Can subjective taste regulate social norms or political practices? This book argues that from the late seventeenth century to the present national cultures have sought to regulate the democratic subject through the academic form of arguments about the proper relations of aesthetics to ethics and politics. In so doing it offers a radical reconsideration of the history of modernity, tracing the emergence of criticism as a socio-cultural practice across all the major European nations, and drawing on an extensive (...) range of European literature and philosophy. (shrink)

This books delineates the seismic shifts of the twentieth century humanities by way of a close examination of the dynamic landscape of modern language, criticism and philosophy. In this manner, it argues that both philosophy and literary criticism have dovetailed in the twenty-first century. Starting out as a survey of literary criticism in its broadest terms, later chapters - which are more expository - assess recent movements within modern literary theory. These are located with respect to the (...) post-Russell and Fregean “linguistic turn” in philosophy. Designed for specialists and non-specialists alike; philosophers, literary critics and even students of the modern critical tradition, the argument takes a novel stance towards modern criticism, language and philosophy, arguing for a return to a more formalist and rhetorical approach to literary criticism, while taking care not to indulge too many “political pathologies” when engaging with texts. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a discussion of R.G. Collingwood's cultural criticism, as a critique of the modern world, referring, beyond social and political institutions, to definite aspects of everyday existence, such as trends in aesthetics and technology, and to the form of rationality that disciplines the general attitudes of men. For this type of criticism, modernity becomes problematic as a 'form of life'. I therefore intend to provide a commentary of certain passages of Collingwood's writings, in (...) order to reconstruct the historical narrative where the genesis and the development of the modern world is represented as a process full of tensions and contradictions, thus allowingme to stress the coexistence of different patterns in cultural criticism. At the same time, I propose to discuss somemethodological and category problems arising from them: principally the explanatory problem about the specific causal relationships that take into account the traits of modern civilization which are the object of criticism, and the normative problem concerning the criteria applied in this criticism. (shrink)

Originally published in 1996 and newly revised, _Conspicuous Criticism_ is a ringing defense of the need for religion and tradition in contemporary society. Writing with moral passion and critical verve, Christopher Shannon offers a convincing indictment of the forces that isolate the individual in modern capitalist society and counters more than a century of efforts by modern intellectuals­ to displace tradition in favor of a humanism that actually diminishes humanity in the name of freeing its potential. Featuring in-depth analyses of (...) the works of John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, C. Wright Mills, and others, _Conspicuous Criticism_ is a call to reinstate traditional relations to God, nature, and the common good. Scholars in fields from American studies to intellectual history will be forced to grapple with Shannon’s trenchant critique, which is well on its way to becoming a classic of Christian thought. “_Conspicuous Criticism_ inspired a concern about the modern world that in the years since I’ve not been able to brush aside.”—Eric Miller, _First Things _. (shrink)

Building on the strengths of the first edition, this volume introduces the key concepts of current literary and cultural debate and presents substantial extracts from the period's most seminal thinkers.

"Alterity and Criticism: Retracing Time in Modern Literature" argues that the role of time in canonical literature underlies the experience of alterity and requires a new hermeneutic to clarify how the self emerges in literary texts. Romantic poetry from Goethe to Shelley and the modern prose tradition from Flaubert to Butor constitute different traditions but also indicate, on a textual basis, how alterity is crucial to reading, thus encouraging us to interpret literary texts in terms of the related concerns (...) of self, other and time. This volume engages in discussions of cultural semiotics and late phenomenology, and provides insights into how modern literature provides one way of assessing the possibility of World Literature for our own time. It will be of interest to students and scholars of both literature and philosophy. (shrink)

This article is a systematic consideration of aristotle's position vis-a-vis modern tendencies to judge all philosophical positions as historically conditioned. the argument shows that aristotle's position is not only not reducible to historical temporality but is transcendent of it. the article, which contains original translations of key passages in the metaphysics and physics and refers to the de anima, topica, poetics, nicomachean ethics, rhetorica, and history of animals, points to the author's own systematic philosophy entitled mentaphysics (chiron, 1978). particular stress (...) is laid on the relation between "logos" and "physis" with respect to aristotle's definition of "nous" as finally a divine "zoon". (shrink)

We will all have sometimes cried out, while running between the bedroom and the bathroom, in the morning, as did King Peter of Georg Buechner’s Leonce und Lena: “But where is my shirt? and my trousers? Halt, few! Free will is here all open in front of me. Where are morals? Where are my cuffs? The categories are in the most scandalous confusion : two more buttons are sewn on, the snuff-box is stuck in the right pocket; my whole system (...) is in disarray.”. (shrink)

