|
Showing 1 - 8 of
8 matches in All Departments
In 1859, Charles Baudelaire is writing the poetry and criticism of
the new urban cultural and social world which would make him
described by a number of historians as the first modern. Indeed, it
is he who coined the term 'modernity'. In the east, Ivan Turgenev
with On the Eve begins reflections about Russia and modernity which
would result in his next novel, set in 1859, Fathers and Sons. The
latter still resonates today. In Switzerland, Jacob Burckhardt is
inventing the Renaissance as a means of understanding what is
happening in his own time. Indeed, we never talked about a
Renaissance until Burckhardt published his The Civilization of the
Renaissance in Italy in 1860, something he wrote in order to better
understand his own times. In the West, several important and
central works of European culture are being written in England by
both British writers and exiles. Marx is researching Das Capital
and writing A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Mazzini is writing his major work on modern nationalism, The Duties
of Man, just as Italy is beginning its decade of unification and
the European map is beginning a period of extraordinary change.
John Stuart Mill published his On Liberty in early 1859, still the
work that is the modern ground of democratic ideas dealing with the
relationship between liberty and authority. And in November 1859
one of the dozen or so most influential works of all of European
history and science, one that shattered many pre-modern concepts,
The Origin of Species, was published by Charles Darwin. The
thinkers who were prominent at the time were, in a full sense,
public intellectuals. Their works were read, debated, applauded,
feared, defended and scorned in the public forums, what
philosophers sometimes called the marketplace. It was in 1859 that
modernity, the world as we now know it, gets confronted and
encountered. As a result concepts and ideas we still use, then new,
get thought about and become part of the public discourse. From
this point on, the dialogue is forever transformed.
My Basilian Priesthood is a memoir of Michael Quealey's six years
in the order in the 1960s. During his priesthood, Quealey was
director of the Newman Centre at the University of Toronto and
engaged in reforming the mass and in other theological matters. The
1960s was a time of questioning traditions, including the role of
Biblical criticism, the nature of liturgy, the place of women in
the Church and in society, and the power of community living and
decision-making. Quealey was deeply involved in all these matters,
and sought to fulfill his commitment to service and balance that
with his faith and vows of obedience to the institution of the
Church. Written decades after the events he describes, the book is
his reflection on the excitement of the times and the tensions
created when tradition encountered new ideas and new forms of
communal living. Here's a story that blends Toronto history with
Catholic Church history and an inside look at 1960s counterculture.
The year 1930 can be seen as the dawn of a period of darkness, the
beginning of a decade that Auden would style ""low, dishonest.""
That year was one of the most reflective moments in modernity.
After the optimism of the nineteenth century, the West had stumbled
into war in 1914. It managed to survive a conflagration, but it
failed in the aftermath to create something valued.In 1930, Europe
was questioning itself and its own viability. Where are we heading?
a number of public intellectuals asked. Who are we and how do we
build moral social and political structures? Can we continue to
believe in the insights and healing quality of our culture? Major
thinkers - Mann, Woolf, Ortega, Freud, Brecht, Nardal, and Huxley -
as well as a number of artists, including Picasso and Magritte, and
musicians, such as Weill, sought to grapple with issues that remain
central to our lives today: the viability of a secular Europe with
Enlightenment values coming to terms with a darker view of human
nature mass culture and its dangers; the rise of the politics of
irrationality identity and the ""other"" in Western civilization
new ways to represent the postwar world the epistemological dilemma
in a world of uncertainty; and the new Fascism - was it a new norm
or an aberration?Arthur Haberman sees 1930 as a watershed year in
the intellectual life of Europe and with this book, the first to
see the contributions of the public intellectuals of 1930 as a
single entity, he forces a reconsideration and reinterpretation of
the period.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|