To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism

To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism PDF Author: Rob Riemen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393635872
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Book Description
"We are sleepwalking into catastrophe; Riemen wants to wake us up and he does with passion, wisdom, and eloquence." —Simon Schama An international bestseller, To Fight Against This Age consists of two beautifully written, cogent, and urgent essays about the rise of fascism and the ways in which we can combat it. In “The Eternal Return of Fascism,” Rob Riemen explores the theoretical weakness of fascism, which depends on a politics of resentment, the incitement of anger and fear, xenophobia, the need for scapegoats, and its hatred of the life of the mind. He draws on history and philosophy as well as the essays and novels of Thomas Mann and Albert Camus to explain the global resurgence of fascism, often disguised by its false promises of ushering in freedom and greatness. Riemen’s own response to what he sees as the spiritual crisis of our age is articulated in “The Return of Europa,” a moving story about the meaning of European humanism with its universal values of truth, beauty, justice, and love for life—values that are the origin and basis of a democratic civilization. To Fight Against This Age is as timely as it is timeless, to be read by those who want to understand and change the world in which they live.

To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism

To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism PDF Author: Rob Riemen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393635872
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 101

Get Book Here

Book Description
"We are sleepwalking into catastrophe; Riemen wants to wake us up and he does with passion, wisdom, and eloquence." —Simon Schama An international bestseller, To Fight Against This Age consists of two beautifully written, cogent, and urgent essays about the rise of fascism and the ways in which we can combat it. In “The Eternal Return of Fascism,” Rob Riemen explores the theoretical weakness of fascism, which depends on a politics of resentment, the incitement of anger and fear, xenophobia, the need for scapegoats, and its hatred of the life of the mind. He draws on history and philosophy as well as the essays and novels of Thomas Mann and Albert Camus to explain the global resurgence of fascism, often disguised by its false promises of ushering in freedom and greatness. Riemen’s own response to what he sees as the spiritual crisis of our age is articulated in “The Return of Europa,” a moving story about the meaning of European humanism with its universal values of truth, beauty, justice, and love for life—values that are the origin and basis of a democratic civilization. To Fight Against This Age is as timely as it is timeless, to be read by those who want to understand and change the world in which they live.

The Year of Our Lord 1943

The Year of Our Lord 1943 PDF Author: Alan Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190864672
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others-sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world. In this book, Alan Jacobs explores the poems, novels, essays, reviews, and lectures of these five central figures, in which they presented, with great imaginative energy and force, pictures of the very different paths now set before the Western democracies. Working mostly separately and in ignorance of one another's ideas, the five developed a strikingly consistent argument that the only means by which democratic societies could be prepared for their world-wide economic and political dominance was through a renewal of education that was grounded in a Christian understanding of the power and limitations of human beings. The Year of Our Lord 1943 is the first book to weave together the ideas of these five intellectuals and shows why, in a time of unprecedented total war, they all thought it vital to restore Christianity to a leading role in the renewal of the Western democracies.

Nobility of Spirit

Nobility of Spirit PDF Author: Rob Riemen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030015853X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
In a series of three essays, the author identifies nobility of spirit in the life and work of Spinoza and of Thomas Mann; explores the quest for the good society in our own times; and addresses the pursuit of truth and freedom that engaged figures as disparate as Socrates and Leone Ginzburg, a Jewish-Italian intellectual murdered by Nazis.

Enlightenment Now

Enlightenment Now PDF Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525427570
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

Fighting Fascism

Fighting Fascism PDF Author: Clara Zetkin
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608468798
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
Presented at a time when fascism was a new and little-understood phenomenon, Zetkin’s work proposed a sweeping plan for the unity of all victims of capitalism in an ideological and political campaign against the fascist danger.

The Judgment of the Nations

The Judgment of the Nations PDF Author: Christopher Dawson
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813218802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Christopher Dawson wrote The Judgment of the Nations in 1942, in the midst of the horrors of World War II.

Erich Fromm's Critical Theory

Erich Fromm's Critical Theory PDF Author: Kieran Durkin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350087033
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Interest in Fromm is increasing: as a prominent Marxist, sociologist, psychoanalytic theorist, and public intellectual, the unique normative-humanist thrust of his writings provides a crucial critical reference point for those seeking to understand and transcend the societal pathologies of our age. The essays in this volume retrieve, revive, and expand upon Fromm's central insights and contributions. They offer a critical theory of culture, the self, psychology and society that goes beyond what is typical of the narrower concerns of the fragmented and isolated disciplines of today, demonstrating the pan-disciplinary potential of Fromm's work. But this book does not simply reassert Fromm's ideas and rehash his theories, but rather reconstructs them to bring them into meaningful dialogue with contemporary ideas and cultural, political and economic developments. Providing new approaches to Fromm's ideas and work brings them up-to-date with contemporary problems and debates in theory and society and helps us understand the challenges of our times.

Beauty in the Age of Empire

Beauty in the Age of Empire PDF Author: Raja Adal
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
When modern primary schools were first founded in Japan and Egypt in the 1870s, they did not teach art. Yet by the middle of the twentieth century, art education was a permanent part of Japanese and Egyptian primary schooling. Both countries taught music and drawing, and wartime Japan also taught calligraphy. Why did art education become a core feature of schooling in societies as distant as Japan and Egypt, and how is aesthetics entangled with nationalism, colonialism, and empire? Beauty in the Age of Empire is a global history of aesthetic education focused on how Western practices were adopted, transformed, and repurposed in Egypt and Japan. Raja Adal uncovers the emergence of aesthetic education in modern schools and its role in making a broad spectrum of ideologies from fascism to humanism attractive. With aesthetics, educators sought to enchant children with sounds and sights, using their ears and eyes to make ideologies into objects of desire. Spanning multiple languages and continents, and engaging with the histories of nationalism, art, education, and transnational exchanges, Beauty in the Age of Empire offers a strikingly original account of the rise of aesthetics in modern schools and the modern world. It shows that, while aesthetics is important to all societies, it was all the more important for those countries on the receiving end of Western expansion, which could not claim to be wealthier or more powerful than Western empires, only more beautiful.

The Age of Rights

The Age of Rights PDF Author: Norberto Bobbio
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509526137
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
This book presents a valuable clarification and defence of human rights by Italy's leading political theorist.

An Awareness of What is Missing

An Awareness of What is Missing PDF Author: Jürgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745694705
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 83

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Book Description
In his recent writings on religion and secularization, Habermas has challenged reason to clarify its relation to religious experience and to engage religions in a constructive dialogue. Given the global challenges facing humanity, nothing is more dangerous than the refusal to communicate that we encounter today in different forms of religious and ideological fundamentalism. Habermas argues that in order to engage in this dialogue, two conditions must be met: religion must accept the authority of secular reason as the fallible results of the sciences and the universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality; and conversely, secular reason must not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith. This argument was developed in part as a reaction to the conception of the relation between faith and reason formulated by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2006 Regensburg address. In 2007 Habermas conducted a debate, under the title ‘An Awareness of What Is Missing', with philosophers from the Jesuit School for Philosophy in Munich. This volume includes Habermas's essay, the contributions of his interlocutors and Habermas's reply to them. It will be indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand one of the most urgent and intractable issues of our time.