The Persistence Of Modernity Aesthetics Ethics And Postmodernism

In this timely new book Wellmer intervenes in the highly topical debates on modernity and post-modernity. Discussing the work of Adorno, Habermas, Peter Burger and Jean-François Lyotard, among others, he offers a penetrating analysis of the aesthetic, ethical and philosophical dimensions of the modern era. In opposition to those who view post-modernity as a sign of post-enlightenment, Wellmer makes a reasoned plea for a re-examination of the goals of emancipatory Enlightenment and explores its implications for the appreciation of modern art forms.

Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and Postmodernism: These four essays, drawn from two books by one of Germany's foremost philosophers, go to the heart of a number of contemporary issues: Adorno's anesthetics, the nature of a postmodern ethics, and the persistence of modernity in the so-called postmodern age.

In Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel Andrew Gibson sets out to demonstrate that postmodern theory has actually made possible an ethical discourse around fiction. Each chapter elaborates and discusses a particular aspect of Levinas' thought and raises questions for that thought and its bearing on the novel. It also contains detailed analyses of particular texts. Part of the book's originality is its concentration on a range of modernist and postmodern novels which have seldom if ever served as the basis for a larger ethical theory of fiction. Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel discusses among others the writings of Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Jane Austen, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust and Salman Rushdie.

In this book Christoph Menke attempts to explain art's sovereign power to subvert reason without falling into an error common to Adorno's negative dialectics and Derrida's deconstruction.

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.