Download or read book To Fight Against This Age On Fascism and Humanism written by Rob Riemen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We are sleepwalking into catastrophe; Riemen wants to wake us up and he does with passion, wisdom, and eloquence." —Simon Schama An international bestseller, To Fight Against This Age consists of two beautifully written, cogent, and urgent essays about the rise of fascism and the ways in which we can combat it. In “The Eternal Return of Fascism,” Rob Riemen explores the theoretical weakness of fascism, which depends on a politics of resentment, the incitement of anger and fear, xenophobia, the need for scapegoats, and its hatred of the life of the mind. He draws on history and philosophy as well as the essays and novels of Thomas Mann and Albert Camus to explain the global resurgence of fascism, often disguised by its false promises of ushering in freedom and greatness. Riemen’s own response to what he sees as the spiritual crisis of our age is articulated in “The Return of Europa,” a moving story about the meaning of European humanism with its universal values of truth, beauty, justice, and love for life—values that are the origin and basis of a democratic civilization. To Fight Against This Age is as timely as it is timeless, to be read by those who want to understand and change the world in which they live.
Download or read book The Year of Our Lord 1943 written by Alan Jacobs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others-sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world. In this book, Alan Jacobs explores the poems, novels, essays, reviews, and lectures of these five central figures, in which they presented, with great imaginative energy and force, pictures of the very different paths now set before the Western democracies. Working mostly separately and in ignorance of one another's ideas, the five developed a strikingly consistent argument that the only means by which democratic societies could be prepared for their world-wide economic and political dominance was through a renewal of education that was grounded in a Christian understanding of the power and limitations of human beings. The Year of Our Lord 1943 is the first book to weave together the ideas of these five intellectuals and shows why, in a time of unprecedented total war, they all thought it vital to restore Christianity to a leading role in the renewal of the Western democracies.
Download or read book Nobility of Spirit written by Rob Riemen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Riemen insists that if we hope to move beyond the war on terror and create a life-affirming culture, we must address timeless but neglected questions: What is a good society? Why art? Why culture? What is the responsibility of intellectuals? Why anti-Americanism? Why nihilism? Why the cult of death of fundamentalists? In a series of three essays, the author identifies nobility of spirit in the life and work of Baruch Spinoza and of Thomas Mann; explores the quest for the good society in our own time; and addresses the pursuit of truth and freedom that engaged figures as disparate as Socrates and Leone Ginzburg, a Jewish Italian intellectual murdered by Nazis."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Judgment of the Nations written by Christopher Dawson and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Dawson wrote The Judgment of the Nations in 1942, in the midst of the horrors of World War II.
Download or read book The Birth of Fascist Ideology written by Zeev Sternhell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When The Birth of Fascist Ideology was first published in 1989 in France and at the beginning of 1993 in Italy, it aroused a storm of response, positive and negative, to Zeev Sternhell's controversial interpretations. In Sternhell's view, fascism was much more than an episode in the history of Italy. He argues here that it possessed a coherent ideology with deep roots in European civilization. Long before fascism became a political force, he maintains, it was a major cultural phenomenon. This important book further asserts that although fascist ideology was grounded in a revolt against the Enlightenment, it was not a reactionary movement. It represented, instead, an ideological alternative to Marxism and liberalism and competed effectively with them by positing a revolt against modernity. Sternhell argues that the conceptual framework of fascism played an important role in its development. Building on radical nationalism and an "antimaterialist" revision of Marxism, fascism sought to destroy the existing political order and to uproot its theoretical and moral foundations. At the same time, its proponents wished to preserve all the achievements of modern technology and the advantages of the market economy. Nevertheless, fascism opposed every "bourgeois" value: universalism, humanism, progress, natural rights, and equality. Thus, as Sternhell shows, the fascists adopted the economic aspect of liberalism but completely denied its philosophical principles and the intellectual and moral heritage of modernity.
Download or read book How to Stop Fascism written by Paul Mason and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'For its historical depth, analytical vigour and mobilizational potential, this book is unparalleled ... every page is an urgent invitation to resist' David Lammy MP The bestselling author of PostCapitalism offers a guide to resisting the far right The far right is on the rise across the world. From Modi's India to Bolsonaro's Brazil and Erdogan's Turkey, fascism is not a horror that we have left in the past; it is a recurring nightmare that is happening again - and we need to find a better way to fight it. In How to Stop Fascism, Paul Mason offers a radical, hopeful blueprint for resisting and defeating the new far right. The book is both a chilling portrait of contemporary fascism, and a compelling history of the fascist phenomenon: its psychological roots, political theories and genocidal logic. Fascism, Mason powerfully argues, is a symptom of capitalist failure, and it has haunted us throughout the twentieth century. History shows us the conditions that breed fascism, and how it can be successfully overcome. But it is up to us in the present to challenge it, and time is running out. From the ashes of COVID-19, we have an opportunity to create a fairer, more equal society. To do so, we must ask ourselves: what kind of world do we want to live in? And what are we going to do about it?
Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Download or read book American Fascists written by Chris Hedges and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the celebrated author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" comes a startling expos of the political ambitions of the Christian Right--a clarion call for everyone who cares about freedom.
Download or read book Fire and Blood written by Enzo Traverso and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe’s second Thirty Years’ War—an epoch of blood and ashes Fire and Blood looks at the European crisis of the two world wars as a single historical sequence: the age of the European Civil War (1914–1945). Its overture was played out in the trenches of the Great War; its coda on a ruined continent. It opened with conventional declarations of war and finished with “unconditional surrender.” Proclamations of national unity led to eventual devastation, with entire countries torn to pieces. During these three decades of deepening conflicts, a classical interstate conflict morphed into a global civil war, abandoning rules of engagement and fought by irreducible enemies rather than legitimate adversaries, each seeking the annihilation of its opponents. It was a time of both unchained passions and industrial, rationalized massacre. Utilizing multiple sources, Enzo Traverso depicts the dialectic of this era of wars, revolutions and genocides. Rejecting commonplace notions of “totalitarian evil,” he rediscovers the feelings and reinterprets the ideas of an age of intellectual and political commitment when Europe shaped world history with its own collapse.
