The Dialectical Self: Kierkegaard, Marx, and the Making of the Modern Subject by

Description: The Dialectical Self by Jamie Aroosi By drawing out important themes bequeathed them by their shared predecessor G. W. F. Hegel, Jamie Aroosi shows that Marx and Kierkegaard were engaged in parallel projects of making sense of the modern, "dialectical" self, as it realizes itself through a process of social, economic, political, and religious emancipation. FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Although Karl Marx and Soren Kierkegaard are both major figures in nineteenth-century Western thought, they are rarely considered in the same conversation. Marx is the great radical economic theorist, the prophet of communist revolution who famously claimed religion was the "opiate of the masses." Kierkegaard is the renowned defender of Christian piety, a forerunner of existentialism, and a critic of mass politics who challenged us to become "the single individual." But by drawing out important themes bequeathed them by their shared predecessor G. W. F. Hegel, Jamie Aroosi shows how they were engaged in parallel projects of making sense of the modern, "dialectical" self, as it realizes itself through a process of social, economic, political, and religious emancipation.In The Dialectical Self, Aroosi illustrates that what is traditionally viewed as opposition is actually a complementary one-sidedness, born of the fact that Marx and Kierkegaard differently imagined the impediments to the selfs appropriation of freedom. Specifically, Kierkegaards concern with the psychological and spiritual nature of the self reflected his belief that the primary impediments to freedom reside in subjectivity, such as in our willing conformity to social norms. Conversely, Marxs concern with the sociopolitical nature of the self reflected his belief that the primary impediments to freedom reside in the objective world, such as in the exploitation of the economic system. However, according to Aroosi, each thinker represents one half of a larger picture of freedom and selfhood, because the subjective and objective impediments to freedom serve to reinforce one another.By synthesizing the writing of these two diametrically opposed figures, Aroosi demonstrates the importance of envisioning emancipation as a subjective, psychological, and spiritual process as well as an objective, sociopolitical, and economic one. The Dialectical Self attests to the importance and continued relevance of Marx and Kierkegaard for the modern imagination. Author Biography Jamie Aroosi is a political theorist based in New York City. Table of Contents Introduction. The Dialectical SelfPART I. BONDAGEChapter 1. SelfhoodChapter 2. DeceptionPART II. EMANCIPATIONChapter 3. CommunicationChapter 4. LawChapter 5. FaithPART III. FREEDOMChapter 6. SubjectivityChapter 7. HistoryChapter 8. DemocracyPART IV. PRAXISChapter 9. ReligionChapter 10. PoliticsConclusion. Love and RevolutionNotesIndexAcknowledgments Review "Jamie Aroosis new book is an original and refreshing contribution to the study of SØren Kierkegaard and KarlMarx . . . Carefully argued-and skillfully written-it provides a much-needed boost to contemporary scholarship, showing how and why we must read Kierkegaard and Marx as part of the modern quest for democracy and self-determination." * Perspectives on Politics *"Jamie Aroosi has a nuanced appreciation for the complexities of the reception of Kierkegaard and Marx in the twentieth century. In a new, refreshing, and useful comparison, The Dialectical Self shows how these two thinkers have much more in common than one might immediately imagine. It deserves our careful attention." * Jon Stewart, Slovak Academy of Sciences * Promotional By drawing out important themes bequeathed them by their shared predecessor G. W. F. Hegel, Jamie Aroosi shows that Marx and Kierkegaard were engaged in parallel projects of making sense of the modern, "dialectical" self, as it realizes itself through a process of social, economic, political, and religious emancipation. Long Description Although Karl Marx and S Review Quote "Jamie Aroosis new book is an original and refreshing contribution to the study of S Promotional "Headline" By drawing out important themes bequeathed them by their shared predecessor G. W. F. Hegel, Jamie Aroosi shows that Marx and Kierkegaard were engaged in parallel projects of making sense of the modern, "dialectical" self, as it realizes itself through a process of social, economic, political, and religious emancipation. Excerpt from Book Introduction The Dialectical SelfNo sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me . --Marcel Proust, Swanns Way Think youre escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. --James Joyce, Ulysses Trauma and Mimesis Ours is a fractured age. Born in the crucible of World War I, the promise of a progressive