradigms. /div
Download or read book Revolt Against Modernity written by Ted V. McAllister and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the first comparison of the thought of these two political philosophers and its influence on contemporary American conservatism.
Download or read book Makers of Jewish Modernity written by Jacques Picard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique reference to leading Jewish figures who helped shape the modern world This superb collection presents more than forty incisive portraits of leading Jewish thinkers, artists, scientists, and other public figures of the last hundred years who, in their own unique ways, engaged with and helped shape the modern world. Makers of Jewish Modernity features entries on political figures such as Walther Rathenau, Rosa Luxemburg, and David Ben-Gurion; philosophers and critics such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler; and artists such as Mark Rothko. The book provides fresh insights into the lives and careers of novelists like Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth; the filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen; social scientists such as Sigmund Freud; religious leaders and thinkers such as Avraham Kook and Martin Buber; and many others. Written by a diverse group of leading contemporary scholars from around the world, these vibrant and frequently surprising portraits offer a global perspective that highlights the multiplicity of Jewish experience and thought. A reference book like no other, Makers of Jewish Modernity includes an informative general introduction that situates its subjects within the broader context of Jewish modernity as well as a rich selection of photos.
Download or read book Against the Modern World written by Mark J. Sedgwick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States, touching the lives of many individuals. French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age and sought to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy - the central truths behind all the major world religions. Guenon stressed the urgent need for the West's remaining spiritual and intellectual elite to find personal and collective salvation in the surviving vestiges of ancient religious traditions. A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to his call. In Europe, America, and the Islamic world, Traditionalists founded institutes, Sufi brotherhoods, Masonic lodges, and secret societies. Some attempted unsuccessfully to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalist ideas were the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and in the Islamic world entered the debate about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Although its appeal in the West was ultimately limited, Traditionalism has wielded enormous influence in religious studies, through the work of such Traditionalists as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Mircea Eliade, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Download or read book Thoreauvian Modernities written by François Specq and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does Thoreau belong to the past or to the future? Instead of canonizing him as a celebrant of “pure” nature apart from the corruption of civilization, the essays in Thoreauvian Modernities reveal edgier facets of his work—how Thoreau is able to unsettle as well as inspire and how he is able to focus on both the timeless and the timely. Contributors from the United States and Europe explore Thoreau's modernity and give a much-needed reassessment of his work in a global context. The first of three sections, “Thoreau and (Non)Modernity,” views Thoreau as a social thinker who set himself against the “modern” currents of his day even while contributing to the emergence of a new era. By questioning the place of humans in the social, economic, natural, and metaphysical order, he ushered in a rethinking of humanity's role in the natural world that nurtured the environmental movement. The second section, “Thoreau and Philosophy,” examines Thoreau's writings in light of the philosophy of his time as well as current philosophical debates. Section three, “Thoreau, Language, and the Wild,” centers on his relationship to wild nature in its philosophical, scientific, linguistic, and literary dimensions. Together, these sixteen essays reveal Thoreau's relevance to a number of fields, including science, philosophy, aesthetics, environmental ethics, political science, and animal studies. Thoreauvian Modernities posits that it is the germinating power of Thoreau's thought—the challenge it poses to our own thinking and its capacity to address pressing issues in a new way—that defines his enduring relevance and his modernity. Contributors: Kristen Case, Randall Conrad, David Dowling, Michel Granger, Michel Imbert, Michael Jonik, Christian Maul, Bruno Monfort, Henrik Otterberg, Tom Pughe, David M. Robinson, William Rossi, Dieter Schulz, François Specq, Joseph Urbas, Laura Dassow Walls.
Download or read book Anarchist Modernity written by Sho Konishi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mid-nineteenth century Russian radicals who witnessed the Meiji Restoration saw it as the most sweeping revolution in recent history and the impetus for future global progress. Acting outside imperial encounters, they initiated underground transnational networks with Japan. Prominent intellectuals and cultural figures, from Peter Kropotkin and Lev Tolstoy to Saigo Takamori and Tokutomi Roka, pursued these unofficial relationships through correspondence, travel, and networking, despite diplomatic and military conflicts between their respective nations. Tracing these non-state networks, Anarchist Modernity uncovers a major current in Japanese intellectual and cultural life between 1860 and 1930 that might be described as “cooperatist anarchist modernity”—a commitment to realizing a modern society through mutual aid and voluntary activity, without the intervention of state governance. These efforts later crystallized into such movements as the Nonwar Movement, Esperantism, and the popularization of the natural sciences. Examining cooperatist anarchism as an intellectual foundation of modern Japan, Sho Konishi offers a new approach to Japanese history that fundamentally challenges the “logic” of Western modernity. It looks beyond this foundational construct of modern history writing to understand people, practices, and cultural expressions that have been forgotten or dismissed as products of anti-modern nativist counter urges against the West."
