The Foundations of Belief

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David Williams

"Often wrongly accused of being fascists, the wartime Kyoto philosophers were among the first non-White thinkers to brood on the secrets of effective national action. They believed, with Marx, that the point of philosophy is to change the world. They exploited a sophisticated idea of history, borrowed partly from Ranke, partly from Hegel, to develop a Japanese understanding of rational self-mastery. This is the first study based on a meticulous examination of the primary sources in Japanese, which clarifies who these forgotten intellectuals were while challenging the orthodox prejudices that explain why we do not know more about them. In their published writings and hitherto secret anti-Tojo seminars of 1940-44, the philosophers of the Kyoto School took the first soundings of the post-White age that will define our tomorrow. They offered us the philosophy of our future."--Jacket.

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Theodor W. Adorno

"Quasi una Fantasia contains Adorno's own selection from his essays and journalism over more than three decades. In its analytical profundity it can be compared to his Philosophy of Modern Music and to the monographs on Berg, Mahler and Wagner. But in the range of its themes and references (from Mozart to Boulez, the minuet to the jitterbug) and in the clarity of its arguments, Quasi una Fantasia stands alone among Adorno's writings on music."--BOOK JACKET. "At the book's core are illuminating studies of the founders of modern music: Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg, as well as sympathetic rediscoveries of Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker. Especially significant is Adorno's 'dialectical portrait' of Stravinsky, in which he both reconsiders and refines the damning indictment he gave in Philosophy of Modern Music.^ In 'Vers une musique informelle', an enormously influential essay, he plots a course for a music of the future 'which could take up the challenge of an unrevised, unrestricted freedom'. More unexpectedly, there are moving accounts of earlier works, such as Bizet's Carmen and Weber's Der Freischutz, along with an entertainingly caustic 'Natural History of the Theatre' which explores the rituals and hierarchies of the auditorium, from upper circle to foyer."--BOOK JACKET. "'The positive element of kitsch', Adorno remarks, 'lies in the fact that it sets free for a moment the glimmering realization that you have wasted your life.' Musical kitsch is the target of several of the shorter pieces: on Gounod's Ave Maria or Tchaikovsky's 'clumsy naivety'; on the 'Penny Serenade' or the transformation of Mozart into chocolate-box rococo.^ Yet even while Adorno demolishes 'commodity music' he is sustained by the conviction that music is supremely human because it retains the capacity to speak of inhumanity and to resist it. It is a conviction which reverberates throughout these writings. For Adorno, music and philosophy were inextricably linked: Quasi una Fantasia will enlarge our understanding of both."--BOOK JACKET.

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Jude P. Dougherty

The logic of religion presents an examination of the nature of religion from a philosophical perspective. In successive chapters classical, medieval, and modern authors are canvassed for their views. Even among those who find no evidence for the existence of God, we encounter discussions of the nature of religion and its function in society. This study begins in antiquity with Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and Seneca. It then moves through Augustine to the Middle Ages as represented by Averroes and Aquinas. By so proceeding, the author gives the reader insight into the nature and logic of religion as conceived before and after the advent of Christianity. Subsequent investigation leads to a consideration of the work of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and G.W.F. Hegel, in whose philosophies we find not only an account of the logic of religion but an appreciation of its implications in the practical order, and of Sigmund Freud's negative assessment of religion in The future of an illusion. Although the focus of this study is primarily Western religion, attention is also paid to selected oriental modes of thought, some properly called "religion" in the Western sense, others more akin to philosophy than religion.

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Stjepan G. Meštrović

"As the present century and millennium approach their close, many dramatic endgames have been conceptualized by celebrated intellectuals; for example: the "end of history" (Fukuyama); the "end of culture" (Baudrillard); the "end of communism" (Brzezinski) - the last just in time for the events of 1989. The "end of sociology" might even be proposed by those who deem the field of no practical relevance to contemporary social problems. Mestrovic here cuts against the grain of this nihilistic discourse, by arguing that postmodernism itself is an aspect of culture."--BOOK JACKET. "In setting out to find cultural roots for the many phenomena taken up by postmodernists, he connects the present turmoil with strikingly similar debates at the end of the last century, debates concerning the future of capitalism, communism, feminism, and sociology, among other matters. With ambitious sweep, he relates the work of Emile Durkheim and other earlier figures (such as Henry Adams, Veblen, Jung, Adorno) to contemporary postmodernist discourse. His new book points to an opportunity for sociology to revivify itself by taking the cultural approach of its founders seriously."--BOOK JACKET.