philosophy encompassing the totality of our spiritual and sociopolitical lives--a promise last tendered by G. W. F. Hegel--came to seem a fools crusade at best and, at worst, a rationalization for imperial destructiveness. Whereas we had once been able to imagine Western civilization as a universalist project delivering rational enlightenment to humankind, with Hegels thought representing a particular highpoint, the sheer destructiveness of World War I shattered this self-image, revealing that it might only run skin deep. And what began with World War I only intensified in the decades to follow, as the examples of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, National Socialism and Stalinism, and the Cold War and decolonization all seemed to provide tragic proof of a will to domination that existed as the hidden foundation of the Western project. In the ensuing wreckage, it seemed like a new era of rupture had begun. As early as 1920, Sigmund Freud captured something of this zeitgeist. Turning to the question of trauma in Beyond the Pleasure Principle , Freud offered a clinical analysis for a phenomenon of unfortunate familiarity following World War I, as he argued that trauma entailed a rupture in our ability to construct a cohesive mental representation of the world. For Freud, our attempt to make sense of the world was a necessary developmental step in the growth of personal autonomy, as it allowed us to navigate the world. However, as our understanding derives its impetus from self-preservation, it was necessarily complicit in domination, insofar as we want to understand the world so that we can control it. And since the world is simply too complex for intellectual confinement, this made radical ruptures--be they personal or political--a foregone conclusion. Freuds insight was not new, if its psychological application was. Prior to World War I, thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche had long predicted the dissolution of Western thought, seeing within its insistence on reason a hidden will to domination, and thereby creating a body of thought easily adaptable to the lived reality of post-World War I European intellectuals. For Nietzsche, the Western project was itself a nihilistic project intent on domination; however, as with Freud, it also served the developmental role of saving individual autonomy because it offered us a meaning by which to live--"man would rather will nothingness than not will." Nonetheless, if the Western project was little more than a veiled will to power, investing our faith in its promise set the stage for a massive cultural breakdown--a breakdown evidenced by World War I. Therefore, when Freud offered his postwar theory of trauma, he was offering a clinical correlate to the prophetic claims of nineteenth-century intellectuals like Nietzsche, who saw a cultural breakdown as imminent, because trauma was the acute example of a general problem. The radical claims of the nineteenth century seemed verified by the lived reality of the twentieth. If ours is a fractured age--an age in which all pretensions at universal meaning are suspected of domination--the story of nineteenth-century thought reinterpreted through twentieth-century events helps explain how we got here. However, the pervasive sense of vulnerability and loss experienced by Western intellectuals following World War I--we might say their trauma--not only made the insights of the nineteenth century particularly resonant but also led to their distortion. Rather than interpreting the criticisms levied by nineteenth-century thinkers as correctives to the Western project, the tumult of events often led to their stark portrayal. However, for Freud, while meaning might be implicated in an attempt to control our surroundings, it could only do so if it was somehow true, because our ability to control our surroundings depended on an accurate representation of them. This is what Freud believed trauma was, after all, as trauma was the result of only those psychic attacks that we did not foresee. It did not invalidate truth; it merely demonstrated its limits. In this sense, what Europe had lived through was not necessarily an invalidation of the Western project but an attack on the hubris that believed it fulfilled. As Freud himself wrote when reflecting on the war, our disappointment should not lead us to conclude that the promise of a peaceful future is forever invalid but only that we have not traveled as far as we once thought. The lessons of World War I were hardly momentary insights. The horrors of the century to follow solidified these truths, as the twentieth century seemed better proof of ethical, political, and philosophical pessimism than of the optimism of earlier ages. While the trauma of war receded, becoming ever more a memory and less a lived reality, what remained of this tumultuous period was its deep