Reluctant Modernity

In this book Aleš Debeljak offers a refreshing alternative to postmodernists such as Baudrillard who declare the death of art conceived as yet another source of rootless circulating fictions. Inspired by the melancholy critical theory of Adorno and Bejamin, Debeljak shows that with the dawning of modernity, art was made autonomous - art production was effectively emancipated from the exigencies of everyday life and its guiding ideal of purposive rationality. The deterioration of bourgeois liberal individualism into the narcissism of modern mass society accompanied the decomposition of art into simplified mass art and commercialized kitsch. Today, argues Debeljak, postmodern art is subjected to infinite reproducibility, total integration into mass society, and political resignation - it no longer represents an alternative reality. The postmodern institution of art thus cannot be simply cured of modern structures and assumptions, but is, instead, fated to a continuous and painful relationship with modernity. -- from back cover.

Interpreting the work of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt rereads Arendt's political philosophy in light of newly gained insights into the historico-cultural background of her work. Arguing against the standard interpretation of Hannah Arendt as an anti-modernist lover of the Greek polis, author Seyla Benhabib contends that Arendt's thought emerges out of a double legacy: German Existenz philosophy, particularly the thought of Martin Heidegger, and her experiences as a German-Jewess in the age of totalitarianism. This important volume reconsiders Arendt's theory of modernity, her concept of the public sphere, her distinction between the social and the political, her theory of totalitarianism, and her critique of the modern nation state, including her life long involvement with Jewish and Israeli politics.

In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Americans were faced with the challenges and uncertainties of a new era. The comfortable Victorian values of continuity, progress, and order clashed with the unsettling modern notions of constant change, relative truth, and chaos. Attempting to embrace the intellectual challenges of modernism, American thinkers of the day were yet reluctant to welcome the wholesale rejection of the past and destruction of traditional values. In Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880-1900, George Cotkin surveys the intellectual life of this crucial transitional period. His story begins with the Darwinian controversies, since the mainstream of American culture was just beginning to come to grips with the implications of the Origins of Species, published in 1859. Cotkin demonstrates the effects of this shift in thinking on philosophy, anthropology, and the newly developing field of psychology. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of these fields, he explains clearly and concisely the essential tenets of such major thinkers and writers as William James, Franz Boas, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry Adams, and Kate Chopin. Throughout this fascinating, readable history of the American fin de si cle run the contrasting themes of continuity and change, faith and rationalism, despair over the meaninglessness of life and, ultimately, a guarded optimism about the future.

Such is the dire prophecy of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Newman, and Alvin Rabushka, whose Red Flag over Hong Kong casts a cold eye on the future prospects of "the world's best example of the free-market economy, working as textbooks say it should." Applying to that unknown future a dynamic model of decision making that rests on the collection of data from a wide range of expert observers, the authors boldly seek to quantify human behavior and so derive a precise and reliable early forecast of Hong Kong's destiny at the hands of its communist masters.

In this book Aleš Debeljak offers a refreshing alternative to postmodernists such as Baudrillard who declare the death of art conceived as yet another source of rootless circulating fictions. Inspired by the melancholy critical theory of Adorno and Bejamin, Debeljak shows that with the dawning of modernity, art was made autonomous - art production was effectively emancipated from the exigencies of everyday life and its guiding ideal of purposive rationality. The deterioration of bourgeois liberal individualism into the narcissism of modern mass society accompanied the decomposition of art into simplified mass art and commercialized kitsch. Today, argues Debeljak, postmodern art is subjected to infinite reproducibility, total integration into mass society, and political resignation - it no longer represents an alternative reality. The postmodern institution of art thus cannot be simply cured of modern structures and assumptions, but is, instead, fated to a continuous and painful relationship with modernity. -- from back cover.

Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity explores the theme of human rights in the work of Hannah Arendt. Parekh argues that Arendt's contribution to this debate has been largely ignored because she does not speak in the same terms as contemporary theoreticians of human rights. Beginning by examining Arendt’s critique of human rights, and the concept of "a right to have rights" with which she contrasts the traditional understanding of human rights, Parekh goes on to analyze some of the tensions and paradoxes within the modern conception of human rights that Arendt brings to light, arguing that Arendt’s perspective must be understood as phenomenological and grounded in a notion of intersubjectivity that she develops in her readings of Kant and Socrates.

Is politics really nothing more than power relations, competing interests and claims for recognition, conflicting assertions of "simple" truths? No thinker has argued more passionately against this narrow view than Hannah Arendt, and no one has more to say to those who bring questions of meaning, identity, value, and transcendence to our impoverished public life. This volume brings leading figures in philosophy, political theory, intellectual history, and literary theory into a dialogue about Arendt's work and its significance for today's fractious identity politics, public ethics, and civic life. For each essay -- on the fate of politics in a postmodern, post-Marxist era; on the connection of nonfoundationalist ethics and epistemology to democracy; on the conditions conducive to a vital public sphere; on the recalcitrant problems of violence and evil -- the volume includes extended responses, and a concluding essay by Martin Jay responding to all the others. Ranging from feminism to aesthetics to the discourse of democracy, the essays explore how an encounter with Arendt reconfigures, disrupts, and revitalizes what passes for public debate in our day. Together they forcefully demonstrate the power of Arendt's work as a splendid provocation and a living resource.

This accessible and comprehensive overview of the main issues on the modernity-postmodernity controversy is the first clear-sighted book on the subject. It surveys modern social theory, from Kant to Weber with economy and masterly precision. And evaluates the work of the Frankfurt School, Arendy, Strauss, Luhmann, Habermas, Heller, Castoriadis and Touraine, before moving on to consider the approaches of the leading writers on postmodenrity: Lyotard, Vattimo, Derrida, Foucault and Jameson. The result is a new way of conceptualizing the modernity-postmodernity debate, and an exciting new approach to the roots of contemporary social theory.