Are ideology and utopia exhausted and dead on the threshold of the twenty-first century? According to Leonidas Donskis, they survive in the modern social sciences and humanities as well as in various critiques of society and culture, as the inner spring of the cultural and moral imaginations. In tracing what he terms the modern moral imagination, Donskis works out a theory of tolerance, dialogue, human intersubjectivity, the discovery and demonization of the Other, and ideology and utopia as a framework for social and cultural criticism. In portraying four major critics of culture of the twentieth century (Vytautas Kavolis, Ernest Gellner, Louis Dumont, and Lewis Mumford), this book reveals four modes of being of the contemporary critique of culture. Leonidas Donskis shows how modern critiques of culture originate in political philosophy, philosophy of culture, sociology, and the comparative study of civilizations.
"History is not about to end, neither is the succession of modern utopias and ideologies; this is the message of this thoughtful - provocative yet closely argued - book. There is another message as well: there is an important place to guard and an important role to play for 'untypical,' 'maverick,' 'passionate,' and 'iconoclastic' thinkers, people who blend their intellectual and moral biographies after the pattern of Mumford, Kavolis, Gellner, or Dumont, the main heroes of Donskis's insightful, penetrating, and exceedingly readable study."
(Zygmunt Bauman, Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds, United Kingdom)
"Leonidas Donskis offers a broad and imaginative synthesis and critique of contemporary social analysis and the moral categories in which it operates. Combining civilizational theory, philosophy of history, and Kulturkritik, the author sketches an absorbing overview of the contemporary Western condition."
(Philip T. Grier, Thomas Bowman Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Dickinson College)
(Zygmunt Bauman, Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds, United Kingdom)
"Leonidas Donskis offers a broad and imaginative synthesis and critique of contemporary social analysis and the moral categories in which it operates. Combining civilizational theory, philosophy of history, and Kulturkritik, the author sketches an absorbing overview of the contemporary Western condition."
(Philip T. Grier, Thomas Bowman Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Dickinson College)