The Disenchantment of Art

The Disenchantment of Art
Title The Disenchantment of Art PDF eBook
Author Rainer Rochlitz
Publisher Guilford Press
Pages 298
Release 1998-02-15
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 9780898624076

Download The Disenchantment of Art Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Fifty years after his death, Walter Benjamin remains one of the great cultural critics of this century. Despite his renown, however, Benjamin's philosophical ideas remain elusive--often considered a disaggregated set of thoughts not meant to cohere. This book provides a more systematic perspective on Benjamin, laying claim to his status as a philosopher and situating his work in the context of its time. Exploring Benjamin's theory of language, spoken and nonspoken, Rainer Rochlitz shows how Benjamin reconceptualized traditional ideas of language, art, and history. Offering an expansive assessment of a unique twentieth-century thinker, this volume provides an indispensable guide for readers of Benjamin's recently released collected works.

Arts of Wonder

Arts of Wonder
Title Arts of Wonder PDF eBook
Author Jeffrey L. Kosky
Publisher University of Chicago Press
Pages 222
Release 2013
Genre Art
ISBN 0226451062

Download Arts of Wonder Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Kosky focuses on a handful of artists - Walter De Maria, Diller + Scofidio, James Turrell, and Andy Goldsworthy - to show how they introduce spaces hospitable to mystery and wonder, redemption and revelation, and transcendence and creation.

The Myth of Disenchantment

The Myth of Disenchantment
Title The Myth of Disenchantment PDF eBook
Author Jason Ananda Josephson Storm
Publisher University of Chicago Press
Pages 428
Release 2017-05-16
Genre History
ISBN 022640336X

Download The Myth of Disenchantment Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

Permanent Crisis

Permanent Crisis
Title Permanent Crisis PDF eBook
Author Paul Reitter
Publisher University of Chicago Press
Pages 335
Release 2023-04-05
Genre Education
ISBN 022673823X

Download Permanent Crisis Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Leads scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities into more effectively analyzing the fate of the humanities and digging into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world. The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at the mercy of modernizing and technological forces that are driving universities towards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show, this crisis isn’t new—in fact, it’s as old as the humanities themselves. Today’s humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are strikingly similar to their nineteenth-century German counterparts. The humanities came into their own as scholars framed their work as a unique resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. The self-understanding of the modern humanities didn’t merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis; it also made crisis a core part of its project. Through this critical, historical perspective, Permanent Crisis can take scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities beyond the usual scolding, exhorting, and hand-wringing into clearer, more effective thinking about the fate of the humanities. Building on ideas from Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Small and Danielle Allen, Reitter and Wellmon dig into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world. ,

The Disenchantment of the World

The Disenchantment of the World
Title The Disenchantment of the World PDF eBook
Author Marcel Gauchet
Publisher Princeton University Press
Pages 248
Release 1999-10-24
Genre History
ISBN 9780691029375

Download The Disenchantment of the World Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This text reinterprets the modern West's development in terms of mankind's relationship to religion. It argues that the development of human political and psychological autonomy must be understood against the growth of the concept of divine power and its increasing distance from human activity.

The Disenchantment of Reason

The Disenchantment of Reason
Title The Disenchantment of Reason PDF eBook
Author Paul R. Harrison
Publisher SUNY Press
Pages 272
Release 1994-01-01
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 9780791418376

Download The Disenchantment of Reason Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book is an examination of nineteenth-century interpretations of Socrates by Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche in the light of the contemporary debates over rationality in the modern world. These interpretations of Socrates have fundamentally influenced modern and postmodern thought, and their complexity reflects both an attraction to, and a fear of, the peculiarly modern concept of reason that Socrates is read as embodying. Socrates is seen in this book as an emblematic figure through which the constitutive tensions between enlightenment and romanticism in modern thought can be understood. In the concluding chapter, Harrison analyzes the claims of discursive reason versus those of deconstruction in the postmodern conflict over the figure of Socrates.

A Discourse on Disenchantment

A Discourse on Disenchantment
Title A Discourse on Disenchantment PDF eBook
Author Gilbert G. Germain
Publisher State University of New York Press
Pages 206
Release 1993-02-02
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1438403968

Download A Discourse on Disenchantment Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book is the first full-length study of the ongoing debate over the status of our "disenchanted" world—a world stripped of mysterious and supernatural forces by the demythologizing power of reason and modern science. It draws together for the first time the writings of various theorists on this theme, such as Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, and Jürgen Habermas, providing a coherent overview of an evolving dialogue, as well as Germain's own evaluation of the disenchantment problematic.