Description
Book SynopsisTackles a question as old as Plato and still pressing today: what is reason, and what roles does and should it have in human endeavour? Applying the tools of intellectual history, Martin Jay examines the overlapping, but not fully compatible, meanings that have accrued to the term “reason” over two millennia, homing in on moments of crisis, critique, and defense of reason.
Trade ReviewMartin Jay is one of the most respected intellectual historians now working, and any book by him is an important event. His subject here could hardly be bigger: the idea of reason in Western thought over two millennia."" - Michael Rosen, Harvard University
""A magisterial rethinking of the fate of reason, particularly in German philosophy from Kant to Habermas."" - Anson Rabinbach, Princeton University
""The overriding strength of Jay's book is the breadth and depth of the intellectual history of reason it offers, a history that illuminates Critical Theory's concern to criticize our deeply imperfect societies, and the damaged lives they produce."" -
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews""A magisterial rethinking of the fate of reason, particularly in German philosophy from Kant to Habermas."" - Anson Rabinbach,Princeton University
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
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- Part I. The Ages of Reason
- 1 From the Greeks to the Enlightenment
- 2 Kant: Reason as Critique; the Critique of Reason
- 3 Hegel and Marx
- 4 Reason in Crisis
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- Part II. Reason’s Eclipse and Return
- 5 The Critique of Instrumental Reason: Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Adorno
- 6 Habermas and the Communicative Turn
- 7 Habermas and His Critics
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- Notes
- Index