Download or read book Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World written by Stephen Trombley and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The development of modern thought is traced through a sequence of accessible profiles of the most influential thinkers in every domain of intellectual endeavor since 1789 No major representative of post-Enlightenment thought escapes Trombley's attention in this history: the German idealists Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the utilitarians Bentham and Mill; the transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau; Kierkegaard and the existentialists; founders of new fields of inquiry such as Weber, Durkheim, and C.S. Peirce; the analytic philosophers Russell, Moore, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein; political leaders from Mohandas K. Gandhi to Adolf Hitler; and—last but not least—the four shapers-in-chief of our modern world: the philosopher, historian, and political theorist Karl Marx; the naturalist Charles Darwin, proposer of the theory of evolution; Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; and the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, begetter of the special and general theories of relativity and founder of post-Newtonian physics. This book offers a crisp analysis of their key ideas, and in some cases a reevaluation of their importance as we proceed into the 21st century.
Download or read book Introduction to Modernity written by Henri Lefebvre and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. A classic analysis of the modern world using Marxist dialectic, it is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin’s death—an analysis in which the contours of our own “postmodernity” appear with startling clarity.
Download or read book Judaism and Modernity written by Gillian Rose and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reinterpretation of thinkers from Benjamin and Rosenzweig to Simone Weil and Derrida Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays challenges the philosophical presentation of Judaism as the sublime ‘other’ of modernity. Here, Gillian Rose develops a philosophical alternative to deconstruction and post-modernism by critically re-engaging the social and political issues at stake in every reconstruction.
Download or read book A Singular Modernity written by Fredric Jameson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concepts of modernity and modernism are amongst the most controversial and vigorously debated in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory. In this intervention, Fredric Jameson-perhaps the most influential and persuasive theorist of postmodernity-excavates and explores these notions in a fresh and illuminating manner.The extraordinary revival of discussions of modernity, as well as of new theories of artistic modernism, demands attention in its own right. It seems clear that the (provisional) disappearance of alternatives to capitalism plays its part in the universal attempt to revive 'modernity' as a social ideal. Yet the paradoxes of the concept illustrate its legitimate history and suggest some rules for avoiding its misuse as well. In this major interpretation of the problematic, Jameson concludes that both concepts are tainted, but nonetheless yield clues as to the nature of the phenomena they purported to theorize. His judicious and vigilant probing of both terms-which can probably not be banished at this late date-helps us clarify our present political and artistic situations.
Download or read book Revolt against modernity written by Youssef and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-10-24 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Theological Origins of Modernity written by Michael Allen Gillespie and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 762 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life- and that they did so not out of hostility but in order to sustain certain religious beliefs. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as the result of a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology.
Download or read book Whittaker Chambers written by Richard M. Reinsch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Chambers Can Teach Us Whittaker Chambers is rightly remembered for his pivotal role in the electrifying Alger Hiss spy case. But as Richard Reinsch reminds us in this volume of the acclaimed Library of Modern Thinkers series, Chambers was more than just a government informant; he was a profoundly important thinker who grappled with the nature of modern man's predicaments. Whittaker Chambers: The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary shows that Chambers's thought posed—and still poses—a challenge to American conservatism and its typical focus on markets and small government. In his journalism, essays, personal correspondence with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr., and landmark autobiographical tome Witness, Chambers engaged more broadly, analyzing the fundamental question of who man is and the classical and spiritual foundations of civilization. Defying conventional thinking, Reinsch argues that the former Communist spy may have been more right than wrong when he predicted that the West would lose the Cold War. While the Soviets' Communist system did of course collapse, the spiritual and philosophical sickness that Chambers identified, Reinsch suggests, has not been cured.
Download or read book Reflections on Empire written by Antonio Negri and published by Polity. This book was released on 2008-07-08 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book from Antonio Negri, one of the most influential political thinkers writing today, provides a concise and accessible introduction to the key ideas of his recent work. Giving the reader a sense of the wider context in which Negri has developed the ideas that have become so central to current debates, the book is made up of five lectures which address a series of topics that are dealt with in his world-famous books empire, globalization, multitude, sovereignty, democracy. Reflections on Empire will appeal to anyone interested in current debates about the ways in which the world is changing today, to the many people who are followers of Negri's work and to students and scholars in sociology, politics and cultural studies.
