Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Martin Jay

$44.95

Publication Date: April 21st, 2016

Publisher:

University of Wisconsin Press

ISBN:

9780299306502

Pages:

272

Description

Martin Jay tackles a question as old as Plato and still pressing today: what is reason, and what roles does and should it have in human endeavor? Applying the tools of intellectual history, he examines the overlapping, but not fully compatible, meanings that have accrued to the term "reason" over two millennia, homing in on moments of crisis, critique, and defense of reason.

After surveying Western ideas of reason from the ancient Greeks through Kant, Hegel, and Marx, Jay engages at length with the ways leading theorists of the Frankfurt School—Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, and most extensively Habermas—sought to salvage a viable concept of reason after its apparent eclipse. They despaired, in particular, over the decay in the modern world of reason into mere instrumental rationality. When reason becomes a technical tool of calculation separated from the values and norms central to daily life, then choices become grounded not in careful thought but in emotion and will—a mode of thinking embraced by fascist movements in the twentieth century.

Is there a more robust idea of reason that can be defended as at once a philosophical concept, a ground of critique, and a norm for human emancipation? Jay explores at length the ommunicative rationality advocated by Habermas and considers the range of arguments, both pro and con, that have greeted his work.

About the Author

Martin Jay is the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley. His many books include The Dialectical Imagination, Marxism and Totality, and The Virtues of Mendacity.

Praise for Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

"Martin Jay is one of the most respected intellectual historians now working, and any book by him is an important event. His subject here could hardly be bigger: the idea of reason in Western thought over two millennia."—Michael Rosen, Harvard University

"A magisterial rethinking of the fate of reason, particularly in German philosophy from Kant to Habermas."—Anson Rabinbach, Princeton University

"A magisterial rethinking of the fate of reason, particularly in German philosophy from Kant to Habermas." —Anson Rabinbach, Princeton University

Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Description

About the Author

Praise for Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Other Books in Series

Surreal Geographies: A New History of Holocaust Consciousness (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education, and Children's Rights (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

The Holocaust and the West German Historians: Historical Interpretation and Autobiographical Memory (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Cataclysms: A History of the Twentieth Century from Europe’s Edge (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education, and Children's Rights (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

La Grande Italia: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Confronting History: A Memoir (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Carl Schmitt and the Jews: The “Jewish Question," the Holocaust, and German Legal Theory (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Respectability and Violence: Military Values, Masculine Honor, and Italy’s Road to Mass Death (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

The Perils of Normalcy: George L. Mosse and the Remaking of Cultural History (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

What History Tells: George L. Mosse and the Culture of Modern Europe (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Contemporary Europe in the Historical Imagination (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

A History of Italian Fascist Culture, 1922–1943 (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)