This essay first contextualizes Adorno's essays in literary criticism in relation to his historico‐philosophical account of modern rationalization and late capitalism, his dialectical theory of culture, and his return to postwar Germany. It then presents the neo‐Marxist and formalist principles that inform his literary criticism, emphasizing the artwork's critical relationship to society, on the one hand, and the theory of aesthetic experience undergone by the artwork's recipient on the other. These principles are exemplified in selective readings of Adorno's (...) essays on Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Hölderlin. The essay concludes by polemically juxtaposing Adorno's practice of literary criticism with that of neo‐Aristotelian “ethical criticism.”. (shrink)

The Baconian Criticism holds that it is unnecessary to use final-cause conceptions when an explanation in terms of the other Aristotelian causes is sufficient to the task at hand. It is argued that modern efforts by cognitive psychologists to explain intentionality in machine terminology falls prey to the Baconian Criticism. Cognitive theory is framed extraspectively and relies basically and thoroughly on material/efficient-causation. Introducing final-cause description to such machine processing is superfluous because it adds nothing to our basic understanding (...) of what is taking place. Telosponsivity, on the other hand, is exclusively introspective in formulation and is not open to the Baconian Criticism because of its basic reliance on oppositionality in cognition. The telosponding person is always "taking a position" within a sea of opposite possibilities, which allows for the fact that behavior could have unfolded differently all circumstances remaining the same. This permits a truly teleological understanding of human behavior, one that is not reducible to machine processing. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Lived Experience and Cognitive Science Reappraising Enactivism’s Jonasian Turn” by Mario Villalobos & Dave Ward. Upshot: As a reply to the criticism that anthropomorphism and modern science are incompatible, targeting Jonasian phenomenology and Varelian enactivism, I suggest considering the concept of modern anthropomorphism, which seems prima facie compatible with the pluralistic situation of today’s life sciences. My further claim is that the phenomenological method is intrinsically linked with this sort of anthropomorphism.

Preface.--Modern mysticism.--Beauty and morals in nature.--The tragedy of Macbeth.--Modern melancholy.--Tolstoy.--Imitation and originality.--Physical courage and moral cowardice.--Parsifalitis.--Authority and individualism.--The new criticism.--Amiel.--Culture.--The artistic faculty in literature.

In celebration of the centennial of the Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven, a series of lectures was organized to outline the evolution of various philosophical disciplines in the time span 1889-1989. The lcture on ethics was an attempt to depict the transition from foundational and universalist ethics into a hermeneutical type of ethics that is anti-foundational and particularistic. Such can be interpreted as a transition from modernity into post-modernity,or from ethics into post-ethics : it (...) is the abandonment of the belief that ethics might offer a rational legitimation of ethical principles, or that such principles might be shown to be universal dictates of reason. Several historical and philosophical aspects of this criticism of rationalistic ethics are traced and evaluated, in discussion with authors such as Nussbaum, Rorty, Walzer, and Lévi-Strauss. — 1. The post-modern rehabilitation of moral sensitivity correctly criticizes the poverty of a moral life that is only based on principles. However, it is shown that even loyalty to a particular person or group can only be of an ethical nature ifsome universality is presupposed. — 2. The post-modern rehabilitation of tradition is based on two arguments: moral judging can only occur within a particular way of life, and this particularism is the most efficient anti-dote against totalitarian powers of rationalization and homogenization. Nevertheless, it is evidenced that the universalism of human rights is needed to safeguard such particularism. — 3. Other motives in the criticismof a universalist ethical theory derive from the Wittgensteinian or Heideggerian rejection of humanism as a form of subjectivism or anthropocentrism. The final conclusion is that the particularity of ethos has an important role to playin the development of our moral sense, but that this role is essentially heuristic. Thisparticularity is the experiential matrix for a responsibility that is nevertheless of a universal nature. Ethics can never be equated with the articulation of a particular way of life, or ethos, because it needs the tension between facts and values. Without such atension it is reduced to a positivism of culture. The foundational questions should not be abandoned. They are not rationalistic abstractions precluding experience, but they are the reminders that our norms are norms, i.e. tasks to be fulfilled and not just actualsocial sentiments and preferences. (shrink)

This volume brings together modernity as a Western project. From the early, via the classic and high to the late modern period, each chapter reveals a marked interdisciplinary approach to the various aspects of this century-old process.

