1st Edition

The Frankfurt School Revisited

By Richard Wolin Copyright 2006
    322 Pages
    by Routledge

    328 Pages
    by Routledge

    This volume is a collection of essays by Richard Wolin, a leading political theorist and intellectual historian.

    It is the follow up to Wolin’s two recent, widely acclaimed books: Heidegger’s Children and The Seduction of Unreason. In those books, he explored the legacy of Martin Heidegger and his impact on some of his most influential and notable students. He dealt particularly with the effect that Heidegger’s subsequent embrace of fascism and National Socialism had on these students. Delving further in his next book, Wolin explored the question of why philosophers and intellectuals have been drawn to antiliberal, antidemocratic fascism.

    The essays in this book are focused on European Political Thought particularly with figures associated with the Frankfurt School. The collection represents a virtual who’s who of European political thinkers with essays on Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Marcuse, Arendt, Heidegger, Weber, Jaspers, and Carl Schmitt. Moving beyond these thinkers and those books, this collection will also include essays on contemporary political issues such as post-communist revolutions, human rights, global democracy, the revival of republicanism, and religion and public life.

    Introduction: The Frankfurt School Revisited  Part 1: The Frankfurt School Revisited  1. Between Proust and the Zohar: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project  2. The Adorno Centennial: The Apotheosis of Negative Dialectics  3. What is Heideggerian Marxism? On the Unknown Herbert Marcuse  4. Critical Reflections on Marcuse’s Theory of Revolution  5. The Lion in Winter: Leo Lowenthal and the Integrity of the Intellectual  6. Levinas and Heidegger: The Anxiety of Influence  7. Karl Jaspers: The Paradoxes of Mandarin Humanism  Part 2: Exiting Revolution  8. What We Can Learn From the Revolutions of 1989  9 . From the "Death of Man" to Human Rights: The Paradigm Change in French Intellectual Life, 1968-86  10. The Republican Revival: Reflections on French Singularity  Postscript: Hexagon Fever  11. What is Global Democracy?  12. Religion and Public Reason: A Contemporary Debate  13. The Disoriented Left: A Critique of Left Schmittianism  14. Kant at Ground Zero: Philosophers Respond to September 11

    Biography

    Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History, Comparative Literature, and Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among his books are Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas, and Martin Heidegger (2001) and The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism (2004).