Bøger af Raphael Sassower

Offering a detailed analysis of the essential role enslavement played in the success of the British and American capitalism, Manorial Capitalism, Enslavement, and the Logic of Dividuation describes the logic of dividuation, a logic that veils its motives and practices with ever cleverer myths.

Since the eighteenth century, artists--especially so-called avant-garde artists--have played a conflicting role in society. Part of the reason for their complex position, argue Raphael Sassower and Louis Cicotello, is the survival of the culture of idolatry in the modern age. In the twentieth century, artists can criticize the worship of material things or they can produce the things themselves. They can paint the scenes of worship of the golden calf--as the German expressionist Emil Nolde did in "Dance Around the Golden Calf" (1910), in which garish exaggerations reflect a condemnation of materialistic culture--or they can be the ones fabricating the idol for a fee.Part radical critics, part celebrity servants of bourgeois tastes, avant-garde artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Andy Warhol, the Christos, and Keith Haring have captured the twentieth-century imagination and inspired the artistic community to reconsider its social, political, and cultural roles. Charting the uneasy middle ground occupied by these artists and their work, Sassower and Cicotello argue that their success has as much to do with their complicity with capitalist forces as it does with their defiance of them. Indeed, the major theme of The Golden Avant-Garde is the inability of any cultural subgroup to withstand the overwhelming power of capitalism, commercialism, and science and technology.While some artists are paid by governments and institutions to construct national and religious monuments that express and honor society's most valuable principles and goals, the same society has fabricated a romantic myth of artists as revolutionary heroes who defy the authorities and pay dearly for their passion and vision. The Golden Avant-Garde is a unique collaboration between a philosopher and an artist, who bring their different perspectives to bear on how the avant-garde navigates the cultural, financial, and technological challenges presented by this postmodern dilemma. Often, Sassower and Cicotello conclude, avant-garde artists have become adept at manipulating the same forces that they seek to exaggerate and articulate in their work.

Raphael Sassower examines the concept of hypocrisy for its strategic potential as a means of personal protection and social cohesion.

A timely look at the role of governments in solving economic crises that learns from the past and proposes a new era of post-ideological capitalism.

This book asks what are the common assumptions - or frames of references - that underlie our understanding of political economy today. How many of them are worthy of retaining? Could others be discarded?

Since the 18th century, artists have played a conflicting role in society. Part of the reason for this, argues this analysis, is the survival of the culture of idolatry in the modern age. They can either paint scenes of worship of the golden calf or they can fabricate the idol themselves.

In order to better understand the conditions of the twenty-first century Raphael Sassower and Louis Cicotello revisit the twentieth century in Political Blind Spots: Reading the Ideology of Images. Sassower and Cicotello revisit some of the most significant periods in art and politics in the twentieth century paying close attention to the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

The work of Karl Popper has had extraordinary influence across the fields of scientific and social thought. This book examines Popper in the round, analysing in particular his moral and psychological insights. Presenting an overview, it reveals the debt many intellectual movements - such as Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism - owe to Popper.

Solo: Postmodern Explorations provides a postmodern approach to technoscience and economics. Sassower pulls together postmodern motifs and attitudes with his own experience to provide a unique perspective on political history and economics. Solo raises the question of whether it is possible to be an objective observer and what that means for scholarship, especially when it concerns making assessments of other cultures in the developing world. Sassower questions the usefulness of applying external economic measurements on the economic development of these countries.

Contemporary society is rife with instability. Our active and invasive study of genetics has given life to one of the great specters of biological science: the clone. The scarcity of natural energy sources has led to an increased manipulation of atomic or nuclear energy and regressive environmental policies, resulting in a greater sense of danger for everyone. The promises of economic globalization have, in some cases, been delivered, but in many other ways globalization has created even greater gaps in social and economic life. Despite the expansion of our productive and technological capabilities, our workdays grow longer, not shorter. We find ourselves in exile from our families, our friends, and from other meaningful forms of social connection. And as 'freedom' is bandied about in the popular press and media as the preeminent global social value, it actually seems that the reigning contemporary ethos of our time is stress and anxiety. While Raphael Sassower's previous work has focused extensively on science and technology, this book is significantly different. It is an urgent commentary in the tradition of Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man or even Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents; a culmination of many years of research and thought carefully arranged into an extended essay on our contemporary social, cultural, and existential orientation in the modern world. This book is written for advanced graduate students, informed and concerned citizenry, and especially the young student who, in the face of mounting anxiety, must be able to make critical choices towards an uncertain future.

Contends that technoscientific projects are contingent upon economic and political support, and not simply on their economic feasibility.

In an age when the visual landscape dominates our communication, War Images offers the rationale and the method by which we can critically engage images. Though focused on war images, this book provides a broad appreciation of how "reading" images is an act of social courage and personal responsibility.

What is at stake in compromising the Enlightenment ideals of liberal education with educational policies engendered by a neo-liberalized, global marketplace? This text explores Western culture's longstanding ambivalence toward "the life of the mind".

This work considers two related phenomena - the positive public image of science as the citadel of truth and the objectivity and the angst displayed by scientists over their indirect roles in technological horrors, such as the atomic devastation of Hiroshima.