Postmodernism Rightly Understood The Return to Realism in American Thought

by Lawler, Peter Augustine

• ISBN13: 9780847694266
• ISBN10: 0847694267
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-07-29
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

Postmodernism Rightly Understood is a dramatic return to realism--a poetic attempt to attain a true understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the postmodern predicament. Prominent political theorist Peter Augustine Lawler reflects on the flaws of postmodern thought, the futility of pragmatism, and the spiritual emptiness of existentialism. Lawler examines postmodernism by interpreting the writings of five respected and best selling American authors--Francis Fukuyama, Richard Rorty, Allan Bloom, Walker Percy, and Christopher Lasch. Lawler explains why the alternatives available in our time are either a 'soulless niceness,' which Fukuyama, Rorty, and Bloom described as the result of modern success, or a postmodern moral responsibility that accompanies love in the ruins, as articulated by Percy and Lasch. This is a fresh and compelling look at the crisis of the human soul and intellect accompanied by the onset of postmodernity.

Author Biography

Peter Augustine Lawler is professor of government at Berry College in Georgia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(14)
Francis Fukuyama versus the End of History	15	(26)
Allan Bloom's Ineffectual Response to Richard Rorty	41	(36)
Walker Percy's Twentieth-Century Thomism	77	(38)
Sex, Drugs, Politics, Love, and Death	115	(42)
Moral Realism versus Therapeutic Elitism	157	(22)
The Return to Realism	179	(10)
Index	189	(6)
About the Author	195