Fin de Siècle Socialism, originally published in 1988, demonstrates the lively potential for cultural criticism in intellectual history. Martin Jay discusses such controversies as the Habermas-Gadamer debate and the deconstructionist challenge to synoptic analysis. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of modern European history, political and social theory.
First Published in 1991, this book attempts to show the relevance of Durkheim’s sociology to the debate on modernity and postmodernism. It does so by examining how Durkheim’s ideas can be applied to current social issues. The author argues that there are striking parallels between the social context of the 1890s, when Durkheim began to publish in book form, and today. The book will appeal to the readers of sociology, as well as the related disciplines of philosophy, psychology, cultural studies and history. It is also intended for anyone interested in the issues and questions that were being raised as humanity approached the end of the twentieth century and the end of the millennium.
The essays collected in Fin de Siècle and Other Essays on America and Europe cover the political and cultural spectrum of our time, specifically the rise, fall, and reemergence of radical movements of what was once called the extreme left and right. If the essays have a common denominator, it is that they do not join in the chorus of rejoicing after the end of the cold war. When the Soviet Empire collapsed and the cold war came to an end, there was a general celebration similar to the joy expressed after World Wars I and II. Walter Laqueur, in contrast to many of his peers, realized that Russia's and Eastern Europe's road to freedom would be, at best, protracted and arduous with many setbacks. And, as he shows, ten years after the reforms in the communist world, power, such as it is, is again in the hands of the communists, or of nationalists closely cooperating with communists. While they may not be old Stalinists, their style remains authoritarian, and no one can say for certain whether the conversion to democracy is lasting.Throughout Europe the extreme right has reemerged in force in France, Italy, Russia, and Austria these parties are among the strongest. While only a few years have passed since the demise of communism, there is already nostalgia among many in Russia with regard to the good old days, when vodka was cheap and order prevailed in the streets. In the West, the positive aspects of Nazism and fascism are being rediscovered. One might argue that it should have been obvious that the end of the cold war would in many ways create new and greater uncertainties rather than a new world order in international affairs. In certain nations, including the United States, there has been an unmistakable trend toward isolationism.How to explain such attitudes? In a brilliant assemblage of published and hitherto unpublished essays, Laqueur brings his concerns about these issues in a post-cold war environment. Essays include: The Long Way to Europe, Russian Nationalism, In Praise of Menshevism, The End of the Cold War, Feuchtwanger and Gide, and The Empire Strikes Out. Laqueur includes a profile of Andrei Sakharov, who played such a crucial role in the movement of democratic dissent in the Soviet Union. Fin de Siècle and Other Essays on America and Europe will be of significant interest to historians of European and American culture, sociologists, economists, and political scientists.
The result is a lively, diverse offering from an extraordinary intellect. --Richard Wolin, the Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s
In this volume, leading historians, critics and theorists review 3,000 years of apocalyptic theory. Tracing the history of millenarianism, they investigate the modern and postmodern debates. (Philosophy)
Force Fields collects the recent essays of Martin Jay, an intellectual historian and cultural critic internationally known for his extensive work on the history of Western Marxism and the intellectual migration from Germany to America.
This is a guide to the vast amount of literature on the history of political thought which has appeared in English since 1945. The editors provide an annotation of the content of many entries and, where appropriate, indicate their significance, controversial nature and readability.
There is no more contentious and perennial issue in the history of modern Western thought than the vexed relationship between the genesis of an idea and its claim to validity beyond it. Can ideas or values transcend their temporal origins and overcome the sin of their original context, and in so doing earn abiding respect for their intrinsic merit? Or do they inevitably reflect them in ways that undermine their universal aspirations? Are discrete contexts so incommensurable and unique that the smooth passage of ideas from one to the other is impossible? Are we always trapped by the limits of our own cultural standpoints and partial perspectives, or can we somehow escape their constraints and enter into a fruitful dialogue with others? These persistent questions are at the heart of the discipline known as intellectual history, which deals not only with ideas, but also with the men and women who generate, disseminate, and criticize them. The essays in this collection, by one of the most recognized figures in the field, address them through engagement with leading intellectual historians—Hans Blumenberg, Quentin Skinner, Hayden White, Isaiah Berlin, Frank Ankersmit—as well other giants of modern thought—Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Georg Lukács. They touch on a wide variety of related topics, ranging from the heroism of modern life to the ability of photographs to lie. In addition, they explore the fraught connections between philosophy and theory, the truth of history and the truthfulness of historians, and the weaponization of free speech for other purposes.
