Decadence And Objectivity

Haworth's concerns are urgent. Modern society, he argues, threatens to collapse under the burden of mindless growth. Its demands have begun to exhaust the world's resources. The pursuit of growth has hollowed out our social foundations. Advanced technology has emancipated us from toil but condemned us to work that is perceived as meaningless. The dissolution of traditional communities has resulted in a society which has no sense of common concern or public purpose. Most people live largely in private spheres, and value the public sphere only for its capacity to improve their private lives, a function which is exercised unevenly and is largely incidental to its purpose. Modern urban society is characterized by its 'decadence,' a pervasive lack of inspiring vision. In this book Haworth concerns himself with the conceptual foundations of social order and the options for a future society. He analyses two sharply contrasting systems, the one committed to individual satisfaction and independence and the other based on collective values and rewards. Both would retain advanced technology but restrain consumption. The leisure-oriented society would reduce the hours of work at a sacrifice of efficiency and at the expense of individual determination. This analysis provides the basis for a new model of what Haworth calls an 'objective' society, based on the ideals of responsibility, leisureliness, and professionalism. These ideals imply a sympathetic yet not strictly custodial attitude towards the natural world, a responsible use of human creativity and natural potential, a sense of absorption in the present (in the original Greek sense of leisure which is contrasted with the more recent association of leisure with discretionary time), and above all a sense of professional commitment. Commitment links individuals who locate the point of their lives outside themselves and their private interests in some work for which they have a distinctive talent and in the pursuit of which they experience a meaningful, shared existence. Lawrence Howarth offers a model, not a blueprint, but it is one that political scientists, economists, sociologists, urban planners, and all who are committed to improving the design of our society should consider carefully.

The essays in this book range broadly over different aspects of value theory and include contributions by Nicholas Rescher, Frances Kamm, Barry Smith, and Jan Narveson. Portions examine the theoretical foundations of values and valuation exploring the rational groundwork for judgments. Other aspects, appealing to value distinctions of inherent, intrinsic, and instrumental, drawn most notably by C. I. Lewis, bring to light matters of aesthetic, social political, ethical, and ontological issues. Throughout Inherent and Instrumental Values, the authors address questions assessing the intrinsic worth of utility of actions and whether manual or professional labor can hold an equal value rating and the implications of this assessment. In other portions of the anthology, authors explore the extent to which such value categories above, help clarify and assess moral issues we encounter in everyday life. Among some analyzed in this book are racism and affirmative action, abortion, euthanasia, homelessness, care, and friendship. The theme of the nature of value and the role of valuation we encounter in the days of our life, provide a basis for examining other aspects of axiology that lie beyond the scope of this work.

A cultural study of the Flint community's response to its own deindustrialization, within the framework of the state, national, and international forces that produced it.

In Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture, Andrew Huddleston offers a new interpretation of the views of the influential German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) on cultural decadence and flourishing. Whereas Nietzsche is often thought to be the champion of the isolated great individual, Huddleston argues that there is a deeply collectivist (though radically inegalitarian) strand to his thinking. He challenges the prevalentreading of Nietzsche as an individualist, identifying him instead as a more social thinker who appreciated collective cultural achievements. Using Nietzsche's ideal of a flourishing culture, and his diagnostics ofcultural malaise, as a point of departure for reconsidering many of the central themes in his ethics and social philosophy, Huddleston strikes a balance between situating Nietzsche in his nineteenth century context while also considering the ongoing relevance of his ideas.

Honorable Mention for the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies from the Modern Language Association Charles Bernheimer described decadence as a "stimulant that bends thought out of shape, deforming traditional conceptual molds." In this posthumously published work, Bernheimer succeeds in making a critical concept out of this perennially fashionable, rarely understood term. Decadent Subjects is a coherent and moving picture of fin de siècle decadence. Mature, ironic, iconoclastic, and thoughtful, this remarkable collection of essays shows the contradictions of the phenomenon, which is both a condition and a state of mind. In seeking to show why people have failed to give a satisfactory account of the term decadence, Bernheimer argues that we often mistakenly take decadence to represent something concrete, that we see as some sort of agent. His salutary response is to return to those authors and artists whose work constitutes the topos of decadence, rereading key late nineteenth-century authors such as Nietzsche, Zola, Hardy, Wilde, Moreau, and Freud to rediscover the very dynamics of the decadent. Through careful analysis of the literature, art, and music of the fin de siècle including a riveting discussion of the many faces of Salome, Bernheimer leaves us with a fascinating and multidimensional look at decadence, all the more important as we emerge from our own fin de siècle.

Edited by Jane Desmarais and David Weir.

Mabogo P. More: Philosophical Anthropology is the first book to provide an extensive treatment of More’s Africana existential thought. This book locates him, as it is clear in his body of work, in the Azanian (Black and Indigenous) existential tradition. As a philosopher, he is engaged from the perspective of black radical thought. From this intervention, it is clear that his philosophical project originates and is expressed from the existential condition of being-black-in-an-antiblack-world. It is from the lived experience and the fact of being black that More is meditated upon and this book, which is the extension of his work, brings to the forth the ways of thinking, knowing, and doing that that illuminate his philosophical project.