ABSTRACT

This volume is a collection of essays by Richard Wolin, a leading political theorist and intellectual historian.

It is the follow up to Wolin’s two recent, widely acclaimed books: Heidegger’s Children and The Seduction of Unreason. In those books, he explored the legacy of Martin Heidegger and his impact on some of his most influential and notable students. He dealt particularly with the effect that Heidegger’s subsequent embrace of fascism and National Socialism had on these students. Delving further in his next book, Wolin explored the question of why philosophers and intellectuals have been drawn to antiliberal, antidemocratic fascism.

The essays in this book are focused on European Political Thought particularly with figures associated with the Frankfurt School. The collection represents a virtual who’s who of European political thinkers with essays on Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Marcuse, Arendt, Heidegger, Weber, Jaspers, and Carl Schmitt. Moving beyond these thinkers and those books, this collection will also include essays on contemporary political issues such as post-communist revolutions, human rights, global democracy, the revival of republicanism, and religion and public life.

chapter |17 pages

Introduction

part |131 pages

The Frankfurt School Revisited

chapter |24 pages

Between Proust and the Zohar

Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project

chapter |15 pages

The Adorno Centennial

The Apotheosis of Negative Dialectics

chapter |16 pages

The Lion in Winter

Leo Lowenthal and the Integrity of the Intellectual

chapter |22 pages

Levinas and Heidegger

The Anxiety of Influence

chapter |17 pages

Karl Jaspers

The Paradoxes of Mandarin Humanism

part |118 pages

Exiting Revolution

chapter |14 pages

From the “Death of Man” to Human Rights

The Paradigm Change in French Intellectual Life, 1968–86

chapter |16 pages

The Republican Revival

Reflections on French Singularity

chapter |9 pages

Postscript Hexagon Fever

chapter |16 pages

What Is Global Democracy?

chapter |15 pages

Religion and Public Reason

A Contemporary Debate

chapter |9 pages

The Disoriented Left

A Critique of Left Schmittianism

chapter |16 pages

Kant at Ground Zero

Philosophers Respond to September 11