Download or read book Sartre and Adorno written by David Sherman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the notion of the subject in Sartre's and Adorno's philosophies, David Sherman argues that they offer complementary accounts of the subject that circumvent the excesses of its classical formation, yet are sturdy enough to support a concept of political agency, which is lacking in both poststructuralism and second-generation critical theory. Sherman uses Sartre's first-person, phenomenological standpoint and Adorno's third-person, critical theoretical standpoint, each of which implicitly incorporates and then builds toward the other, to represent the necessary poles of any emancipatory social analysis.
Download or read book Adorno and Existence written by Peter E. Gordon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beginning to the end of his career, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno sustained an uneasy but enduring bond with existentialism. His attitude overall was that of unsparing criticism, verging on polemic. In Kierkegaard he saw an early paragon for the late flowering of bourgeois solipsism; in Heidegger, an impresario for a “jargon of authenticity” cloaking its idealism in an aura of pseudo-concreteness and neo-romantic kitsch. Even in the straitened rationalism of Husserl’s phenomenology Adorno saw a vain attempt to break free from the prison-house of consciousness. “Gordon, in a detailed, sensitive, fair-minded way, leads the reader through Adorno’s various, usually quite vigorous, rhetorically pointed attacks on both transcendental and existential phenomenology from 1930 on...[A] singularly illuminating study.” —Robert Pippin, Critical Inquiry “Gordon’s book offers a significant contribution to our understanding of Adorno’s thought. He writes with expertise, authority, and compendious scholarship, moving with confidence across the thinkers he examines...After this book, it will not be possible to explain Adorno’s philosophical development without serious consideration of [Gordon’s] reactions to them.” —Richard Westerman, Symposium
Download or read book The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau Ponty written by Jon Stewart and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1998-10-28 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays provides a portrait of the intellectual relationship between these two men. It addresses several points of contact and covers themes of the debate from the different periods in their shared history.
Download or read book Sartre Explained written by David Detmer and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was the major representative of the philosophical movement called “existentialism,” and he remains by far the most famous philosopher, worldwide, of the post–World War Two era. This book will provide readers with all the help they will need to find their own way in Sartre’s works. Author David Detmer provides a clear, accurate, and accessible guide to Sartre’s work, introducing readers to all of his major theories, explaining the ways in which the different strands of his thought are interrelated, and offering an overview of several of his most important works. Sartre was an extraordinarily versatile and prolific writer. His gigantic corpus includes novels, plays, screenplays, short stories, essays on art, literature, and politics, an autobiography, several biographies of other writers, and two long, dense, complicated, systematic works of philosophy (Being and Nothingness and Critique of Dialectical Reason). His treatment of philosophical issues is spread out over a body of writing that many find highly intimidating because of its size, diversity, and complexity. A distinctive feature of this book is that it is comprehensive. The vast majority of books on Sartre, including those that are billed as introductions to his work, are highly selective in their coverage. For example, many of them deal only with his early writings and neglect the massive and difficult Critique of Dialectical Reason, or they address only his philosophical work and ignore his novels and plays (or vice versa). The present book, by contrast, discusses works in all of Sartre’s literary genres and from all phases of his career. An introductory chapter provides an overview of Sartre’s life and work. The next chapter analyzes several of Sartre’s earliest philosophical writings. Each of the next six chapters is devoted to an in-depth examination of a single key book. Two of these chapters are devoted to philosophical works, two to plays, one to a biography, and one to a novel. These chapters also contain some discussion of other writings insofar as these are relevant to the topics under consideration there. A final chapter considers important concepts and theories that are not found in the major works discussed in earlier chapters, briefly introduces other important works of Sartre’s, and offers some final thoughts. The book concludes with a short annotated bibliography with suggestions for further reading. Central to all of Sartre’s writing was his attempt to describe the salient features of human existence: freedom, responsibility, the emotions, relations with others, work, embodiment, perception, imagination, death, and so forth. In this way he attempted to bring clarity and rigor to the murky realm of the subjective, limiting his focus neither to the purely intellectual side of life (the world of reasoning, or, more broadly, of thinking), nor to those objective features of human life that permit of study from the “outside.” Instead, he broadened his focus so as to include the meaning of all facets of human existence. Thus, his work addressed, in a fundamental way, and primarily from the “inside” (where Sartre’s skills as a novelist and dramatist served him well) the question of how an individual is related to everything that comprises his or her situation: the physical world, other individuals, complex social collectives, and the cultural world of artifacts and institutions.
