Fate Of Modernity

Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life- and that they did so not out of hostility but in order to sustain certain religious beliefs. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as the result of a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology.

Composed after the collapse of his political hopes, Milton's great poems Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes are an effort to understand what it means to be a poet on the threshold of a post-theological world. The argument of Delirious Milton, inspired in part by the architectural theorist Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York, is that Milton's creative power is drawn from a rift at the center of his consciousness over the question of creation itself. This rift forces the poet to oscillate deliriously between two incompatible perspectives, at once affirming and denying the presence of spirit in what he creates. From one perspective the act of creation is centered in God and the purpose of art is to imitate and praise the Creator. From the other perspective the act of creation is centered in the human, in the built environment of the modern world. The oscillation itself, continually affirming and negating the presence of spirit, of a force beyond the human, is what Gordon Teskey means by delirium. He concludes that the modern artist, far from being characterized by what Benjamin (after Baudelaire) called "loss of the aura," is invested, as never before, with a shamanistic spiritual power that is mediated through art.

Kevin M. Cahill reclaims one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's most passionately pursued endeavors: to reawaken a sense of wonder around human life and language and its mysterious place in the world. Following the philosopher's spiritual and cultural criticism and tying it more tightly to the overall evolution of his thought, Cahill frames an original interpretation of Wittgenstein's engagement with Western metaphysics and modernity, better contextualizing the force of his work. Cahill synthesizes several approaches to Wittgenstein's life and thought. He stresses the nontheoretical aspirations of the philosopher's early and later writings, combining key elements from the so-called resolute readings of the Tractatus with the "therapeutic" readings of Philosophical Investigations. Cahill shows how continuity in Wittgenstein's cultural and spiritual concerns informed if not guided his work between these texts, and in his reading of the Tractatus, Cahill identifies surprising affinities with Martin Heidegger's Being and Time—a text rarely associated with Wittgenstein's early formulations. In his effort to recapture wonder, Wittgenstein both avoided and undermined traditional philosophy's reliance on theory. As Cahill relates the steps of this bold endeavor, he forms his own innovative, analytical methods, joining historicist and contextualist approaches to text-based, immanent readings. The result is an original, sustained examination of Wittgenstein's thought.

Nikolai Berdyaev was the foremost religious and political thinker of his time. In this book he attempts to consolidate the industrial world and the place for religion and the modern man inside that world. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Horner offers a new interpretation of how China's changed view of its modern historical experience has also changed China's understanding of its long intellectual and cultural tradition. Spirited reevaluations of history, strategy, commerce, and literature are cooperating--and competing--to define the future.

Kimball explores the literary and philosophical underpinnings of modernity as well as the state of our culture today.

This book illuminates an important dimension of the work of Max Weber. Weber’s theory of meaning and modernity is articulated through an understanding of his account of the way in which the pursuit of meaning in the modern world has been shaped by the loss of Western religion and how such pursuit gives sense to the phenomena of human suffering and death. Through a close, scholarly reading of Weber’s extensive writings and Vocation Lectures, the author explores the concepts of ’paradox’ and ’brotherliness’ as found in Weber’s work, in order to offer an original exposition of Weber’s actual theory of how meaning and meaninglessness work in the modern world. In addition to making a substantial and highly original contribution to the sociology of modernity, the book applies the theory of meaning extracted from Weber’s thought, addressing the claim that Weber’s work has been rendered out-dated by the supposed re-enchantment of the modern world, as well as discussing the ways this theory can contribute to our understanding of the development of specific forms of modernity. A rigorous examination of the thought of one of the most important figures in classical sociology, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in modernity, Weber and the concept of meaning.