Marshall Berman (1940–2013)
Author of All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
About the Author
Marshall Berman is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at City College of New York and CCNY Graduate Center.
Works by Marshall Berman
The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society (1970) 70 copies, 1 review
Associated Works
These United States: Original Essays by Leading American Writers on Their State within the Union by John Leonard (1995) — Contributor — 101 copies, 1 review
The Suburbanization of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town? (2006) — Contributor — 34 copies, 1 review
Harvard Design Magazine: The origins and evolution of "urban design" 1956-2006 (2006) — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1940-11-24
- Date of death
- 2013-09-11
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Harvard University (PhD)
Columbia University
University of Oxford - Occupations
- distinguished professor (Political Science)
- Organizations
- City College of New York
Center for Worker Education (City College) - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
- Place of death
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, New York, USA
Members
Reviews
A splendid romp from Faust to the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Excellent at two levels: we get familiarized with a whole stream of great literature, plus an over-arching perspective that certainly deepened my understanding even where I was familiar with the literature already. Modernity as kind of auto-catabolic process, where constant novelty powers itself through the destruction of yesterday's novelty; and modernism, maybe it's a process of finding meaning in the process of finding meaning. show more Industry and art reacting to each other, building off each other.
Quite wild how this book was completed January 1981, the inauguration of Reagan. That makes it a kind of swan song. It'd be interesting to hold this up against Fukuyama's End of History. Berman has history going on into the indefinite future, the world constantly remaking itself. Ten years later, Fukuyama sees the thing stopped. The icy grip of neo-liberalism! Probably it was only sleeping. But by now, it feels like it has been dismembered and scattered: Osiris or Sati. We had to make our own meaning back in the days of Dostoevsky and Sartre. Now we must wander as pilgrims and search for the bits and pieces, stare at them and wonder. Probably our findings are from many different puzzles. Still, a patchwork quilt can keep us warm in the long winter.
Yeah this is a glorious book. Ah, Puerto Rican Sun, an outdoor sculpture at 156th & Fox Sts. in the Bronx, is still there! Richard Serra's T.W.U. is long gone - was only up for a year or so. Yeah, Berman could see that reality would put constraints on our grand dreams of flying cars and what-not. Seems like that's where we are now, the constant revolution we're in the midst of. Every new forecast looks bleaker. We try harder, we shout louder, we shall overcome! There's a book we could use, overcoming injustice vs. overcoming the planetary eco-sphere. show less
Quite wild how this book was completed January 1981, the inauguration of Reagan. That makes it a kind of swan song. It'd be interesting to hold this up against Fukuyama's End of History. Berman has history going on into the indefinite future, the world constantly remaking itself. Ten years later, Fukuyama sees the thing stopped. The icy grip of neo-liberalism! Probably it was only sleeping. But by now, it feels like it has been dismembered and scattered: Osiris or Sati. We had to make our own meaning back in the days of Dostoevsky and Sartre. Now we must wander as pilgrims and search for the bits and pieces, stare at them and wonder. Probably our findings are from many different puzzles. Still, a patchwork quilt can keep us warm in the long winter.
Yeah this is a glorious book. Ah, Puerto Rican Sun, an outdoor sculpture at 156th & Fox Sts. in the Bronx, is still there! Richard Serra's T.W.U. is long gone - was only up for a year or so. Yeah, Berman could see that reality would put constraints on our grand dreams of flying cars and what-not. Seems like that's where we are now, the constant revolution we're in the midst of. Every new forecast looks bleaker. We try harder, we shout louder, we shall overcome! There's a book we could use, overcoming injustice vs. overcoming the planetary eco-sphere. show less
Superb. And my kind of read. Berman explores his idea(s) by reference to (and sometimes subtle reinterpretations of) history and great literature; and the book opens doors to further reading. He gets a bit elegiac at the end but concludes on a balanced and hopeful note. Highly recommend.
I love the Marx quote that this book is titled after and centred around:
As well as having a beautiful ring to it, this statement proves fruitful as a means of discussing what modernism and modernisation are in different historical, geographical, and disciplinary contexts, as well as the dialectic between them. show more Berman writes in a thoughtful, readable style, using a series of case studies to examine modernity. These include Goethe’s ‘Faust’, Baudelaire’s writings on the streets of Paris, and New York city planning in the 20th century. The eclectic mixture of sources is a joy in itself - poets, planners, and revolutionaries all crop up. My favourite section, the longest, is concerned with the political and literary history of St Petersburg. I was fascinated to learn about this strange city, built by order of Tsar Peter I and an illusionary outpost of modernism in pre-modern Russia. In fact, this section reads well with [b:Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia|21413849|Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible The Surreal Heart of the New Russia|Peter Pomerantsev|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407196452s/21413849.jpg|40714614], which discusses contemporary manifestations of Russian unreality.
Although published in 1982, this book has important resonances today. Many of Berman’s insights still seem very apposite, for example:
There are plenty of other quote-worthy points to be found, however that was the most memorable to me. What I was left wondering, however, is what would constitute an end to modernism. Berman is dismissive of postmodernism as misinterpretation and seems to believe that, although it evolves continually, the essential character of modernism remains dominant. I suppose this is due to its paradoxical nature as constant change, everything solid melting into air. Perhaps the only end to modernism as Berman describes it would be an end to change, a freezing of the built environment, social relations, and economic activity into stasis. (cf [b:The End of History and the Last Man|57981|The End of History and the Last Man|Francis Fukuyama|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391572633s/57981.jpg|56476]? Which proved extremely premature.) I am not particularly comfortable with the term late modernity, though. What can come next - later modernity? Very late modernity? Post-modernity? The choice seems to depend on whether there is sufficient continuity between past and present. Clearly I need to read some more books on this, as the cross-disciplinary perspective taken by Berman is very thought-provoking. I was especially pleased that he supports a point I make in my PhD thesis - that the constant movement enabled by cars is a key characteristic of modernity. However, I argued that technology and behaviour were changing this and that the social significance of cars was evolving. After all, this book was written before I was born and a lot can alter in 34 years. If modernity is constant redevelopment and change, then I suppose it is still with us. If the ways that we think about it in politics and literature have also changed (as is undoubtedly the case), is that a sign of some new modernity? Like I said, evidently more reading is needed. show less
All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned, and men at last are forced to face… the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men.
