The Melancholy Science

The Melancholy Science
Author: Gillian Rose
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-01-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1781682062

The Melancholy Science is the first and foundational work from the celebrated philosopher Gillian Rose and a classic critique of critical theory.

The Melancholy Science

The Melancholy Science
Author: Gillian Rose
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-01-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 178168152X

The Melancholy Science is Gillian Rose’s investigation into Theodor Adorno’s work and legacy. Rose uncovers the unity discernable among the many fragments of Adorno’s oeuvre, and argues that his influence has been to turn Marxism into a search for style. The attempts of Adorno, Lukács and Benjamin to develop a Marxist theory of culture centred on the concept of reification are contrasted, and the ways in which the concept of reification has come to be misused are exposed. Adorno’s continuation for his own time of the Marxist critique of philosophy is traced through his writings on Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger. His opposition to the separation of philosophy and sociology is shown by examination of his critique of Durkheim and Weber, and of his contributions to the dispute over positivism, his critique of empirical social research and his own empirical sociology. Gillian Rose shows Adorno’s most important contribution to be his founding of a Marxist aesthetic that offers a sociology of culture, as demonstrated in his essays on Kafka, Mann, Beckett, Brecht and Schönberg. Finally, Adorno’s ‘Melancholy Science’ is revealed to offer a ‘sociology of illusion’ that rivals both structural Marxism and phenomenological sociology as well as the subsequent work of the Frankfurt School.

Hegel: Contra Sociology

Hegel: Contra Sociology
Author: Gillian Rose
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2000-12-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441122060

This original and challenging book presents a radical revision of traditional assessments of Hegel. Gillian Rose argues that the classical origins of contemporary non-Marxist and Marxist sociology rest on the 'neo-Kantian' paradigm and that Hegel's thought anticipates and criticises the limitations of this paradigm and the problems of methodologism and moralism in sociological method. Hegel's major mature works are expounded in the light of his early radical writings. From this unusual perspective Dr Rose shows that Hegel's speculative discourse is a powerful critique of bourgeois property relations and law, or art and religion as misrepresentation and of the inversions and end of culture. The book concludes with a discussion of the end of philosophy, the repetition of sociology and the culture and fate of Marxism.

The Melancholy of Resistance

The Melancholy of Resistance
Author: László Krasznahorkai
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2003
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780811215046

From the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize

Melancholy

Melancholy
Author: László F. Földényi (Foldenyi)
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2016-04-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0300220693

Alberto Manguel praises the Hungarian writer László Földényi as “one of the most brilliant essayists of our time.” Földényi’s extraordinary Melancholy, with its profusion of literary, ecclesiastical, artistic, and historical insights, gives proof to such praise. His book, part history of the term melancholy and part analysis of the melancholic disposition, explores many centuries to explore melancholy’s ambiguities. Along the way Földényi discovers the unrecognized role melancholy may play as a source of energy and creativity in a well-examined life. Földényi begins with a tour of the history of the word melancholy, from ancient Greece to the medieval era, the Renaissance, and modern times. He finds the meaning of melancholy has always been ambiguous, even paradoxical. In our own times it may be regarded either as a psychic illness or a mood familiar to everyone. The author analyzes the complexities of melancholy and concludes that its dual nature reflects the inherent tension of birth and mortality. To understand the melancholic disposition is to find entry to some of the deepest questions one’s life. This distinguished translation brings Földényi’s work directly to English-language readers for the first time.

Philosophy and Melancholy

Philosophy and Melancholy
Author: Ilit Ferber
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2013-06-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 080478664X

This book traces the concept of melancholy in Walter Benjamin's early writings. Rather than focusing on the overtly melancholic subject matter of Benjamin's work or the unhappy circumstances of his own fate, Ferber considers the concept's implications for his philosophy. Informed by Heidegger's discussion of moods and their importance for philosophical thought, she contends that a melancholic mood is the organizing principle or structure of Benjamin's early metaphysics and ontology. Her novel analysis of Benjamin's arguments about theater and language features a discussion of the Trauerspiel book that is amongst the first in English to scrutinize the baroque plays themselves. Philosophy and Melancholy also contributes to the history of philosophy by establishing a strong relationship between Benjamin and other philosophers, including Leibniz, Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger.

Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy

Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy
Author: Andrew Bowie
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2013-10-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0745671594

Theodor Adorno’s reputation as a cultural critic has been well-established for some time, but his status as a philosopher remains unclear. In Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy Andrew Bowie seeks to establish what Adorno can contribute to philosophy today. Adorno’s published texts are notably difficult and have tended to hinder his reception by a broad philosophical audience. His main influence as a philosopher when he was alive was, though, often based on his very lucid public lectures. Drawing on these lectures, both published and unpublished, Bowie argues that important recent interpretations of Hegel, and related developments in pragmatism, echo key ideas in Adorno’s thought. At the same time, Adorno’s insistence that philosophy should make the Holocaust central to the assessment of modern rationality suggests ways in which these approaches should be complemented by his preparedness to confront some of the most disturbing aspects of modern history. What emerges is a remarkably clear and engaging re-interpretation of Adorno’s thought, as well as an illuminating and original review of the state of contemporary philosophy. Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy will be indispensable to students of Adorno’s work at all levels. This compelling book is also set to ignite debate surrounding the reception of Adorno’s philosophy and bring him into the mainstream of philosophical debate at a time when the divisions between analytical and European philosophy are increasingly breaking down.

Judaism and Modernity

Judaism and Modernity
Author: Gillian Rose
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2017-03-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1786630907

A reinterpretation of thinkers from Benjamin and Rosenzweig to Simone Weil and Derrida Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays challenges the philosophical presentation of Judaism as the sublime ‘other’ of modernity. Here, Gillian Rose develops a philosophical alternative to deconstruction and post-modernism by critically re-engaging the social and political issues at stake in every reconstruction.

Splinters in Your Eye

Splinters in Your Eye
Author: Martin Jay
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1788736036

Assessing the legacy of the Frankfurt School in the twenty-first century Although successive generations of the Frankfurt School have attempted to adapt Critical Theory to new circumstances, the work done by its founding members continues in the 21st century to unsettle conventional wisdom about culture, society and politics. Exploring unexamined episodes in the School's history and reading its work in unexpected ways, these essays provide ample evidence of the abiding relevance of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Löwenthal, and Kracauer in our troubled times. Without forcing a unified argument, they range over a wide variety of topics, from the uncertain founding of the School to its mixed reception of psychoanalysis, from Benjamin's ruminations on stamp collecting to the ironies in the reception of Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, from Löwenthal's role in Weimar's Jewish Renaissance to Horkheimer's involvement in the writing of the first history of the Frankfurt School. Of special note are their responses to visual issues such as the emancipation of color in modern art, the Jewish prohibition on images, the relationship between cinema and the public sphere, and the implications of a celebrated Family of Man photographic exhibition. The collection ends with two essays tracing the still metastasizing demonization of the Frankfurt School by the so-called Alt Right as the source of "cultural Marxism" and "political correctness," which has gained alarming international resonance and led to violence by radical right-wing fanatics.

Melancholy and the Otherness of God

Melancholy and the Otherness of God
Author: Alina N. Feld
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0739166034

An impressive study that prompts the reader toward philosophical reflection on the hermeneutics of melancholy in its relation to maturing theological understanding and cultivation of a profound self-consciousness. Melancholy has been interpreted as a deadly sin or demonic temptation to non-being, yet its history of interpretation reveals a progressive coming to terms with the dark mood that ultimately unveils it as the self's own ground and a trace of the abysmal nature of God. The book advances two provocative claims: that far from being a contingent condition, melancholy has been progressively acknowledged as constitutive of subjectivity as such, a trace of divine otherness and pathos, and that the effort to transcend melancholy-like Perseus vanquishing Medusa-is a necessary labor of maturing self-consciousness. Reductive attempts to eliminate it, besides being dangerously utopian, risk overcoming the labor of the soul that makes us human. This study sets forth a rigorous scholarly argument that spans several disciplines, including philosophy, theology, psychology, and literary studies.