Download or read book History and Freedom written by Theodor W. Adorno and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite all of humanity's failures, futile efforts and wrong turnings in the past, Adorno did not let himself be persuaded that we are doomed to suffer a bleak future for ever. One of the factors that prevented him from identifying a definitive plan for the future course of history was his feelings of solidarity with the victims and losers. As for the future, the course of events was to remain open-ended; instead of finality, he remained committed to a Hölderlin-like openness. This trace of the messianic has what he called the colour of the concrete as opposed to mere abstract possibility. Early in the 1960s Adorno gave four courses of lectures on the road leading to Negative Dialectics, his magnum opus of 1966. The second of these was concerned with the topics of history and freedom. In terms of content, these lectures represented an early version of the chapters in Negative Dialectics devoted to Kant and Hegel. In formal terms, these were improvised lectures that permit us to glimpse a philosophical work in progress. The text published here gives us an overview of all the themes and motifs of Adorno's philosophy of history: the key notion of the domination of nature, his criticism of the existentialist concept of a historicity without history and, finally, his opposition to the traditional idea of truth as something permanent, unchanging and ahistorical.
Download or read book The Existentialist Moment written by Patrick Baert and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-08-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015 Jean-Paul Sartre is often seen as the quintessential public intellectual, but this was not always the case. Until the mid-1940s he was not so well-known, even in France. Then suddenly, in a very short period of time, Sartre became an intellectual celebrity. How can we explain this remarkable transformation? The Existentialist Moment retraces Sartres career and provides a compelling new explanation of his meteoric rise to fame. Baert takes the reader back to the confusing and traumatic period of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath and shows how the unique political and intellectual landscape in France at this time helped to propel Sartre and existentialist philosophy to the fore. The book also explores why, from the early 1960s onwards, in France and elsewhere, the interest in Sartre and existentialism eventually waned. The Existentialist Moment ends with a bold new theory for the study of intellectuals and a provocative challenge to the widespread belief that the public intellectual is a species now on the brink of extinction.
Download or read book Towards a New Manifesto written by Theodor Adorno and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote the central text of “critical theory”, Dialectic of Enlightenment, a measured critique of the Enlightenment reason that, they argued, had resulted in fascism and totalitarianism. Towards a New Manifesto shows the two philosophers in a uniquely spirited and free-flowing exchange of ideas. This book is a record of their discussions over three weeks in the spring of 1956, recorded with a view to the production of a contemporary version of The Communist Manifesto. A philosophical jam-session in which the two thinkers improvise freely, often wildly, on central themes of their work—theory and practice, labor and leisure, domination and freedom—in a political register found nowhere else in their writing. Amid a careening flux of arguments, aphorisms and asides, in which the trenchant alternates with the reckless, the playful with the ingenuous, positions are swapped and contradictions unheeded, without any compulsion for consistency. A thrilling example of philosophy in action and a compelling map of a possible passage to a new world.
Download or read book Adorno s Poetics of Form written by Josh Robinson and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adorno's Poetics of Form is the first book-length examination of the elusive deployment of the concept of form in Adorno's writings on art and literature, and the first monograph to offer a comprehensive account of the relation of these writings to his broader philosophical project. It examines form within the constellation of concepts that exist around it, considering how it appears when seen in conjunction with and in opposition to content, expression, genre, and material. Illuminated from these angles, form is revealed as the site of a complex web of dynamic conceptual interactions. The book thus offers a resolution to a problem in Adorno's work that has remained unsolved for several decades, and in doing so sets out the consequences of Adorno's poetics for literary and critical theory today.
Download or read book Adorno A Guide for the Perplexed written by Alex Thomson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-04-24 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or, indeed, downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to fathom, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. One of the most influential philosophers and cultural theorists of the twentieth century, Theodor Adorno poses a considerable challenge to students. His works can often seem obscure and impenetrable, particularly for those with little knowledge of the philosophical traditions on which he draws. His tendency to confound what we take for common sense, and to attack what he sees as the dominant trends in twentieth century European and American culture, can pose very particular difficulties for the reader. 'Adorno' is an engaging and accessible account of his thought that does not patronise or short-change the reader. Those new to Adorno - and those who have struggled to make headway with his work - will find this an invaluable resource - clearly written, comprehensive and specifically focused on just what makes Adorno difficult to read and understand. The text is structured around key themes in Adorno's work and provides clear and stimulating accounts of topics including the central place of the aesthetic in Adorno's writing, his much misunderstood essays on popular culture and the importance of freedom in Adorno's philosophy.