As well as having a beautiful ring to it, this statement proves fruitful as a means of discussing what modernism and modernisation are in different historical, geographical, and disciplinary contexts, as well as the dialectic between them. show more Berman writes in a thoughtful, readable style, using a series of case studies to examine modernity. These include Goethe’s ‘Faust’, Baudelaire’s writings on the streets of Paris, and New York city planning in the 20th century. The eclectic mixture of sources is a joy in itself - poets, planners, and revolutionaries all crop up. My favourite section, the longest, is concerned with the political and literary history of St Petersburg. I was fascinated to learn about this strange city, built by order of Tsar Peter I and an illusionary outpost of modernism in pre-modern Russia. In fact, this section reads well with [b:Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia|21413849|Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible The Surreal Heart of the New Russia|Peter Pomerantsev|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407196452s/21413849.jpg|40714614], which discusses contemporary manifestations of Russian unreality.
Although published in 1982, this book has important resonances today. Many of Berman’s insights still seem very apposite, for example:
The first point here is the immense power of the market in modern men’s inner lives: they look to the price list for answers to questions not merely economic but metaphysical - questions of what is worthwhile, what is honorable, even what is real. When Marx says that other values are ‘resolved into’ exchange value, his point is that bourgeois society does not efface old structures of value but subsumes them. Old modes of honor and dignity do not die; instead, they get incorporated into the market, take on price tags, gain new life as commodities. Thus, any imaginable mode of human contact becomes morally permissible the moment it becomes economically possible, becomes ‘valuable’; anything goes if it pays. This is what modern nihilism is all about.
There are plenty of other quote-worthy points to be found, however that was the most memorable to me. What I was left wondering, however, is what would constitute an end to modernism. Berman is dismissive of postmodernism as misinterpretation and seems to believe that, although it evolves continually, the essential character of modernism remains dominant. I suppose this is due to its paradoxical nature as constant change, everything solid melting into air. Perhaps the only end to modernism as Berman describes it would be an end to change, a freezing of the built environment, social relations, and economic activity into stasis. (cf [b:The End of History and the Last Man|57981|The End of History and the Last Man|Francis Fukuyama|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391572633s/57981.jpg|56476]? Which proved extremely premature.) I am not particularly comfortable with the term late modernity, though. What can come next - later modernity? Very late modernity? Post-modernity? The choice seems to depend on whether there is sufficient continuity between past and present. Clearly I need to read some more books on this, as the cross-disciplinary perspective taken by Berman is very thought-provoking. I was especially pleased that he supports a point I make in my PhD thesis - that the constant movement enabled by cars is a key characteristic of modernity. However, I argued that technology and behaviour were changing this and that the social significance of cars was evolving. After all, this book was written before I was born and a lot can alter in 34 years. If modernity is constant redevelopment and change, then I suppose it is still with us. If the ways that we think about it in politics and literature have also changed (as is undoubtedly the case), is that a sign of some new modernity? Like I said, evidently more reading is needed. show less
The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society by Marshall Berman
Berman is an engaging writer who has much to say about the writings of others. Unfortunately he plunks us in the middle of a dialectic between Montesquieu and Rousseau's work without ever setting the ground rules of the argument.
The idea of 'authenticity' is as ambiguous as ideasa can get. Often weaponized to excuse poor behaviour, authenticity is a slippery eel that even a subject when asked likely cannot easily identify in themselves. Am I being my true self? Am I truly making my own show more decisions? What even IS free will and how does that create implications for authenticity?
The argument from Montesquieu is far clearer than that of Rousseau. In his analysis, Berman is clearly honing in on the inauthenticity of totalitarian regimes and the reversal of fortune that can break down social order when the oppressed seek authenticity.
On the other hand, Rousseau is complaining about society as a corruption of the human condition without any redeeming values. While he doesn't think we are going to be able to repeal society as a whole, he continues a fruitless search for an objective, permanent 'thou' that simply cannot exist. Second order desires and mental illness not withstanding, the fluid nature of the human condition simply cannot support such a stringent view of authenticity. What is frustrating about this book is that Berman never calls Rousseau out on this point. show less
The idea of 'authenticity' is as ambiguous as ideasa can get. Often weaponized to excuse poor behaviour, authenticity is a slippery eel that even a subject when asked likely cannot easily identify in themselves. Am I being my true self? Am I truly making my own show more decisions? What even IS free will and how does that create implications for authenticity?
The argument from Montesquieu is far clearer than that of Rousseau. In his analysis, Berman is clearly honing in on the inauthenticity of totalitarian regimes and the reversal of fortune that can break down social order when the oppressed seek authenticity.
On the other hand, Rousseau is complaining about society as a corruption of the human condition without any redeeming values. While he doesn't think we are going to be able to repeal society as a whole, he continues a fruitless search for an objective, permanent 'thou' that simply cannot exist. Second order desires and mental illness not withstanding, the fluid nature of the human condition simply cannot support such a stringent view of authenticity. What is frustrating about this book is that Berman never calls Rousseau out on this point. show less
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