Download or read book Mussolini and Fascism written by John Patrick Diggins and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mussolini, in the thousand guises he projected and the press picked up, fascinated Americans in the 1920s and the early '30s. John Diggins' analysis of America's reaction to an ideological phenomenon abroad reveals, he proposes, the darker side of American political values and assumptions. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Erich Fromm s Critical Theory written by Kieran Durkin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in Fromm is increasing: as a prominent Marxist, sociologist, psychoanalytic theorist, and public intellectual, the unique normative-humanist thrust of his writings provides a crucial critical reference point for those seeking to understand and transcend the societal pathologies of our age. The essays in this volume retrieve, revive, and expand upon Fromm's central insights and contributions. They offer a critical theory of culture, the self, psychology and society that goes beyond what is typical of the narrower concerns of the fragmented and isolated disciplines of today, demonstrating the pan-disciplinary potential of Fromm's work. But this book does not simply reassert Fromm's ideas and rehash his theories, but rather reconstructs them to bring them into meaningful dialogue with contemporary ideas and cultural, political and economic developments. Providing new approaches to Fromm's ideas and work brings them up-to-date with contemporary problems and debates in theory and society and helps us understand the challenges of our times.
Download or read book Intellectuals in the Society of Spectacle written by Christopher Britt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-24 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reveals the sense in which our postmodern societies are characterized by the obscene absence of the intellectual. The modern intellectual--who had once been associated with humanism and enlightenment—has in our day been replaced by media stars, talking heads, and technical experts. At issue is the ongoing crisis of democracy, under the aegis of the société du spectacle and its vast networks of politically-induced idiocy, industrially-produced biocide, and militarily-provoked genocide. Spectacle fills the resulting moral and intellectual vacuum with electronic technologies of control, punishment, and destruction. This postmodern tyranny reduces intelligence to mechanistic, positivist, and grammatological models of inquiry, while increasing the segmentation, fragmentation, and dissolution of human existence. The apotheosis of the spectacle explains the intellectual void that lies at the heart of our postmodern decadence; it also accounts for the need to recuperate the humanist values of enlightenment promoted by the modern intellectual tradition.
Download or read book Beauty in the Age of Empire written by Raja Adal and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When modern primary schools were first founded in Japan and Egypt in the 1870s, they did not teach art. Yet by the middle of the twentieth century, art education was a permanent part of Japanese and Egyptian primary schooling. Both countries taught music and drawing, and wartime Japan also taught calligraphy. Why did art education become a core feature of schooling in societies as distant as Japan and Egypt, and how is aesthetics entangled with nationalism, colonialism, and empire? Beauty in the Age of Empire is a global history of aesthetic education focused on how Western practices were adopted, transformed, and repurposed in Egypt and Japan. Raja Adal uncovers the emergence of aesthetic education in modern schools and its role in making a broad spectrum of ideologies from fascism to humanism attractive. With aesthetics, educators sought to enchant children with sounds and sights, using their ears and eyes to make ideologies into objects of desire. Spanning multiple languages and continents, and engaging with the histories of nationalism, art, education, and transnational exchanges, Beauty in the Age of Empire offers a strikingly original account of the rise of aesthetics in modern schools and the modern world. It shows that, while aesthetics is important to all societies, it was all the more important for those countries on the receiving end of Western expansion, which could not claim to be wealthier or more powerful than Western empires, only more beautiful.
Download or read book A World of Becoming written by William E. Connolly and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prominent political theorist William E. Connolly outlines a political philosophy for the contemporary world: a world whose powers of creative evolution include and exceed the human estate.
Download or read book Debating Humanity written by Daniel Chernilo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original approach to the question 'what is a human being?', examining key ideas of leading contemporary sociologists and philosophers.
Download or read book The Posthuman written by Rosi Braidotti and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Braidotti then analyzes the escalating effects of post-anthropocentric thought, which encompass not only other species, but also the sustainability of our planet as a whole. Because contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, they result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between the human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. These dislocations induced by globalized cultures and economies enable a critique of anthropocentrism, but how reliable are they as indicators of a sustainable future? The Posthuman concludes by considering the implications of these shifts for the institutional practice of the humanities. Braidotti outlines new forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism that emerge from the spectrum of post-colonial and race studies, as well as gender analysis and environmentalism. The challenge of the posthuman condition consists in seizing the opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while pursuing sustainability and empowerment.
Download or read book An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy written by Alison Stone and published by Polity. This book was released on 2007-12-17 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to offer a systematic account of feminist philosophy as a distinctive field of philosophy. The book introduces key issues and debates in feminist philosophy including: the nature of sex, gender, and the body; the relation between gender, sexuality, and sexual difference; whether there is anything that all women have in common; and the nature of birth and its centrality to human existence. An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy shows how feminist thinking on these and related topics has developed since the 1960s. The book also explains how feminist philosophy relates to the many forms of feminist politics. The book provides clear, succinct and readable accounts of key feminist thinkers including de Beauvoir, Butler, Gilligan, Irigaray, and MacKinnon. The book also introduces other thinkers who have influenced feminist philosophy including Arendt, Foucault, Freud, and Lacan. Accessible in approach, this book is ideal for students and researchers interested in feminist philosophy, feminist theory, women's studies, and political theory. It will also appeal to the general reader.
