Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme

Martin Jay

Published by University of California Press 2005

Songs of Experience

Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme

Martin Jay

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520939790

Overview
Contents

About this book

Few words in both everyday parlance and theoretical discourse have been as rhapsodically defended or as fervently resisted as "experience." Yet, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of how the concept of experience has evolved over time and why so many thinkers in so many different traditions have been compelled to understand it. Songs of Experience is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience written by one of our best-known intellectual historians. With its sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis—qualities that have made Martin Jay's previous books so distinctive and so successful—Songs of Experience explores Western discourse from the sixteenth century to the present, asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy. Resisting any single overarching narrative, Jay discovers themes and patterns that transcend individuals and particular schools of thought and illuminate the entire spectrum of intellectual history.

As he explores the manifold contexts for understanding experience—epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, and historical—Jay engages an exceptionally broad range of European and American traditions and thinkers from the American pragmatists and British Marxist humanists to the Frankfurt School and the French poststructuralists, and he delves into the thought of individual philosophers as well, including Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Hume and Kant, Oakeshott, Collingwood, and Ankersmit. Provocative, engaging, erudite, this key work will be an essential source for anyone who joins the ongoing debate about the material, linguistic, cultural, and theoretical meaning of "experience" in modern cultures.

Author / Editor information

Jay Martin :

Martin Jay is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his books are Refractions of Violence (2003), The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (second edition, California, 1996), Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (California, 1993), and Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas (California, 1984).

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Trial Of “Experience”: From The Greeks To Montaigne And Bacon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
2. Experience And Epistemology: The Contest Between Empiricism And Idealism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
3. The Appeal Of Religious Experience: Schleiermacher, James, Otto, And Buber Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
4. Returning To The Body Through Aesthetic Experience: From Kant To Dewey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
5. Politics And Experience: Burke, Oakeshott, And The English Marxists Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
6. History And Experience: Dilthey, Collingwood, Scott, And Ankersmit Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	216
7. The Cult Of Experience In American Pragmatism: James, Dewey, And Rorty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
8. Lamenting The Crisis Of Experience: Benjamin And Adorno Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	312
9. The Poststructuralist Reconstitution Of Experience: Bataille, Barthes, And Foucault Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	361
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	401
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	411

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 441

eBook

Published: January 10, 2005
ISBN: 9780520939790