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"Readers of Theodor Adorno often have understood him as a "totalizing negativist." If it truly is the case that Adorno saw modern society as a realm of complete falsehood, however, his own social theory is unintelligible. In A Precarious Happiness, Peter E. Gordon aims to redeem Adorno from this negativist interpretation by showing that it arises from a basic misunderstanding of his work. Pushing against entrenched interpretations, Gordon argues that Adorno's philosophy is animated by a deep attachment to a concept of happiness or human flourishing, and it is only by virtue of that normative standard that Adorno judges the world a catastrophic failure. Through a comprehensive reading of Adorno's work, A Precarious Happiness shows that in an imperfect world, the available standards of our flourishing are also imperfect. Looking beyond Adorno, Gordon suggests that the practice of social criticism, even if it is directed toward exposing what is "false," cannot succeed without appealing to an unrealized notion of what would be right"--

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION. Peregrina in Saeculo -- ONE. Benjamin; or, The Ambivalence of Secularization -- TWO. Horkheimer; or, The Longing for the Wholly Other -- THREE. Adorno; or, Negative Dialectics as Negative Theology -- CONCLUSION. Dialectics and Disenchantment -- Notes -- Index

Introduction: A philosophical physiognomy -- Starting out with Kierkegaard: An unlikely cathexis -- The Kierkegaard reception in Germany -- Adorno's Kierkegaard-book -- Reading Kierkegaard against the grain -- Aesthetics and interiority -- Wahl's Études kierkegaardiennes -- Kierkegaard on love -- Ontology and phenomenology: Reading philosophy in the 1930s -- Philosophy and actuality -- Historicizing nature -- Anticipations of the Hegel-studies -- Lukács and Benjamin -- The metacritique of phenomenology -- Failure and non-identity -- Husserl's progress, Heidegger's regression -- Toward negative dialectics -- The jargon of authenticity: Existentialism's aura -- Satire and secularization -- The Wurlitzer organ of the spirit -- The miserable consolation of self-identity -- Grace and dignity -- Endgame as "negative ontology" -- On Hölderlin and parataxis -- Negative dialectics: Adorno's "Fat child" -- Rage against nature -- Toward a primacy of the object -- Pseudo-concreteness -- Aura and mimesis -- French existentialism -- Kierkegaard's nominalism -- Heidegger's critique of reification -- Ontology as wish-fulfillment -- Into the looking glass -- Disenchanting the concept -- Kierkegaard's return: Salvaging metaphysics -- Materialism -- The family scandal -- Odradek as damaged life -- The mirror image -- Hope against hope -- Aesthetics and interiority -- Conclusion: Adorno's inverse theology

Philosophy in crisis -- Setting the stage -- The independent lectures -- The Davos encounter -- Before Davos : myth, science, modernity -- After Davos : enlightenment, politics, religion -- Philosophy and memory

The 1929 'Davos encounter' between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer has long been viewed by intellectual historians as a paradigmatic event not only for its philosophical meaning but also for its apparently cultural-political ramifications. But such interpretations easily lend legitimacy to a broader and recently ascendant intellectual-historical trend that would reduce philosophy to an allegorical expression of ostensibly more 'real' or instrumentalist meanings. However, as this essay tries to show, the core of the dispute between Cassirer and Heidegger is irreducibly philosophical: the Davos debate brought into focus the emergent themes of the so-called "Kant-crisis" of the 1920s, and cast new light upon neo-Kantian doctrines as to the status of objectivity and the possibility for intersubjective consensus in both knowledge and ethics. The Davos encounter cannot be retroactively decided on political or cultural grounds, since it concerns just that unresolved tension between transcendentalism and hermeneutics that is itself constitutive of intellectual history as a discipline.

Daniel Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, Mary Whittall, trans. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001)Lisa Saltzman, Anselm Kiefer and Art after Auschwitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Julian Young, Heidegger, philosophy, Nazism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997)Herman Philipse, Heidegger's Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998)Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago: Open Court, 2000)

The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought is an authoritative and comprehensive exploration of the themes, thinkers and movements that shaped our intellectual world in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century. Representing both individual figures and the contexts within which they developed their ideas, each essay is written in a clear accessible style by leading scholars in the field and offers both originality and interpretive insight. This second volume surveys twentieth-century European intellectual history, conceived as a crisis in modernity. Comprised of twenty-one chapters, it focuses on figures such as Freud, Heidegger, Adorno and Arendt, surveys major schools of thought including Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Conservatism, and discusses critical movements such as Postcolonialism, , Structuralism, and Post-structuralism. Renouncing a single 'master narrative' of European thought across the period, Peter E. Gordon and Warren Breckman establish a formidable new multi-faceted vision of European intellectual history for the global modern age.--

Derrida's writings on the question of religion have played a crucial role in the transformation of scholarly debate across the globe. The Trace of God provides a compact introduction to this debate. It considers Derrida's fraught relationship to Judaism and his Jewish identity, broaches the question of Derrida's relation to the Western Christian tradition, and examines both the points of contact and the silences in Derrida's treatment of Islam

"During its short lifespan, the Weimar Republic (1918-33) witnessed an unprecedented flowering of achievements in many areas, including psychology, political theory, physics, philosophy, literary and cultural criticism, and the arts. Leading intellectuals, scholars, and critics--such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Martin Heidegger--emerged during this time to become the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century. Even today, the Weimar era remains a vital resource for new intellectual movements. In this incomparable collection, Weimar Thought presents both the specialist and the general reader a comprehensive guide and unified portrait of the most important innovators, themes, and trends of this fascinating period. The book is divided into four thematic sections: law, politics, and society; philosophy, theology, and science; aesthetics, literature, and film; and general cultural and social themes of the Weimar period. The volume brings together established and emerging scholars from a remarkable array of fields, and each individual essay serves as an overview for a particular discipline while offering distinctive critical engagement with relevant problems and debates. Whether used as an introductory companion or advanced scholarly resource, Weimar Thought provides insight into the rich developments behind the intellectual foundations of modernity."--Provided by publisher.