In the 1990s, have long been into the "limbo" of literary criticism and ethics scholars quietly occupied the United States. In the post-modern context, the literary criticism of the ethical shift is not a simple return to tradition, but was given a new meaning and carry a new mission. Engaged in literary criticism of the construction of ethical theorists because of their different starting points and strategies basically two camps: the new humanism and deconstruction were sent, who (...) together constitute a post-modern context of the ethical criticism of American literature the landscape. Ethic criticism dominated American literary criticism once again in 1990's, though for a long time it was marginized. However, the ethics turn of literary criticism in the post modern context is not simply a returning to tradition, instead, it was endowed with new connotation therefore equipped with new missions. Varied in starting points and strategies, critics devoted to ethic criticism could roughly be divided into two parts: that of ness humanism and of deconstruction. The work together and form a postmodern brilliant ethic landscape in American criticism. (shrink)

In this brief response to Herbert De Vriese’s The Charm of Disenchantment, his attempt to link secularism and modernity is questioned. Criticism is leveled at De Vriese’s use of the correspondence between Voltaire and Frederick the Great without reference to the historical context, notably the confessional states that existed between roughly 1650 and 1800 in Europe. De Vriese’s apology for disenchantment and modernity is also questioned in the light of both modern religious and secular responses to (...) class='Hi'>modernity as exemplified by the Dalai Lama and Bernard Stiegler. (shrink)

Stanisław Brzozowski was active as philosopher and literary critic for only a few years at the turn of the twentieth century, yet his writings are still inspire contemporary thinkers and critics. In every important phase of the development of Polish literary criticism, Polish intellectuals have acknowledged Brzozowski as a writer who had the courage and critical acumen to confront modernity and examine closely contemporary trends of thought from the perspective of social and individual life. This continued presence of (...) the celebrated critic cannot but be interesting for the researcher who is led to ask, what is so intriguing in Brzozowski’s work, why do successive generations of critics and intellectuals return to Brzozowski? Drawing on many important interpretations of Brzozowski’s work (Burek, Głowiński, Nycz), I want to show that in Brzozowski’s work it is possible to find everything contemporary criticism and thought needs, because his books contain, in nuce , projects and strategies which can be (and are) used in different ways by critics representing different ideologies and worldviews. Brzozowski worked out, or rather attempted to work out, ideas which are a source of modern critical projects but in addition his work comprises a repertoire of possibilities which contemporary critical thought can turn to its advantage. Brzozowski’s work can be also treated as a performative act, calling forth the reader’s response, in this way shedding new light on it. I also show that “performative consciousness” is both close to Brzozowski’s practice of writing and deeply rooted in his philosophical conviction. Brzozowski can be considered a representative of modernist, critical literature, in which reading and writing become a mode of experience, a privileged social discourse, and a “leaven,” an act and an activity. (shrink)

The founding text of modern hermeneutics. Written by the philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher as a method for the interpretation and textual criticism of the New Testament, it develops ideas about language and the interpretation of texts that are in many respects still unsurpassed and are becoming current in the contemporary philosophy of language. Contrary to the traditional view of Schleiermacher as a theorist of empathetic interpretation, in this text he offers a view of understanding that acknowledges both the (...) structurally and historically determined aspects of language and the need to take account of the activity of the individual subject in the constitution of meaning. This volume offers the text in a new translation by Andrew Bowie, together with related writings on secular hermeneutics and on language, and an introduction that places the texts in the context of Schleiermacher's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Did people in early modern Europe have a concept of an inner self? Carla Mazzio and Douglas Trevor have brought together an outstanding group of literary, cultural, and history scholars to answer this intriguing question. Through a synthesis of historicism and psychoanalytic criticism, the contributors explore the complicated, nuanced, and often surprising union of history and subjectivity in Europe centuries before psychoanalytic theory. Addressing such topics as "fetishes and Renaissances," "the cartographic unconscious," and "the topographic imaginary," these essays move (...) beyond the strict boundaries of historicism and psychoanalysis to carve out new histories of interiority in early modern Europe. Contributors: Ann Rosalind Jones, Peter Stallybrass, James R. Siemon, John Guillory, Eric Wilson, Karen Newman, Tom Conley, Jeffrey Masten, Carla Mazzio, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Jonathan Goldberg, Douglas Trevor, Kathryn Schwarz, David Hillman, Marjorie Garber. (shrink)

