Best books published in the last thirty(ish) years

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Best books published in the last thirty(ish) years

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1pomonomo2003
nov 28, 2014, 8:15 am

Hello all, over at another LibraryThing group a question was asked regarding what were thought the most important books published in the past thirty years. Rather than annoy them with a list of philosophy books they aren't interested in I will annoy this group instead! Thirty years is half a lifetime for me. Staying (mostly) within those thirty years I have a short list below. However, most of my reading continues to be of people long dead. (Oh! How bourgeois!)
This list is in no order of importance/influence:

Alasdair MacIntyre's Trilogy ('After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory'; 'Whose Justice? Which Rationality?'; 'Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition') is on the list mostly for hammering home to me that the shared tradition (world-view) one inhabits need not be some festival of agreement. No. What makes a coherent tradition (and perhaps better said, a tradition coherent) is not that they agree on the answers but rather they agree on what are important questions and how to methodically go about answering them. If a generally agreed fundamental question were answered that would be an example of progress within a given tradition.The trilogy (though this was not its purport) helped me begin to wrap my head around how world-views cum world orders are constituted. Here one has no need of utopian thought.

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, Jürgen Habermas
Wonderful. A full frontal attack on the luminaries of the growing postmodern hegemony. But history has shown conclusively that he was spitting into the wind. Pity...

Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, Meghnad Desai
Stunning. Also, a fairly recent book. In a nutshell Desai argues that Marx was right about everything, - except (the possibility of) revolution! He argues throughout this book that the genuinely Marxist understanding of the Capitalist mode of production is that "any particular mode disappeared only after its full potential had been exhausted... (p. 7)" And our author adds that there isn't anything that can change that. Desai also argues that our present globalization is the limit case of the full realization of the potential of Capitalism, ...and therefore its last gasp. And thus he excoriates the trendy leftist opposition to globalization. For our author, globalization is (i.e., will be) the self-transformation of capitalism into socialism!

Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano, Barry Smith
Another book I only saw recently. Showed me that the prehistory of Phenomenology (the vanguard of continental philosophy!) was in strong, if often contentious conversation with the nascent 20th century anglo-american philosophical tradition. Of course I was aware of Brentano; I just did not realize how variegated the sublimations of his movement were. For me, phenomenology was Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty. Here, I glimpsed what I had missed.
It is usually difficult for me to judge a recently read book. Adequate judgments take time. I take a risk here.

Lukacs' Last Autocriticism: The Ontology, Ernest Joós
Most of the time a reading of Lukács with a decided agenda; but this book, however obliquely (and counter to Joós intentions), showed me the importance of Lukács late Ontology. Here the fundamental categories of Being move! To me, this is of profound importance. (Joós was horrified!) Before Joós I had only read Agnes Hellers gnomic remarks on the Ontology and had difficulty understanding both her consternation and the matter itself. (In retrospect, it had a lot to do with what she and the circle around the dying Lukács thought constituted the 'acceptable Marxism' of that time and place.) Though I cannot recommend this book because of the authors animus towards his subject; it was very important to me because it made me aware of the significance of Lukács Ontology.
To most people, all this interest in phenomenology and ontology must appear as something of a private fetish. ...It is.

The Question of Being, Heidegger
Okay, an unjustified break of the thirty year rule. I just wanted to mention how pivotal this small book, really an essay (1956, first translated 1958), was for me. When I first saw it (bought used in the seventies) the world was in a war between irreconcilable 'truths'. This book showed that one could intelligently speak of the world without knowing what would, or should, happen next. Beyond our present world-picture, for Heidegger a technological nihilism, we could not be certain of anything. Indeed. we could not even know if we would remain the 'we' we are now! The known, every Known, is surrounded by the Unknown. There are terrible consequences for that.
Once Being is seen to be entwined with Time stability, all stability, is put in question. Heidegger arrives at this through his fundamental (philosophical) anthropology cum fundamental ontology. Lukács from a militantly opposed direction that starts by ignoring philosophical anthropology and proceding through the scholastics, Hegel, Marx, and then surprisingly (for me) ignoring the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, while he makes much use of the ontology of Nikolai Hartmann. But Lukács too ends with anthropology: Labor.
For as long as we remain human, everything is (and can only be) about Man.

Nietzsche's Task : An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil, Laurence Lampert
Another fetish of mine. Since the mid eighties I had thought that Nietzsche's purpose was to destroy modernity and christianity (those platonisms for the people!) and (surprise!) bring about a new world based on what can only be called another religious ethos (see his Zarathustra.) It was a real joy to read someone who thought similarly of Nietzsche. Of course, Lampert gussies all this up for public consumption.
Strictly speaking, Nietzsche isn't _doing_ anything in the post-Zarathustra books -except teaching/helping/forcing the already dying to die faster. At the core of Nietzsche there is only a dreadful and relentless Necessity. The joy we surely find in Nietzsche is there to render this necessity palatable (i.e., endurable for civilized humanity).
What is of genuine interest in philosophy is Necessity. And everything else? Political philosophy, political theology, and (god help us) ...whims.

Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, Alexandre Kojève
Yes, written many moons ago (1943), but only first published in France in 1982. In English, 2000. While in his earlier lectures (i.e., 'Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit') he argued that a World State (he called it the Universal Homogenous State) would be socialist, here he seems to indicate that it could be of a liberal bent. What was important to our author was the Universalism; not the propaganda the Universal State emits. (As we all know, it was from Kojève that Fukuyama learned about the so-called 'End of History'.)

The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum, Carl Schmitt
Bending the thirty year rule a bit again. This book was first published in the 1950's (in German) but first translated into English only in the last decade. Kojève's great postwar sparring partner, Schmitt basically argues (here and in his 'Land and Sea') that a universal state is impossible. Why? Geography. He concedes that one can have cosmopolitan enlightened universalism in the great trading seapowers, but he argues that one cannot do that in central asia (or, I would add, the insular near east). He is arguing that a world wide secular universal state, given the facts of geography, is impossible.
Also, in this book, he argues that thanks to post WWII population movements, the world is heading for a change as profound as the transition from ancient to medieval and medieval to modern. Like the previous transitions this means a new Politics and Law and, I would add, a new cosmology and religion. And Economics too. If Schmitt is right, everyday the world will become a little more unintelligible to the standard isms that we all know so well.

The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure and Social Systems, Emmanuel Todd
Knocked my socks off when I read this 25 years ago. Demonstrated how the dominant type of Kinship Group in a Polity was an almost flawless predictor of the Ideology and Religion in that territory. As populations continue to mix I suspect this this predictive ability will wane. There, in the late eighties, early nineties (with the USSR still casting its shadow over everything) he said that war between Islam (especially in the middle east) and the US was inevitable.
Why? Their maximally different Kinship rules!

Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, Rene Girard
Girard in several books has argued that ancient religiosity was destroyed by the Crucifixion. Ancient religions incorporated the scapegoat mechanism to achieve (an always temporary) peace. Christ crucified (slowly at first, but inevitably) destroys that peace by showing that the scapegoats are innocent. This book brings Girards teaching into the modern world. He uses Clausewitz to demonstrate that the logic of modern war (escalation to the extremes) can only bring about an apocalypse. I had enjoyed Girard on ancient religion and was impressed by his attempt to bring this understanding into our modern world.

I'd love to see your lists.
Joe

2paradoxosalpha
Bewerkt: nov 28, 2014, 8:56 am

I like the Lampert book you list, but the most impressive Nietzsche scholarship I've read from recent decades was Nietzsche's Corps/e (see my review on the work page). Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche is a volume I've recently acquired and fully intend to read.

3pomonomo2003
nov 28, 2014, 9:16 am

I too am a fan of Waite and I have also reviewed him. Pity He has no other books. And the Lampert volume you mention I have reviewed too.

4paradoxosalpha
nov 28, 2014, 9:18 am

Ah, yes! That was your review (the only one other than mine on the page for Waite's book). Good review, too.

5razzamajazz
nov 28, 2014, 9:29 am

Philosophy is heavy stuff to digest.

Do you have any recommended titles for a novice to read as a starter ?

This link may interest the philosophical experts.

It is a forum platform to address questions and answers to any philosophical and theory questions.

www.philosophy.stackexchange.com

6pomonomo2003
Bewerkt: nov 28, 2014, 9:37 am

#4 Thank you, I enjoyed yours too. If you haven't you should add it to Amazon. For whatever reason, over at Amazon my review of 'Leo Strauss and Nietzsche' has generated the most comments of any of my reviews.

7pomonomo2003
nov 28, 2014, 9:47 am

#5. The short answer is that there is no good place to begin philosophy. I 'knew' (ha!) far more about philosophy 40 years ago than I do today. Looking back, it was only after several books by and about a given thinker / school of thought that I began to really understand the issues. Deeply, philosophy allows you to see both possibilities and abiding problems. It is the various ideologies and religions that 'Know the Truth'. That said, I am sure that others will have a better answer than that.

8theoria
nov 28, 2014, 10:54 am

Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vols. I & II. Published in English in 1984 and 1985 respectively.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. 1990.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism. 1993.
Paul Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting. Published in English in 2004.

9pomonomo2003
nov 29, 2014, 11:52 am

#8 I have always been impressed by Habermas and Ricoeur. They never fail to teach. Thanks for the reply.

10Ian19774
sep 2, 2017, 9:31 am

For the relevant specialists,

Gillian Barker, Beyond Biofatalism, Columbia Univ. Press, 2015. (Philosophy of science; philosophy of biology.)
Beatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge, Princeton Univ. Press, 2000.