Studies in a Dying Culture

I have written several relevant entries both on this blog and on my Reason & Society blog. The most generic keywords to search on are ‘globalization’, ‘ethnophilosophy’, ‘postmodernism’, and ‘liberalism’ or ‘neoliberalism’ where such keywords are used. But any post on non-western philosophy is likely to be relevant, the most numerous being ‘Asian philosophy’ or [...]

Adorno’s Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality Brian O’Connor Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. http://www.scribd.com/doc/87513357/Brian-O-Connor-Adorno-s-Negative-Dialectic-Philosophy-and-the-Possibility-of-Critical-Rationality-The-MIT-Press 1 I did a very quick read of this book, which is a preposterous thing to do considering the difficulty of the subject matter. Furthermore, it is not fully comprehensible without a thorough grounding in Kant, [...]

Dialectical Materialism: READ THIS BOOK!!!! (YouTube video link) I guess I’m ultimately to blame for this by having uploaded  Materialism and the Dialectical Method by Maurice Cornforth, which is volume 1 of  the trilogy Dialectical Materialism: An Introduction. Nobody should have to read this old diamat stuff anymore. You’ll get a lot more out of [...]

Here is a sampling of hard-copy books I’ve been reading all or parts of since my birthday, more or less in reverse chronological order, but several of these simultaneously. This doesn’t include isolated essays, chapters, or online reading. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence [v. 2]. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [...]

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 [...]

The debate: Bronner, Stephen Eric. "The Great Divide: The Enlightenment and its Critics," New Politics, vol. 5, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 19, Summer 1995, pp. 65-86. Goldner, Loren. "A Reply to Stephen Eric Bronner: Renaissance or Enlightenment," New Politics, vol. 6, no. 1 (new series), whole no. 21, Summer 1996, pp. 137-145. Bronner, [...]

In July 2007 I read the following interventions in a debate published in the journal New Politics (new series). First, Bronner: “The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg,” Vol. VIII, No. 3 (New Series), Summer 2001, Whole No. 31, pp. 162-167. “A Reply to David Camfield and Alan Johnson,” Vol. VIII, No. 4 (New Series), Winter 2002, [...]

Stephen Eric Bronner is not content to regurgitate the critical theory of its European originators of an earlier era, and he is not averse to criticizing their lapses. None of his books are to be missed, but for critical theory I suggest Of Critical Theory and Theorists above all. In October 2006 I read the [...]

More Vonnegut When I picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake (New York: G.P. Putnam’s, 1997) off my table for the first time, I thought this might be a throwaway book. I was wrong; it was hilarious, and there’s much in there. It is a combination memoir and science fiction tale. A whole decade has to be [...]

Cornel West, Marxism & morality West, Cornel. The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991. West wrote this in the late 1970s, before he became a star. The exposition of the development of the Young Marx is good. He presents interesting information on Engels, Kautsky, and Lukàcs, but his thesis contrasting [...]