The Intellectual Follies PDF Download

Author: Lionel Abel
Publisher: New York : Norton
ISBN: 9780393018417
Category : Critics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Author: Frederick Crews
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1593761015
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Bestselling author and Berkeley professor of thirty years Frederick Crews has always considered himself a skeptic. Forty years ago he thought he had found a tradition of thought — Freudian psychoanalytic theory — that had skepticism built into it. He gradually realized, however, that true skepticism is an attitude of continual questioning. The more closely Crews examined the logical structure and institutional history of psychoanalysis, the more clearly he realized that Freud's system of thought lacked empirical rigor. Indeed, he came to see Freudian theory as the very model of a modern pseudoscience. Follies of the Wise contains Crews's best writing of the past fifteen years, including such controversial and widely quoted pieces as "The Unknown Freud" and "The Revenge of the Repressed," essays whose effects still reverberate today. In addition, his topics range from "Intelligent Design" creationism to theosophy, from psychological testing to UFO zaniness, from American Buddhism to the current state of literary criticism. A single theme animates his bracing and witty discussions: the temptation to reach for deep wisdom without attending to the little voice that asks, "Could I, by any chance, be deceiving myself here?"

Author: Justin Rosenberg
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859846117
Category : Globalization
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The Follies of Globalisation Theory is an erudite and lively critique arguing that fashionable preoccupations with spatiality have generated deep intellectual confusions that stand in the way of a clear understanding of the modern world. And he shows how these confusions ultimately condemn globalisation theorists to a peculiar and quixotic stance: the more clearly they attempt to articulate their arguments, the more equivocal and evasive those arguments become, yielding at best the intellectual equivalent of an architectural folly.

Author: Diana Senechal
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538115174
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Too often our use of language has become lazy, frivolous, and even counterproductive. We rely on clichés and bromides to communicate in such a way that our intentions are lost or misinterpreted. In a culture of “takeaways” and buzzwords, it requires study and cunning to keep language alive. In Mind over Memes: Passive Listening,Toxic Talk, and Other Modern Language Follies, Diana Senechal examines words, concepts, and phrases that demand reappraisal. Targeting a variety of terms, the author contends that a “good fit” may not always be desirable; delivers a takedown of the adjective “toxic”; and argues that “social justice” must take its place among other justices. This book also includes a critique of our modern emphasis on quick answers and immediate utility. By scrutinizing words and phrases that serve contemporary fads and follies, this book stands up against the excesses of language and offers engaging alternatives. Drawing on literature, philosophy, social sciences, music, and technology, Senechal offers a rich framework to make fresh connections between topics. Combining sharp criticism, lyricism, and wit, Mind over Memes argues for judicious and imaginative speech.

Author: Rita Kramer
Publisher: Dissertation.com
ISBN: 9780595153244
Category : Teachers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Rita Kramer’s extraordinary ethnography of schools of education opens one’s eyes to many things, including the degree to which equality has driven out achievement in the ideals and practices taught to future teachers. All those concerned about what our children will learn and what tomorrow’s adults will know should read this book.” —James S. Coleman, Professor of Sociology and Education, University of Chicago

Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1624668496
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This edition originally published by Berghahn Books. Schopenhauer's treatise on ethics is presented here in E. F. J. Payne’s definitive translation, based on the Hubscher edition (Wiesbaden, 1946-1950). This edition includes an Introduction by David Cartwright, a translator’s preface, biographical note, selected bibliography, and an index. For convenient reference to passages in Kant's work discussed by Schopenhauer, Academy edition numbers have been added.

Author: Yevgenia Belorusets
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811229858
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Powerful, off-beat stories about women living in the shadow of the now-frozen, now-thawing war in Ukraine Out of the impoverished coal regions of Ukraine known as the Donbass, where Russian secret military intervention coexists with banditry and insurgency, the women of Yevgenia Belorusets’s captivating collection of stories emerge from the ruins of a war, still being waged on and off, ever since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. Through a series of unexpected encounters, we are pulled into the ordinary lives of these anonymous women: a florist, a cosmetologist, card players, readers of horoscopes, the unemployed, and a witch who catches newborns with a mitt. One refugee tries unsuccessfully to leave her broken umbrella behind as if it were a sick relative; a private caregiver in a disputed zone saves her elderly charge from the angel of death; a woman sits down on International Women’s Day and can no longer stand up; a soldier decides to marry war. Belorusets threads these tales of ebullient survival with a mix of humor, verisimilitude, the undramatic, and a profound Gogolian irony. She also weaves in twenty-three photographs that, in lyrical and historical counterpoint, form their own remarkable visual narrative.

Author: Amaud Jamaul Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781936797394
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Poetry. African American Studies. DARKTOWN FOLLIES, Amaud Jamaul Johnson's daring and surprising new collection of poems, responds to Black Vaudeville, specifically the personal and professional challenges African American variety performers faced in the early twentieth century. Johnson is fascinated by jokes that aren't funny particularly, what it means when humor fails or reveals something unintended about our national character. DARKTOWN FOLLIES is an act of self-sabotage, a poet's willful attempt at recklessness, abandoning the "good sense" God gave him, as an effort to explore the boundaries and intersections of race and humor."

Author: Alan M. Wald
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146963595X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
For a generation, Alan M. Wald's The New York Intellectuals has stood as the authoritative account of an often misunderstood chapter in the history of a celebrated tradition among literary radicals in the United States. His passionate investigation of over half a century of dissident Marxist thought, Jewish internationalism, fervent political activism, and the complex art of the literary imagination is enriched by more than one hundred personal interviews, unparalleled primary research, and critical interpretations of novels and short stories depicting the inner lives of committed writers and thinkers. Wald's commanding biographical portraits of rebel outsiders who mostly became insiders retains its resonance today and includes commentary on Max Eastman, Elliot Cohen, Lionel Trilling, Sidney Hook, Tess Slesinger, Philip Rahv, Mary McCarthy, James T. Farrell, Irving Kristol, Irving Howe, Hannah Arendt, and more. With a new preface by the author that tracks the rebounding influence of these intellectuals in the era of Occupy and Bernie Sanders, this anniversary edition shows that the trajectory and ideological ordeals of the New York intellectual Left still matters today.

Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042271
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey. With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse. Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today. This paperback edition contains a new preface and and a new epilogue.