Three distinguished scholars draw on critical theory to address the causes and circumstances behind the rise of autocracies and oligarchies.Across the Euro-Atlantic world, political leaders have been mobilizing their bases with nativism, racism, xenophobia, and paeans to "traditional values," in brazen bids for electoral support. How are we to understand this move to the mainstream of political policies and platforms that lurked only on the far fringes through most ...

"Derrida's most lasting legacy might well be his writings on religion . . . If the perplexed seek a guide, they can do no better than this excellent volume." —Warren Breckman, University of PennsylvaniaJacques 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...

An accessible and authoritative biography of Walter Benjamin that guides the reader through the complexity of his intellectual legacy and the turbulence of his time“A short, serene volume. . . . Gordon avoids treating his subject in allegorical terms, in part because Benjamin always resisted conscription into a story larger than his own.�—Anahid Nersessian, New YorkerWalter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely co...

The year 2020 marked the centennial of the death of Max Weber, the German sociologist, scholar of world religions, economic historian, social philosopher, and theoretician of modern political life. This volume presents a collection of essays on the legacy and relevance of his thought. The authors, an international array of distinguished scholars, are drawn from various disciplines--philosophy, political science, intellectual history, and sociology. They comprise both experts who have contr...

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 first volume surveys late eighteenth- ...

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-centur...

From the beginning to the end of his career, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno sustained an uneasy but enduring bond with existentialism. His attitude overall was that of unsparing criticism, verging on polemic. In Kierkegaard he saw an early paragon for the late flowering of bourgeois solipsism; in Heidegger, an impresario for a “jargon of authenticity” cloaking its idealism in an aura of pseudo-concreteness and neo-romantic kitsch. Even in the straitened rationalism of Husserl’s phenomen...

A strikingly original account of Theodor Adorno’s work as a critique animated by happiness**—now in paperback.**"Gordon’s confidently gripping and persistently subtle interpretation brings a new tone to the debate about Adorno’s negativism."—Jürgen HabermasTheodor Adorno is often portrayed as a totalizing negativist, a scowling contrarian who looked upon modern society with despair. Peter E. Gordon thinks we have this wrong: if Adorno is un...

For decades, scholars and public intellectuals have been predicting the demise of religion in the face of secularization. Yet religion is undergoing an unprecedented resurgence in modern life—and secularization no longer appears so inevitable. Formations of Belief brings together many of today's leading historians to shed critical light on secularism's origins, its present crisis, and whether it is as antithetical to religion as it is so often made out to be.Formations...

One of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers presents the results of his lifetime study of man’s cultural achievementsAn Essay on Man is an original synthesis of contemporary knowledge, a unique interpretation of the intellectual crisis of our time, and a brilliant vindication of man’s ability to resolve human problems by the courageous use of his mind. In a new introduction Peter E. Gordon situates the book among Cassirer’s greater body of work, a...

A beautifully written exploration of religion’s role in a secular, modern politics, by an accomplished scholar of critical theoryMigrants in the Profane takes its title from an intriguing remark by Theodor W. Adorno, in which he summarized the meaning of Walter Benjamin’s image of a celebrated mechanical chess-playing Turk and its hidden religious animus: “Nothing of theological content will persist without being transformed; every content will have to put...

Some of the most exciting and innovative work in the humanities currently takes place at the intersection of intellectual history and critical theory. Just as critical theorists are becoming more aware of the historicity of theory, contemporary practitioners of modern intellectual history are recognizing their potential contributions to theoretical discourse. No one has done more than Martin Jay to realize the possibilities for mutual enrichment between intellectual history and critical th...