Studies in a Dying Culture

I have not published a reading review since June 2007. Instead of beginning with July, I’ll work my way backward. At the moment there is too much non-book material to document readily, so this is an effort at compiling a list of books I’ve read part or all of since the beginning of March.

I began to tackle Theodor W. Adorno’s extremely difficult magnum opus Negative Dialectics in March. I got two or three chapters into it, but I got distracted and haven’t picked it back up.

Around the same time I read Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground in preparation for a group discussion of Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Lived Underground“. I liked Wright better. (See also my Annotated Bibliography.)

I read the Soviet compilation Science and Morality (the entire book is now online) and uploaded a couple articles from it: “Humanism and Science” by E. V. Ilyenkov, and “The Relationship Between Science and Morality (Philosophical Aspects)” by A. Arsenyev.

While perusing the latest books uploaded to leninist.biz, I read bits of Life and Work of Walt Whitman: A Soviet View by Maurice Mendelson, translated by Andrew Bromfield (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976). I was not prepared for the Soviet author’s unabashed adoration for Whitman. He claims that Whitman is underappreciated in the USA, which is hard to believe, but it is interesting that Russians would love him so.

In early March I also gave a quick perusal to:

Hunsberger, Bruce; Altemeyer, Bob. Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s Nonbelievers. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006.I found this rather disappointing, rather unsubstantial for a survey. I will review this in greater detail on another occasion.

It may have been in March I read a highly amusing graphic novel (glorified comic book), Rex Libris, Volume One: I, Librarian, about the galactic adventures of a swashbuckling librarian aggressively enforcing library policy.

Moving into April, the next books I read all or part of were:Fotopoulos, Takis. Towards An Inclusive Democracy: The Crisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a New Liberatory Project (London; New York: Cassell, 1997). Extract & Links: http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/TID-8-2d.html

Hollinger, David A. Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Intellectual History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. My review: http://reasonsociety.blogspot.com/2008/04/science-jews-secular-culture.html

LeBeau, Bryan F. The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Publisher description

I intend to write up a summary of this ofttimes depressing bio.

In the processing of looking for Kautsky literature at the beginning of May, I took out my copy and read bits and pieces of:

Donald, Moira. Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.

But this book, which I’ve not yet finished, is a veritable treasure trove giving a perspective on the problems of the German Social Democratic Party, which in one way or another plague us today:

Pierson, Stanley. Marxist Intellectuals and the Working-Class Mentality in Germany, 1887-1912. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

With this context, one can revisit Stephen Eric Bronner’s Socialism Unbound (reviewed previously on this blog) to appreciate it more fully.

Slightly more than a week ago, I got hold of Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World by Bob Avakian (Chicago: Insight Press, 2008), the same Bob Avakian of Maoist fame. I will report on this book more fully in due course. For coordinates, see my first blog entry on the subject: Away With All Gods! (1).

At the same time I acquired several volumes of Emmett Fields’ Bank of Wisdom, rare freethought classics on CD-ROM. #11 – ATHEISM, The Struggle Against Superstition, includes:

Sprading, Charles T. The Science of Materialism. New York: The Truth Seeker Co. Inc., 1942.

This is hard core, old-fashioned materialism. There is a brief treatment of Marx and Engels’ historical materialism. More on this another time.

I reviewed a couple chapters in this book, but this essay is the most important for my ongoing project:

Gouldner, Alvin W. “Romanticism and Classicism: Deep Structures in Social Science,” in For Sociology: Renewal and Critique in Sociology Today (New York: Basic Books, 1973), Chapter 11, pp. 323-366. Bibliographical note, pp. 464-465.

I am still working on this book, which makes me nostalgic for the ’70s, when this research was fresh and new, and class was still front and center in the radical vocabulary:

Gouldner, Alvin W. The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origins, Grammar, and Future of Ideology. New York: Seabury Press, 1976. (The Dark Side of the Dialectic; v. 1)

In this past week, I read parts of this book just acquired:

Hayes, Carlton J. H. A Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900. New York: Harper & Row, 1963, orig. 1941.

I also finally filled in an important gap in my Habermas literature:

Habermas, Jürgen. Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics, translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970.

. . . specifically, the 1968 essay “Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’”, which begins as a critique of Marcuse’s view of science and segues into Habermas’ now famous schema of work (rational-purposive / instrumental action) and interaction (communication ethics).

Also opened up:

Macherey, Pierre. In a Materialist Way: Selected Essays; edited by Warren Montag; translated by Ted Stolze. London; New York: Verso, 1998.

. . . and read the essay “Spinoza’s Philosophical Actuality (Heidegger, Adorno, Foucault)”, which I will have to digest.

Yesterday I started:

Friedman, Michael. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open Court, 2000.

This was on my want list for the longest time. It’s spellbinding. More on this to come.

After I get through all this, next on my agenda will be:

Saxton, Alexander. Religion and the Human Prospect. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006.