(H/B) THE LIMITS OF COMMUNITY

Παρουσίαση

A contemporary of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) achieved recognition as a social philosopher during the three decades following World War II. He is best known for helping to establish philosophical anthropology as a discipline, which arose under his and Max Scheler's tutelage during the Weimar Republic and continues to exert influence over German thought.
In The Limits of Community, Plessner presents the appeal and the dangers of rejecting modern society for the sake of the ideal of community. The appeal, he suggests, is to escape the anonymity of mass society; the danger is the eventual loss of human dignity and the rise of an authoritarian politics based on violence and fanaticism. Social radicalism is born from the underside of modern society. It takes root among the disenfranchised and, especially, among the young. Attuned to the political undercurrents of his own society, Plessner anticipated the rise of German fascism nine years before its fateful emergence onto the world stage.
Now that dissatisfaction with modern society is prevalent in the United States and elsewhere, appeals to the ideal of community can be heard once again in the communitarian critique of liberalism and in the politics of identity. What de Tocqueville identified as the tyranny of the majority represents an ever-present danger to the individual today.
Written in 1924, The Limits of Community remains relevant today and will be of interest to scholars and students of German intellectual history and of political and social theory. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Acknowledgments
Translator's Introduction
Translator's Note
Foreword
1. Problem and Method of the Critique
2. Between the Morality of the Master and the Morality of the Community
3. Blood and Ideal: Possibilities of Community
4. The Struggle for a Genuine Face: The Risk of Ridicule
5. Paths to Unassailability: Ceremony and Prestige
6. The Logic of Diplomacy. The Hygiene of Tact
7. The Utopia of Nonviolence and the Duty of Power