It is difficult to start a discussion about religion. The topic irritates the modern public, especially the part that has been schooled in Critical Theory. Enlightenment hostility toward religion, which regularly goes far beyond skepticism, has profoundly shaped sensibilities and the habits of debate. Spoken or unspoken assumptions in the secular public sphere relegate religion to a fully private matter, and, therefore, not an appropriate topic for consideration, let alone a possible source for reflection on current theoretical or political matters. (...) The elaboration of theory within the project of modernity is taken to be fully separate from religion, or perhaps…. (shrink)

ExcerptAll rational liberal philosophic positions have lost their significance and power. One may deplore this but I for one cannot bring myself to clinging to philosophic positions which have been shown to be inadequate. Leo Strauss, “Existentialism”1The Supreme Court decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration's signature legislation on health care, attracted exceptional public attention, and rightly so. Health is a vital concern, and the topic is charged with acerbic party politics. More importantly, the terms (...) of the debate give evidence of a widespread awareness, across the political spectrum, that…. (shrink)

ExcerptProfound change in society may involve shifting control of political power, the character of economic systems, or access to resources, but it can also have to do with the structures of meaning we bundle together in various understandings of culture. This issue of Telos looks at the explosive forces located specifically in the intangible dimensions of culture and how they may play out in revolutionary or counter-revolutionary processes. No process has been more disruptive of inherited traditions and stable structures than (...) globalization, the spread of the dynamic economy of capitalism coupled with liberal democracy. In a bold account, Jörg Friedrichs…. (shrink)

The concept of the public sphere is the touchstone of Peter Hohendahl's scholarship, which has been profoundly influential on both sides of the Atlantic. One is tempted to suggest that the public sphere is the central concept of Atlanticism. Historically, the urgency of publicness emerged, via Jürgen Habermas's foundational study, in the Federal Republic against the backdrop of the Nazi dictatorship.1 The pursuit of a public sphere represented an insistence on the desideratum of liberal democratic institutions in contrast to totalitarian (...) domination—whether the latter was understood as the absence of a public sphere or, alternatively, as the hyperpoliticization of the…. (shrink)

Are the arguments of the Frankfurt School still relevant? Modern Culture and Critical Theory investigates this question in the context of important issues in contemporary cultural politics: neoconservatism and new social movements, discontents with modernity and debates on postmodernism, the political hegemony of Ronald Reagan, and the cultural hegemony of structuralism and poststructuralism. Russell Berman thoughtfully explores the theories of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Lyotard, and Foucault and their relevance to both historical and contemporary issues in literature, politics, and the (...) arts. (shrink)

A study probing the ambiguities of German nationhood. Berman takes a theoretical perspective of cultural studies, exploring such themes as: the constitution of nationhood; what holds a citizenry together; and history's role in providing a framework for current identities and institutions.

The “nation” has been the primary unit of political membership in modernity, typically stronger than “region” (the American 1865) and almost always stronger than “class” (the European 1914). Membership in the nation has meant citizenship, the basis of civil rights and civic responsibility within the rule of law. However “nation” is also related to the “people,” the source of all democratic power. The “people” was the population in the age of the democratic revolutions before anything like contemporary mass immigration. While (...) the Enlightenment notion of “the people” was not an ethnic definition, the romanticization of the term and its metamorphosis.. (shrink)

Matthias Küntzel's account of the centrality of anti-Semitism within jihadist ideology appeared in German in 2002. The text has been expanded and updated for this translation. The volume includes a foreword by Jeffrey Herf, who highlights key aspects of the argument and the context. Heir to the tradition of Critical Theory—the website of the original publisher, Ça ira, carries a quotation by Hans-Jürgen Krahl, Adorno's student and antagonist—Küntzel's forcefully argued presentation stretches from the origins of twentieth-century Islamism, with the founding (...) of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, to the worldwide wave of anti-Semitism that followed the 9/11 attacks. Küntzel demonstrates…. (shrink)