What is the role of intellectuals in the modern world? How does intellectual work connect to modern cultural development as a whole? Bauman answers these questions through a discussion of the nature of modernism and post-modernism in the analysis of culture.
David Damrosch offers a lucid, often troubling assessment of the state of scholarship in our academic institutions, a look at how these institutions acquired their present complexion, and a proposal for reforms that can promote scholarly communication and, perhaps, broader, more…
To understand political change in contemporary China it is crucial to understand the position of intellectuals in the society and their often troubled relation to the state. This book explores the ideas of prominent Chinese intellectuals, their relationship to the pro-democracy …
Democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual and racial equality--these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human R…
"Arguing the World is a portrait of four of the leading members of the group in their own words, based on the extensive interviews that formed the basis for Joseph Dorman's acclaimed film of the same name, which New York magazine named in 1999 as the Best New York Documentary. T…
"Arguing the World is a portrait of four of the leading members of the group in their own words, based on the extensive interviews that formed the basis for Joseph Dorman's acclaimed film of the same name, which New York magazine named in 1999 as the Best New York Documentary. T…
"This new collection of essays bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. In these twenty-six pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the break-down of Islam to the legal…
"This new collection of essays bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. In these twenty-six pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the break-down of Islam to the legal…
Who are our public intellectuals? Are they needed in a democracy? Should the state underwrite their activities even if they end up, like Socrates, being gadflies? Shouldn't they refrain from public debates so as to retain their critical vantage point? These and other questions a…
"Isaiah Berlin's response to the Soviet Union was central to his identity, both personally and intellectually. Born a Russian subject in Riga in 1909, he spoke Russian as a child and witnessed both revolutions in St. Petersburg in 1917, emigrating to the West in 1921. He first r…
