Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART I: Guides in Trickster Land -- 1 Hermann Broch: The Spell -- 2 Lewis Hyde: The Gift and the Trickster -- 3 Roberto Calasso: the revolution and its shipwrecking -- 4 Michel Serres: the parasite, from Hermes the communicator to Don Juan the first hero of modernity -- 5 Sándor Márai: from Krisztina a first heroine of modernity to an encounter with the Russians -- 6 Colin Thubron: encounters with Asia -- 7 Albert Camus: the absurd revolt -- PART II: Exploring the regions of Trickster Land -- 8 Trickster art: imitativity, effect-mongering vs. graceful beauty, and Picasso -- 9 Trickster thought: Magi, mediation and consciousness, and Sartre -- 10 Trickster economy: the fairground origins of infinite substitutability -- 11 Trickster politics: the trick-ful joining of representation and election -- 12 Trickster society: welcome to Absurdistan! -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Name index -- Subject index.

The Genesis of Modernity reconstructs the ideas of three of the most important social and political theorists of the Twentieth Century, Max Weber, Michel Foucault and Eric Voegelin, on the distant roots and sources of modernity.Drawing upon the conceptual tools of social theory and political philosophy, complimented by approaches based in the fields of anthropology, comparative mythology and the history of ancient philosophy this book will prove to be a timely and valuable contribution to this developing area, bringing together the ideas of a group of social and political theorist

The book aims at reframing the discussion on the "public sphere," usually understood as the place where the public opinion is formed, through rational discussion. The aim of this book is to give an account of this rationality, and its serious shortcomings, examining the role of the media and the confusing of public roles and personal identity. It focuses in particular on the role of the theatrical and comical in the historical development of the public sphere, and in this manner reformulating definitions of common sense, personal identity, and culture

AbstractThis article aims at exploring a long‐term historical perspective on which contemporary globalization can be more meaningfully situated. A central problem with established approaches to globalization is that they are even more presentist than the literature on modernization was. Presentism not only means the ignoring of history, but also the unreflective application to history of concepts taken from the study of the modern world. In contrast, it is argued that contemporary globalization is not a unique development, but rather is a concrete case of a historical type. Taking as its point of departure the spirit, rather than the word, of Max Weber, this article extends the scope of sociological investigation into archaeological evidence. Having a genealogical design and introducing the concept of 'liminality', the article approaches the modern process of globalization through reconstructing the internal dynamics of another type of historical change called 'social flourishing'. Taking up the Weberian approach continued by Eisenstadt in his writings on 'axial age', it moves away from situations of crisis as reference point, shifting attention to periods of revival by introducing the term 'epiphany'. Through the case of early Mesopotamia, it shows how social flourishing can be transmogrified into globalizing growth, gaining a new perspective concerning the kind of 'animating spirit' that might have driven the shift from Renaissance to Reformation, the rise of modern colonialism, or contemporary globalization. More generally, it will retrieve the long‐term historical background of the axial age and demonstrate the usefulness and importance of archaeological evidence for sociology.

This article investigates a single thesis, following Nietzsche's insights: a central feature of the modern world is theatricalisation. Beyond being entrapped by critiquing the 'naïve mirroring' perspective, it is argued that art is not simply part of reality, but might interfere with other aspects of life, and so can become problematic. As for a theoretical framework, the author introduces three anthropological concepts: imitation, liminality and trickster. Under liminal conditions, imitative processes can escalate and trickster figures become influential. A central area for such escalating processes is the public sphere, due to its own liminal features. Focusing on the rise of the modern realistic novel in England, the article first presents how such novels further escalate theatricalisation. Through the example of Goethe, the author then shows how the best novelists, by reflecting on their own activity, made the in-depth theatricalisation of social life in modernity a central theme of their works.

Modernity, or the combination of market economy, liberal democratic polity and a society driven by technological progress, we are led to believe, is the end-state of history; the glorious condition of a fully enlightened society of free citizens equipped with equal rights at which all traditional societies are bound to arrive, after a period of transition which might involve some temporary difficulties or 'sacrifices'. However, and in contrast to this, modernity rather involves an infinite period of transition, in which the stable elements of social life, representing not just rigid external constraints on individual freedom, but also the condition of possibility of meaningful life, are one by one liquidated. This article argues that the anthropological concept 'liminality' is particularly helpful in understanding the formative aspects of transition experiences, like the Celtic Tiger phenomenon in Ireland. It also helps to move beyond the conventional 'transition to modernity' framework by pointing out that advanced modernity is identical to a permanent state of transitionality.

This article argues that Nietzsche's preoccupation with the figure of Dionysos can be best understood as a visionary insight concerning the distant roots of European culture in Minoan civilization. While the opportunity offered by the discovery of ancient Crete for continuing Nietzsche's genealogical work into the sources of Greek culture was ignored by the vast archive of literature on Nietzsche, this project was pursued in a book by the mythologist Károly Kerényi, published posthumously. Using the classic work of Henrietta Groenewegen- Frankfort, this article identifies the 'spirit' of Minoan Crete with its attempt to manifest the gracefulness of life. The sudden emergence of Minoan Palace civilization, its peaceful character shown by the absence of fortified walls, and the importance of epiphany scenes in various works of art all indicate the centrality of religion for ancient Crete. The article offers the hypothesis that the origins of this culture can be traced to similar transcendental experiences such as those in ancient Judaism. The basic difference is that in the Cretan case epiphanies were connected to female figures, leading not to a prophetic tradition of divine grace through the revealed word and public law, rather the transmission of a secret tradition and the manifestation of its truth through spectacular public rituals and graceful works of art. While direct awareness of Minoan civilization was lost, its central concern survived in the value attributed to the manifestation of radiant, indestructible truth, a central characteristic of European identity, periodically revitalized in a series of renascences.

This article argues that the dominant role played by intellectuals in East Central Europe was motivated by a deeply felt Enlightenment missionary belief. This establishes affinities between them and the ancient Sophists, and the ambivalence of such a position is illustrated through the case of Georg Lukács. As examples of philosophers in the classical sense of the term, the article provides four short portraits: the Czech Jan Patoc<caron>ka, who argued that Europe as a culture is rooted in the care of the soul; the Hungarian one-time friends Károly Kerényi and Béla Hamvas, and the Polish bishop-philosopher Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II. The central thrust of the argument is that while Western thought is increasingly trapped in an ever more desperately radicalized critique of metaphysics, in East Central Europe – ironically, to a large extent in the footsteps of Nietzsche – the most important intellectual figures have sparked a return to metaphysics.