The Poverty of Postmodernism rejects the current celebration of knowledge and value relativism. This is on the grounds that it renders critical reason and commonsense incapable of resisting the superifical ideologies of minoritarianism that leave the hard core of global capitalism unanalyzed. In this book John O'Neill examines the postmodern turn in the social sciences. From a phenomenological standpoint (Husserl, Merleau Ponty, Schutz, Winch), he challenges Lyotard's postrationalist reading of Wittgenstein and Habermas in order to defend commonsense reason and values that are constitutive of the everyday life-world. In addition he argues from the standpoint of Vico and Marx on the civil history of embodied mind that the post-rationalist celebration of the arts of superificiality undermines the recognition of the cultural debt each generation owes to past and post-generations. In a positive way O'Neill develops an account of the historical vocation of reason and of the charitable accountability of science to commonsense that is necessary to sustain the basic institutions of civic democracy.
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An articulate and passionate argument against the postmodern/postraditionalist abandonment of Marxist and phenomenological concepts of reason and commonsense. This is a major and accessible contribution to the debate on postmodernity.
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Introduction: the two politics of knowledge—alterity and mutuality Part I The politics of disciplinary knowledge 1 Postmodernism and (post) Marxism 2 The therapeutic disciplines: from Parsons to Foucault 3 The disciplinary society: from Weber to Foucault 4 The phenomenological concept of modern knowledge and the Utopian method of Marxist economics 5 Orphic Marxism Part II The politics of mutual knowledge 6 ‘Posting’ modernity: Bell and Jameson on the social bond—with an allegory of the body politic 7 On the regulative idea of a critical social science 8 Mutual knowledge 9 The mutuality of science and common sense: an essay on political trust Conclusion: the common-sense case against post-rationalism
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780415116879
Publisert
1994-10-20
Utgiver
Vendor
Routledge
Vekt
294 gr
Høyde
216 mm
Bredde
138 mm
Aldersnivå
U, G, 05, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
216

Forfatter

Biographical note

John O’Neill is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology, York University, Toronto.