Modern Liberty and Its Discontents

Modern Liberty and Its Discontents

Author: Pierre Manent

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0585120153

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In this book, distinguished French philosopher Pierre Manent addresses a wide range of subjects, including the Machiavellian origins of modernity, Tocqueville's analysis of democracy, the political role of Christianity, the nature of totalitarianism, and the future of the nation-state. As a whole, the book constitutes a meditation on the nature of modern freedom and the permanent discontents which accompany it. Manent is particularly concerned with the effects of modern democracy on the maintenance and sustenance of substantial human ties. Modern Liberty and its Discontents is both an important contribution to an understanding of modern society, and a significant contribution to political philosophy in its own right.


Modern Character

Modern Character

Author: Julian Murphet

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-12-12

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0192677810

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How was modern character made or remade at the turn of the twentieth century? Modern Character: 1888-1905 considers a range of literary and dramatic texts, showcasing the extraordinary efforts of various writers to rethink and reinvent 'human character' during this period. Arguing that many of the most significant breakthroughs happened in the small theatres of Europe in the 1890s, the book's first section demonstrates how the countervailing currents of Naturalism and Symbolism created a vortex in which time-honoured truisms about character consistency, depth, and verisimilitude were jettisoned. Works by Ibsen, Strindberg, Maeterlinck, and Chekhov provide evidence of a searching and critical campaign against assumed models of characterization. The second section turns to contemporary prose narratives, with attention to Knut Hamsun, Oscar Wilde, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Henry James, George Egerton, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and Joseph Conrad, to ask what writers working in the novel, novella, and short-story forms were doing to contest prevailing expectations about represented persons. Inconsistency, bad faith, fragmentation, and unconscious motives creep into the character spaces of these fictions. Character description recedes and plots disintegrate; a penumbral negativity intrudes just where identification and sympathy might have been achieved. Ultimately, Julian Murphet proposes that the 'modern character' emerging over this decade and a half presents a radical rethinking of a venerable category of narrative and dramatic art, with profound consequences for the coming century.


How to Fall in Love with Anyone

How to Fall in Love with Anyone

Author: Mandy Len Catron

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-06-27

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1501137468

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“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).


A New Philosophy of Modernity and Sovereignty

A New Philosophy of Modernity and Sovereignty

Author: Przemyslaw Tacik

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-07-29

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1350201286

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Tackling important philosophical questions on modernity – what it is, where it begins and when it ends – Przemyslaw Tacik challenges the idea that modernity marks a particular epoch, and historicises its conception to offer a radical critique of it. His deconstruction-informed critique collects and assesses reflections on modernity from major philosophers including Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan, Arendt, Agamben, and Žižek. This analysis progresses a new understanding of modernity intrinsically connected to the growth of sovereignty as an organising principle of contemporary life. He argues that it is the idea of 'modernity', as a taken-for-granted era, which is positioned as the essential condition for making linear history possible, when it should instead be history, in and of itself, which dictates the existence of a particular period. Using Hegel's notion of 'spirit' to trace the importance of sovereignty to the conception of the modern epoch within German idealism, Tacik traces Hegel's influence on Heidegger through reference to the 'star' in his late philosophy which represents the hope of overcoming the metaphysical poverty of modernity. This line of thought reveals the necessity of a paradigm shift in our understanding of modernity that speaks to contemporary continental philosophy, theories of modernity, political theory, and critical re-assessments of Marxism.


Always Almost Modern

Always Almost Modern

Author: David Carter

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9781925003109

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Was Australian culture born modern or has it always been behind the game, never quite modern enough? Carter's essays examine the complete engagements of Australian writers, artists, editors and consumers with 20th-century modernity, social and political crisis, and the impact of modernisms.


Paris

Paris

Author: Grant Allen

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2019-09-25

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 3734081157

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Reproduction of the original: Paris by Grant Allen


Modern Romance

Modern Romance

Author: Aziz Ansari

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-06-14

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0143109251

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The #1 New York Times Bestseller “An engaging look at the often head-scratching, frequently infuriating mating behaviors that shape our love lives.” —Refinery 29 A hilarious, thoughtful, and in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance from Aziz Ansari, the star of Master of None and one of this generation’s sharpest comedic voices At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.