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Loading... Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Ageby Roger Kimball
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Lots of interesting essays about different writers and thinkers of the "modern" and "post-modern" schools. Expanded my knowledge about such people as Freud, Sartre, Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot and others. Of particular interest to me was the essay on John Stuart Mill, who was quite obviously not a favourite of Mr Kimball. ( ) no reviews | add a review
Experiments Against Reality displays the sophistication, breadth of knowledge, and clarity of argument that have made Mr. Kimball one of the most trenchant critics of our contemporary culture. He begins by considering the influential poet and theorist T. E. Hulme, and shows how the work of Eliot, Auden, Wallace Stevens, Robert Musil, Elias Canetti, and others can be seen as efforts to articulate a convincing alternative to the intellectual and spiritual desolations of the age. Turning to the philosophical tradition, Mr. Kimball suggests how figures from Mill and Nietzsche to Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Heidegger, Foucault, and Roger Scruton have addressed--or in many cases evaded--the defining moral imperatives of modernity. Finally he steps back to consider more generally the career of contemporary culture--the trivializing nature of the contemporary art world; the academic attack on historical truth and scientific rationality; the fate of the two cultures controversy. Experiments Against Reality offers continuing evidence of Mr. Kimball's stature as one of our most important cultural critics. Named an International Book of the Year by Mary Lefkowitz, Times Literary Supplement. A scathing critic but one whose tirades are usually justified.... His intellectual rigor is refreshing. Experiments Against Reality demonstrates what criticism can be if you take away all the theoretical scaffolding inherent in, say, a deconstructionist, structuralist or feminist reading. --Catherine Saint Louis, New York Times Book Review No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)190Philosophy and Psychology Modern western philosophy Modern PhilosophersLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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