The Wreck of Western Culture

by Carroll, John E.

• ISBN13: 9781933859699
• ISBN10: 1933859695
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-01
• Publisher: Isi Books

Summary

Humanism built Western civilization as we know it today. Its achievements include the liberation of the individual, democracy, universal rights, and widespread prosperity and comfort. Its ambassadors are the heroes of modern culture-Erasmus, Holbein, Shakespeare, Velaacute;zquez, Descartes, Kant, Freud. Those who sought to contain humanismrs"s pride within a frame of higher truth-Luther, Calvin, Poussin, Kierkegaard-could barely interrupt its torrential progress. Those who sought to reform humanismrs"s tenets from within-Marx, Darwin, and Nietzsche-were tested by the success of their own prophecies. So runs the approved view. It is not shared by John Carroll. Instead, Carroll articulates a disruptive and compelling alternative narrative of the course of Western civilization since the Renaissance and the Reformation contrived to unleash reason, will, and a superhuman man on the world. The Westrs"s five-hundred-year experiment with humanism has failed, he maintains in this bracing study of humanismrs"s rise to preeminence and its headlong tumble into contradiction, because humans ultimately need some kind of contact with a higher, or metaphysical, order beyond the confines of their time-bound, mundane selves. And if this wasnrs"t entirely clear before September 11, 2001, Carroll concludes, it surely is now. His provocative and brilliant arguments will challenge received wisdom on every side.

Author Biography

John Carroll is Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and a Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Prologue	p. 1
The Glory of the Renaissance	p. 13
Ambassadors of Death	p. 29
The Protestant Reformation	p. 51
The Alternative Reformation	p. 69
Discord	p. 93
The Bourgeois Fusion	p. 115
Enlightenment and Romance	p. 135
Mockery, Mockery Everywhere	p. 155
Into the Heart of Darkness	p. 177
Unconscious	p. 197
Sacred Rage	p. 217
Last Stand	p. 231
The End: September 11, 2001	p. 249
The Works	p. 263
Index	p. 265
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