Long considered 'the noblest of the senses', vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. This work discusses the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, and considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity.
The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) serves as a laboratory for competing visions of modernity, leaving a lasting impact on the twentieth century. Its political and cultural lessons are highly relevant for understanding contemporary tensions and possibilities. This sourcebook offers a comprehensive documentation of Weimar culture, history, and politics, inviting readers to explore the richness of Germany's turbulent years before Hitler's rise. Utilizing primary sources such as magazines, newspapers, manifestoes, and official documents—many previously unknown or unavailable in English—the book challenges traditional boundaries between politics, culture, and social life. Its thirty chapters delve into Germany's complex relationship with democracy, the ideologies of "reactionary modernism," the emergence of the "New Woman," Bauhaus architecture, mass media's influence, literary life, cabaret traditions, and the experiences of Jews, intellectuals, and workers during the rise of fascism. While highlighting the Republic's artistic and intellectual achievements, including the Frankfurt School and political theater, the book also features lesser-known materials on popular culture, consumerism, body culture, drugs, criminality, and sexuality. Additionally, it includes a timeline of major political events, an extensive bibliography, and capsule biographies, making it an invaluable resource for students and scholars across various fields.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was a leading figure in the Frankfurt School and one of this century's most demanding intellectuals. His works, always informed by his variant of Critical Theory that he called Negative Dialectics, is notoriously difficult to understand bu has had an enormous impact on philosophy, sociology, musicology, literary criticism, psychology, and the study of culture. In an introductory section, Martin Jay gives a brief, lucid account of Adorno's notion of force-field, and of Adorno's extension of Walter Benjamin's concept of constellation. He distinguishes five impulses in Adorno's thinking: his Marxism, his aesthetic modernism, his mandarin cultural conservatism, his anticipation of deconstructionism, and the self-conscious Jewishness that led him to look for redemption and at the same time to refuse any definition of paradise. Professor Jay devotes the central sections of his book to the major aspects of Adorno's thoughthis philosophy, his social theory, and his view of modern culture and aesthetic theory. He has succeeded brilliantly in the task of presenting Adorno's theories in understandable form while remaining true to their unresolved tensions.
Una detallada historia del movimiento cultural e intelectual conocido como «Escuela de Frankfurt». «Un grupo de hombres —escribe Horkheimer en el prólogo— agrupados en torno a la convicción de que la formulación de lo negativo era más importante que las carreras académicas. Lo que los unió fue la aproximación crítica a la sociedad existente.»