The Ethos of the Enlightenment and the Discontents of Modernity

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-24846-2
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 236 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 368 g

Reihe: Routledge Advances in Sociology

This book probes the sources and nature of the ‘discontents of modernity’. It proposes a new approach to the philosophic-critical discourse on modernity.

The Enlightenment is widely understood to be the foundational moment of modernity. Yet despite its appeal to reason as the ultimate ground of its authority and legitimacy, the Enlightenment has had multiple historical manifestations and, therefore, can hardly be said to be a homogenous phenomenon. The present work seeks to identify a unitive element that allows us to speak of the Enlightenment. To do so, it enjoins the concept of ‘ethos’ and its relation to the ‘discontents of modernity’.

This book proposes a new theoretical framework for the examination of the interrelationships between ‘critical thought’ and ‘modernity’, based on a fundamental distinction between criticism and negation. It will appeal to scholars and students of critical theory, the history of ideas, philosophy, the sociology of knowledge, and political science.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Oram, Matan

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

PART I: The Philosophical Beginnings of Critical Thought

1. The production of Knowledge, Rationality and the Critical Spirit

2. The Enlightenment's Horizon of Progress

PART II: Modernity and its Discontents

3. The Human Condition: Nietzsche's Psycho-critical Discourse

4. Being and Crisis: Husserl's Phenomenological Concept of the Lifeworld

5. Modernity as Culture: A Contextual Reading of Freud's Concept of Discontents

PART III: Knowledge and Totality

6. The Open-Society and the Enemies of the Enlightenment: Popper's Critical-analysis of Scientific Theory – Historicism and Totalitarianism

7. Pathologies of Anti-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School

8. The Moral Horizon of the Enlightenment: Habermas' Rational Reconstruction

PART IV: The Changing of the Consciousness of Modernity

9. Two Critical Readings: Between Foucault and Habermas

10. Toward a Reconstructive Concept of Progress

11. Deciphering the Enigma: The Prefix 'Post'

Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Matan Oram is a Professor of Political Science at The Academic College of Tel-Aviv Yaffo; his lectures and research focus on political philosophy, political theory, and the history of ideas. His publications address a wide range of topics of the philosophical discourse on modernity, and contemporary socio-political thought. His most recent book is Modernity and Crisis in the Thought of Michel Foucault ( 2017).