suspicion of any sense of meaning that had pretensions of universality. All told, we had come to embrace rupture rather than being surprised by it. However, as Freud argues, even the very breakdown of meaning helps reveal universal truths against which it is hard to argue. Specifically, while the meaning that we assert as true might be less than the full truth, our endless attempt to create such meaning reveals underlying truths about ourselves. We might therefore become suspicious of all truth, even going so far as to embrace a contemporary iteration of Nietzsches will to "nothingness," but the very activity of asserting the meaninglessness of the world proves its own conclusions wrong. As Nietzsche knew, nothingness is itself a meaning by which many of us live. For an age in the midst of a breakdown--an age of unprecedented destruction--moderation, even in thought, is often the first value lost. Nonetheless, in its very attack on truth, the intellectual repetitions of the twentieth century served to clarify a truth that was evident to some in the nineteenth century. Interestingly, Freuds work on trauma saw repetition compulsion as a primary mechanism for overcoming trauma, as an individual attempts to gain mastery over the rupture. More generally, the attempt to rebuild a framework for interpreting the world, even if it was a framework of infinite fragmentation, would be something that both Freud and Nietzsche would recognize as the activity of self-construction. And while there is more than a little irony to the fact that philosophies of rupture should help intellectuals overcome it, the concern of the present work is with this very process. It is this process that lies at the core of what is here called the dialectical self . The Owl of Minerva For all of the rebellions against totalizing theories in the twentieth century--rebellions intensified by historical events--the last such theory was that of G. W. F. Hegel. For Hegel, the diverse spheres of human life, ranging from the world of art to that of philosophy and from the world of religion to that of politics, each embodied something of the "Truth," albeit in a form appropriate to that sphere. As an example, the symbolic medium of the religious sphere contained humanitys self-representation, while the ethical and political spheres then externalized our self-understanding into the world of action. For this reason, Hegel could write that "the institutions of ethical life are divine institutions" because "it is in the ethical realm that the reconciliation of religion with worldliness and actuality comes about and is accomplished." All told, by locating a fundamental truth, Hegel could then understand the different areas of life as embodying this truth in their own way. Moreover, for Hegel, truth became more evident over time, as history was the medium through which a truth that was at first only latent later became manifest. The entirety of human existence, including even its historical activity, thereby found explanation within Hegels thought. While twentieth-century Hegel scholarship had many highpoints, outside of those who worked with Hegel, this century often lacked sensitivity in its approach to his thought, going so far as to demonize him as a protofascist. The totalizing nature of Hegels project, coupled with the preeminent value he accorded to reason, made him an easy target. For instance, Hegel argued that nineteenth-century Western civilization had finally become a truly rational society, with the preeminent location being found in the "Germanic realm." In the wake of the complete breakdown of European norms in World War I, which was tragically compounded by World War II and the Holocaust, it became easy to treat Hegel as at best a joke and at worst precisely the type of rationalization for domination that the twentieth century had been eager to expose. However, what critics often failed to notice was that for all of Hegels problems--and problems do exist--his theory was ultimately a theory of freedom. If Hegel suffered from some of the problems latent within Western thought, he was also the most developed r Details ISBN0812250702 Author Jamie Aroosi Year 2018 ISBN-10 0812250702 ISBN-13 9780812250701 Format Hardcover Pages 248 Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press Subtitle Kierkegaard, Marx, and the Making of the Modern Subject Place of Publication Pennsylvania Country of Publication United States DEWEY 126.0922 Publication Date 2018-11-09 Short Title The Dialectical Self Language English UK Release Date 2018-11-09 AU Release Date 2018-11-09 NZ Release Date 2018-11-09 US Release Date 2018-11-09 Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press Alternative 9780812295610 Audience Tertiary & Higher Education We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:126660679;

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