Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age (Paperback)
$16.11 - Free delivery worldwide (to United States and
all these other countries) Usually dispatched within 48 hours | |Short Description for Experiments Against Reality Displays the sophistication, breadth of knowledge, and clarity of argument of Mr Kimball. This book shows how the work of several authors can be seen as efforts to articulate a convincing alternative to the intellectual and spiritual desolations of the age.
Full description- Publisher: Ivan R Dee, Inc
- Published: 01 March 2002
- Format: Paperback 368 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Literary Reference Works | Classical History / Classical Civilisation | Philosophy | Western Philosophy, From C 1900 -
- ISBN 13: 9781566634304 ISBN 10: 156663430X
- Sales rank: 991,855
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Full description for Experiments Against Reality
Confronting the dilemmas of modernist and postmodernist thought, Roger Kimball in this new collection of his work explores the literary and philosophical underpinnings of modernity as well as the state of our culture today. Experiments Against Reality displays the sophistication, breadth of knowledge, and clarity of argument that have made Mr. Kimball one of the most trenchant critics of our contemporary culture. He begins by considering the influential poet and theorist T. E. Hulme, and shows how the work of Eliot, Auden, Wallace Stevens, Robert Musil, Elias Canetti, and others can be seen as efforts to articulate a convincing alternative to the intellectual and spiritual desolations of the age. Turning to the philosophical tradition, Mr. Kimball suggests how figures from Mill and Nietzsche to Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Heidegger, Foucault, and Roger Scruton have addressed _ or in many cases evaded _ the defining moral imperatives of modernity. Finally he steps back to consider more generally the career of contemporary culture _ the trivializing nature of the contemporary art world; the academic attack on historical truth and scientific rationality; the fate of the 'two cultures' controversy. 'Enlightenment,' Mr. Kimball writes, 'sought to emancipate man by liberating reason and battling against superstition. But reason liberated entirely from tradition has turned out to be rancorous and hubristic _ in short, something irrational.' Experiments Against Reality offers continuing evidence of Mr. Kimball's stature as one of our most important cultural critics.