The Hwang affair, a dramatic and far reaching instance of scientific fraud, shocked the world. This collective national failure prompted various organizations in Korea, including universities, regulatory agencies, and research associations, to engage in self-criticism and research ethics reforms. This paper aims, first, to document and review research misconduct perpetrated by Hwang and members of his research team, with particular attention to the agencies that failed to regulate and then supervise Hwang’s research. The paper then examines the research ethics (...) reforms introduced in the wake of this international scandal. After reviewing American and European research governance structures and policies, policy makers developed a mixed model mindful of its Korean context. The third part of the paper examines how research ethics reform is proactive (a response to shocking scientific misconduct and ensuing external criticism from the press and society) as well as reactive (identification of and adherence to national or international ethics standards). The last part deals with Korean society’s response to the Hwang affair, which had the effect of a moral atomic bomb and has led to broad ethical reform in Korean society. We conceptualize this change as ethical modernization, through which the Korean public corrects the failures of a growth-oriented economic model for social progress, and attempts to create a more trustworthy and ethical society. (shrink)

Sixteen of the 20th century's leading artistic innovators talk forcefully about their work — from Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger's 1912 presentation of cubist theory to Henry Moore's comments, three decades later, on sculpture and primitive art. Four newly added essays by Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, El Lissitzky, and Fernand Léger.

This article examines Marcel Gauchet’s claim that the political history of religion is the key to a new understanding of contemporary liberal democratic societies in the shape that they have come to assume since the 1970s. The Disenchantment of the World presents a history of religion starting out from the thesis that, from the perspective of universal history, the primary function of religion can be identified with the production of the unity and identity of societies. Present-day liberal democracies, it is (...) argued, perform the same function through an alternative disposition of the constitutive elements of collective life. Where religions institute the identity of the society by accepting dependence upon a supernatural origin, contemporary society is organized as a ‘subjective form of social functioning’, in the sense that it is able to create and transform itself. Gauchet argues that the central structural features of contemporary society – the administrative state, the separation of civil society and the freedom of individuals, and the global orientation to the future – allow the practical accomplishment of the ideal of autonomy announced by the tradition of modern and revolutionary political thought. The explication of this logic establishes the preconditions for the criticism of these societies, by showing the historical decision and the internal articulations that give them their cohesion. (shrink)

Hardy is the last of the Victorian and one of the most popular novelists of England. He, being an author of unique endowments, was not much esteemed in his life time. Hardy became the victim of stereotypical criticism and was badly ostracized by the ecclesiastical circles and the critics of his time as they merely focused on the depressing features of his fiction. This paper intends to reveal certain aspects of his work which remained neglected for a long time. (...) The present study is designed to focus on those characteristics of his work which win the title of a modern novelist for him. Hardy was quite conscious of the shifting environment around him at the vogue of industrialization that left profound marks on his meditative temperament. His depiction of the 19th century scenario is dominated with clash and collision between innovation and tradition. His art deals with twofold aspects of modernity exposing the sanguine and gloomy consequences of modernity. Owing to such an approach of the writer he is regarded as a social realist and one of the earliest of the modern novelists. Hardy poignantly observes the pathetic condition of the labourers, on one hand, and the modern mechanical advancements, one the other, which were of little benefit for the common man in society. The current study is designed to focus upon his approach to the modern developments in the broad context of social and political changes. Hardy is a modern novelist as he concentrates on the current issues such as gender, class, social and psychological disorders, etc. He is a supporter of class and female liberation. (shrink)

In his recent book Islam Evolving: Radicalism, Reformation, and the Uneasy Relationship with the Secular West, Taner Edis discusses Islamic responses to the modern world and how the West deals and should deal with them. He argues convincingly that the biggest threat to secular liberalism is not fundamentalism but an Islamic form of modernity. He attributes some of the latter's success to Western neoliberalism and to the failure of secular liberals to come up with persuasive arguments. He thus puts (...) part of the blame on the West. However, although self-criticism is an essential aspect of a well-functioning democracy, we should not take it too far. Instead, there exist convincing reasons why a secular liberal society is strongly preferable to a religious conservative one. (shrink)