Download or read book Levinas Adorno and the Ethics of the Material Other written by Eric S. Nelson and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the "non-identity thinking" of Adorno and the "ethics of the Other" of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and "inhuman" material others such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life.
Download or read book Feminist Interpretations of Theodor Adorno written by Renée Heberle and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses several questions, ranging from dilemmas in feminist aesthetic theory to the politics of suffering and democratic theory. This volume introduces feminists to Adorno's work and Adorno scholars to modes of feminist critique. It is useful for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in contemporary political, social, and cultural theory.
Download or read book Dialectic of Enlightenment written by Max Horkheimer and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1993 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major study of modern culture, Dialectic of Enlightenment for many years led an underground existence among the homeless Left of the German Federal Republic until its definitive publication in West Germany in 1969. Originally composed by its two distinguished authors during their Californian exile in 1944, the book can stand as a monument of classic German progressive social theory in the twentieth century.>
Download or read book The Jargon of Authenticity written by Theodor W. Adorno and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosophical critique of Heidegger and modern German thought that focuses on the validity of existentialist jargon and the relationship between language and truth. Bibliogs.
Download or read book Adorno and Heidegger written by Iain Macdonald and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores the conflictual history and future implications of two important traditions of twentieth-century European thought: the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno and the ontology of Martin Heidegger.
Download or read book Cosmopolitan Style written by Rebecca L. Walkowitz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-25 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this broad-ranging and ambitious intervention in the debates over the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of cosmopolitanism, Rebecca L. Walkowitz argues that modernist literary style has been crucial to new ways of thinking and acting beyond the nation. While she focuses on modernist narrative, Walkowitz suggests that style conceived expansively as attitude, stance, posture, and consciousness helps to explain many other, nonliterary formations of cosmopolitanism in history, anthropology, sociology, transcultural studies, and media studies. Walkowitz shows that James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, and W. G. Sebald use the salient features of literary modernism in their novels to explore different versions of transnational thought, question moral and political norms, and renovate the meanings of national culture and international attachment. By deploying literary tactics of naturalness, triviality, evasion, mix-up, treason, and vertigo, these six authors promote ideas of democratic individualism on the one hand and collective projects of antifascism or anti-imperialism on the other. Joyce, Conrad, and Woolf made their most significant contribution to this "critical cosmopolitanism" in their reflection on the relationships between narrative and political ideas of progress, aesthetic and social demands for literalism, and sexual and conceptual decorousness. Specifically, Walkowitz considers Joyce's critique of British imperialism and Irish nativism; Conrad's understanding of the classification of foreigners; and Woolf's exploration of how colonizing policies rely on ideas of honor and masculinity. Rushdie, Ishiguro, and Sebald have revived efforts to question the definitions and uses of naturalness, argument, utility, attentiveness, reasonableness, and explicitness, but their novels also address a range of "new ethnicities" in late-twentieth-century Britain and the different internationalisms of contemporary life. They use modernist strategies to articulate dynamic conceptions of local and global affiliation, with Rushdie in particular adding playfulness and confusion to the politics of antiracism. In this unique and engaging study, Walkowitz shows how Joyce, Conrad, and Woolf developed a repertoire of narrative strategies at the beginning of the twentieth century that were transformed by Rushdie, Ishiguro, and Sebald at the end. Her book brings to the forefront the artful idiosyncrasies and political ambiguities of twentieth-century modernist fiction.
Download or read book The Actuality of Adorno written by Max Pensky and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1997-04-24 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Always resistant to classification, the work of Theodor Adorno ranged from biting criticism of the emergent popular culture in the United States and Europe, through theories of contemporary music and literature, and sociological analyses of the rise of fascism and antisemitism in Germany and elsewhere, to careful readings of modern Continental philosophers. As a leading member of the famous Frankfurt School of critical social theory, Adorno influenced current discussions in cultural studies and Continental philosophy. However, the various dimensions of Adorno's significance for the range of contemporary postmodern theory remained unclear. This book demonstrates the relevance and power of Adorno's work for the state of critical social theory today.
Download or read book What is Literature and Other Essays written by Jean-Paul Sartre and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is Literature? challenges anyone who writes as if literature could be extricated from history or society. But Sartre does more than indict. He offers a definitive statement about the phenomenology of reading, and he goes on to provide a dashing example of how to write a history of literature that takes ideology and institutions into account.
