The Frankfurt School Revisited

Frankfurt School thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jurgen Habermas, and Herbert Marcuse have been enormously influential in a wide range of contemporary public debates. Their writings have remained an invaluable touchstone for controversies in the fields of law, politics, the arts, and cultural studies. Discussions of "postmodernism" regularly mine the theories of Benjamin and Adorno for ideas and inspiration. And the burgeoning field of democratic theory would be inconceivable apart from Habermas's towering influence.
"The Frankfurt School Revisited," Richard Wolin, the eminent political theorist and intellectual historian, reassesses the school's relevance in light of a variety of pressing, contemporary issues and concerns including the collapse of communism, the global war on terror, the resurgence - both at home and abroad - of religious fundamentalism, the dislocations of globalization, and the prospect of global democracy. In doing so, Wolin seeks to redeem and reinvigorate the Frankfurt School's rich intellectual legacy.

This volume is a collection of essays by Richard Wolin, a leading political theorist and intellectual historian. It is the follow up to Wolin’s two recent, widely acclaimed books: Heidegger’s Children and The Seduction of Unreason. In those books, he explored the legacy of Martin Heidegger and his impact on some of his most influential and notable students. He dealt particularly with the effect that Heidegger’s subsequent embrace of fascism and National Socialism had on these students. Delving further in his next book, Wolin explored the question of why philosophers and intellectuals have been drawn to antiliberal, antidemocratic fascism. The essays in this book are focused on European Political Thought particularly with figures associated with the Frankfurt School. The collection represents a virtual who’s who of European political thinkers with essays on Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Marcuse, Arendt, Heidegger, Weber, Jaspers, and Carl Schmitt. Moving beyond these thinkers and those books, this collection will also include essays on contemporary political issues such as post-communist revolutions, human rights, global democracy, the revival of republicanism, and religion and public life.

Introduction: The Frankfurt School Revisited Part 1: The Frankfurt School Revisited 1. Between Proust and the Zohar: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project 2. The Adorno Centennial: The Apotheosis of Negative Dialectics 3. What is Heideggerian Marxism? On the Unknown Herbert Marcuse 4. Critical Reflections on Marcuse’s Theory of Revolution 5. The Lion in Winter: Leo Lowenthal and the Integrity of the Intellectual 6. Levinas and Heidegger: The Anxiety of Influence 7. Karl Jaspers: The Paradoxes of Mandarin Humanism Part 2:Exiting Revolution 8. What We Can Learn From the Revolutions of 1989 9 . From the "Death of Man" to Human Rights: The Paradigm Change in French Intellectual Life, 1968-86 10. The Republican Revival: Reflections on French Singularity Postscript: Hexagon Fever 11. What is Global Democracy? 12. Religion and Public Reason: A Contemporary Debate 13. The Disoriented Left: A Critique of Left Schmittianism 14. Kant at Ground Zero: Philosophers Respond to September 11

Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History, Comparative Literature, and Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among his books are Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas, and Martin Heidegger (2001) and The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism (2004).