Wellek is surely right in arguing that the New Critics did not intend to behave as formalists, but I think he needs to explain why they came so close to doing so in spite of themselves. One explanation may lie in a sphere Wellek mentions but might have probed even more fully, the long-standing Romantic and modernist revolt against the culture of science, positivism, and utilitarianism. In Culture and Society, 1780-1950 , Raymond Williams argues that the Romantic reaction against industrial-utilitarian (...) society led to a specialization of literature that attenuated literature's claims in a self-defeating way. Instead of contesting the realm of objective knowledge, the defenders of literature conceded this territory to science and commerce, either celebrating literature for its very freedom from such knowledge or claiming for it some alternate form of knowledge that could not be made rationally respectable. One could argue that the same pattern of misplaced reaction is seen in the New Criticism, that its revolt against the utilitarian, "Platonic" drives of science and positivism took the form of an attempt to divest literature of objective "truth of correspondence." Having equated this kind of truth with the most reductive forms of scientism, moralism, and propagandizing, the New Critics made it difficult to justify their own ambitious claims for the humanistic knowledge embodied in literature. Their way of reacting against the depravities of technological culture continues to be a common one today and can even be found in such adversaries of the New Critics as the cultural revolutionaries, the phenomenologists, and the deconstructionists—all of whom express the paradigms of our modern "adversary culture." It is an understandable and even perhaps an admirable reaction, but it has led to distortions in our conception of the humanities—one of which is the aggravation of that very dissociation of sensibility into scientific and poetic components that we all say we want to have done with. Gerald Graff, chairman of the English department at Northwestern University, is the author of Poetic Statement and Critical Dogma and, most recently, Literature against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society. He responds in this article to René Wellek's "The New Criticism: Pro and Contra," published in Summer 1978 in Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Not many years ago Carl Jung levelled the charge of “ crackpot psychology” against the philosophical writings of Hegel.1 There is, of course, an element of truth in Jung’s stricture; for one has only to read again the Phenomenology of Spirit in order to realize anew that the conceptual matrix of this work is an account of the self’s psycho-social development. Thus, both Hegel’s notion that the Other is a necessary condition of my selfidentity and his account of the master-slave (...) relationship draw upon psychological insights which become transformed into metaphysical utterances in the doctrine that the Logical Idea must pass over into Nature—that Nature, as other than Idea, is estranged Idea. Though Jung’s criticism is intended negatively, it serves positively to point up the interrelationship that has often (though not always) existed between philosophy and psychology—the former paying house calls (not sick calls) to the latter. In recent years psychology has returned the visit. A growing group of psychologists have turned to philosophy in order to borrow categories for interpreting various patterns of neurosis and psychosis. And here and there isolated voices have accused them of “ crackpot philosophy.” I am referring, of course, to the school of existential psychotherapy, which has by and large adopted Heidegger’s categories of being-in-the-world, facticity, thrownness, care, temporality, lived-space, authenticity, everydayness, project, freedom, anxiety, utensility, and being-unto-death as ready-made schemes for focusing neurotic and psychotic syndromes. Such reliance upon Heidegger’s existential analysis of human reality has tended to minimize the use of Sartre’s philosophy. (shrink)

"Secular criticism" is a term invented by Edward Said to denote, not a theory, but a practice that counters the tendency of much of modern thinking to reach for a transcendentalist comfort zone, the very space philosophy wrested away from religion in the name of modernity. Using this notion as a compass, this book reconfigures the recent secularism debates on an entirely different basis, by showing: 1) how the secular imagination is closely linked to society's radical poiesis, its (...) capacity to imagine and create unprecedented forms of worldly existence; and 2) how the space of the secular animates the desire for a radical democratic politics that overturns inherited modes of subjugation, whether religious or secularist. Indeed, the point is to disrupt the co-dependent relation between the religious and the secular--hence, the rejection of fashionable languages of post-secularism--in order to engage in a double critique against heteronomous politics of all kinds. For Gourgouris, secular criticism is a form of political being, critical, anti-foundational, disobedient, anarchic, yet not negative for negation's sake, but creative of new forms of collective reflection, interrogation, and action, which alter not only the current terrain of dominant politics but the very self-conceptualization of what it means to be human. Written in free and combative style, as was the demand of the Sydney Library Lectures to "think out loud," and given both to close readings of texts and examinations of the broad horizon, these essays cover a range of issues, historical and philosophical, archaic and contemporary, literary and political that ultimately converge on the significance of contemporary radical politics--the assembly movements we have seen in various parts of the world in the last couple of years. The secular imagination demands a radical pedagogy and a great deal of unlearning established thought patterns. Its most important dimension is not battling religion per se, but dismantling theological politics of sovereignty in favor of creating radical conditions for social autonomy. (shrink)

