Revolt Against Modernity
Revolt Against Modernity

Author: Ted V. McAllister

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 1996-01-22

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0700608737

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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.

Bertrand De Jouvenel
Bertrand De Jouvenel

Author: Daniel J. Mahoney

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2023-09-26

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 1684516692

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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.

Judaism and Modernity
Judaism and Modernity

Author: Gillian Rose

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2017-03-28

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1786630907

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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.

Legislators and Interpreters
Legislators and Interpreters

Author: Zygmunt Bauman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-08-27

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0745673198

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The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world.Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity andpost-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks ofintellectuals change from being 'legislators' to 'interpreters'with the transition from modernity to post-modernity. The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world.Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity andpost-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks ofintellectuals change from being 'legislators' to 'interpreters'with the transition from modernity to post-modernity.

Makers of Jewish Modernity
Makers of Jewish Modernity

Author: Jacques Picard

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-08-09

Total Pages: 688

ISBN-13: 0691164231

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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.

Reforming Modernity
Reforming Modernity

Author: Wael B. Hallaq

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0231550553

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Reforming Modernity is a sweeping intellectual history and philosophical reflection built around the work of the Morocco-based philosopher Abdurrahman Taha, one of the most significant philosophers in the Islamic world since the colonial era. Wael B. Hallaq contends that Taha is at the forefront of forging a new, non-Western-centric philosophical tradition. He explores how Taha’s philosophical project sheds light on recent intellectual currents in the Islamic world and puts forth a formidable critique of Western and Islamic modernities. Hallaq argues that Taha’s project departs from—but leaves behind—the epistemological grounds in which most modern Muslim intellectuals have anchored their programs. Taha systematically rejects the modes of thought that have dominated the Muslim intellectual scene since the beginning of the twentieth century—nationalism, Marxism, secularism, political Islamism, and liberalism. Instead, he provides alternative ways of thinking, forcefully and virtuosically developing an ethical system with a view toward reforming existing modernities. Hallaq analyzes the ethical thread that runs throughout Taha’s oeuvre, illuminating how Taha weaves it into a discursive engagement with the central questions that plague modernity in both the West and the Muslim world. The first introduction to Taha’s ethical philosophy for Western audiences, Reforming Modernity presents his complex thought in an accessible way while engaging with it critically. Hallaq’s conversation with Taha’s work both proffers a cogent critique of modernity and points toward answers for its endemic and seemingly insoluble problems.

Against War
Against War

Author: Nelson Maldonado-Torres

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2008-04-09

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780822341703

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DIVAn analysis of Western attitudes toward war from a subaltern perspective that brings new insights into Western philosophical paradigms. /div

Anarchist Modernity
Anarchist Modernity

Author: Sho Konishi

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-05-11

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1684175313

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"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."

Overcoming Modernity
Overcoming Modernity

Author: Yasuo Yuasa

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 079147867X

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In Overcoming Modernity, which contains the last writings from Yuasa, the prominent Japanese scholar reconsiders the modern Western paradigm of thinking and in its place proposes a more holistic worldview. A wide range of topics are examined, including the relationships between language, being, psychology, and logic; Jung's concept of synchronicity; the Yijing (Book of Changes); paranormal phenomena; physics and metaphysics; mind and body; and teleology. Through these explorations, engaging a wide range of Western and East Asian thought, Yuasa offers an alternative to the scientific worldview inherited from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This new paradigm involves the integration of space-and-time and mind-and-body, thematics brought together through what Yuasa calls "image-thinking," a mode of thinking that incorporates image-experience.