Written by one of Japan's foremost contemporary thinkers and scholars, Zen and Modern Society is the third in a series of essay collections on Zen Buddhism as seen in the context of Western thought. Throughout his career, Masao Abe has articulated the meaning of Zen thought in a uniquely compelling way - at once, true to the original tradition and appropriately relevant to a variety of comparative standpoints, ranging from Biblical Judeo-Christianity to modern existentialism, phenomenology, and postmodernism. As a leading (...) representative of the Kyoto School, which has sought a critical, comparative linking of Eastern and Western thought, Abe has based his approach on constructive, mutually respectful yet critical intellectual interaction and dialogue with some of the leading figures in the West (including Paul Tillich, Hans Kung, and Eugene Borowitz) as well as dozens of colleagues, students, and disciples. Together with the previous volumes, this work examines and exemplifies some key features of Kyoto School thought. While the essays presented here should be read in light of the socio-political criticism that has since been lodged against the Kyoto School and, more particularly, i. (shrink)

Excerpt from Nine Modern Moralists The greatness of the men whose insight and re ections are the subject of the following chapters is obviously a sufficient justification for this volume. The reader who simply wants to learn what was felt and thought and believed by some of the outstanding minds of the immediate past and of the present can, it is hoped, do so by reading the chapters of this book as expository essays. Here he will find their thought anatomized; (...) and, in relatively brief compass, it may be possible for him to become seriously engaged in thinking their thoughts after them. Certainly, no one can come to an understanding of the latest and best of contemporary ideas and ideals by going around these men; only by going through them can one gain a deeper understanding of himself and of our epoch. That is the first purpose of this book: to provide an introduction to nine selected modern moralists. The second purpose is constructive and critical. Exposition and ex planation by themselves are not the aim of these chapters. The highest tribute one can pay any thinker, or any body of writing, is to wrestle with it; and this may well be the best way to bring out the innermost and most vital meaning of what any man has said. I trust that in this wrestling I have nowhere simply commanded an issue to be gone, or have ignored the real meaning or the strength of an idea or point of view in rejecting or reformulating it. The procedure employed in criti cism is always an internal one. This is to say that it always seems best to go as far as one can with another man's thought, developing it up to the point where some criticism or objection or revision unfolds itself, as it were, from within the system or structure of thought under examina tion. In this way the most constructive results may be expected from criticism; and, in this way also, constructive and critical essays may fairly aim to be explanatory ones. As expository essays the chapters that follow may be taken one at a time and in any order, or one or more without the others. Their con structive and critical purpose, however, connects them all together. The author has been somewhat surprised at the extent to which this is true, when preparing for publication these papers which were written in some cases years apart. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

Some of the most promising advances in recent social and sociological theory have happened in connection with historical sociology, including the ‘multiple’ or ‘entangled’ modernity as well as the civilizational approaches, despite their several problems. This article critically resumes this debate, proposing specific conceptualizations of civilization and modernity, at the global level, as well as of regions. Multidimensionality and collective subjectivities and modernizing moves cut across the whole text. The discussion starts from a specific analysis of Latin American (...) modernity, including the criticism of some recent interpretations. It then moves into more general conceptual dimensions, taking Latin America in unitary terms and as a unit of analysis, regardless of its relative internal heterogeneity, and placing of the subcontinent within a comparative view of, in particular, a third, contemporary phase of modernity, vis-à-vis China, India, Africa and other civilizational coordinates. (shrink)

A preface is best written last, after a book is done and its author may look back to survey what he hopes he has accomplished and what he must admit he has not. In hindsight virginity by itself has seemed a very large field to till, but with that reflection also comes a sense of the awareness that a really comprehensive treatment of misgiving, that subject would somehow have to encompass an enormous ter rain, the whole length and breadth of (...) Christianity's attitude toward sexuality from the earliest times down to the high Middle Ages. It could be argued that no small book could cover so much ground, and I would be the first to agree. As its subtitle is meant to suggest, the present work is, in at least two senses of the word, an essay: both an initial and tentative effort to get at the meaning of an extremely important but as yet unprobed medieval belief in the perfective value of the virginal life; and an interpretive study of a complex subject from a limited point of view, specifically, that in which the virgin appears in devotional literature as the bride of Christ. (shrink)