Product Description: The century that began in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War was catastrophic. Over the course of that one-hundred-year span, civilizations were destroyed in the Old World, the New World, and the Third World, the latter represented by China, India, and Islam...read more

For Harry Redner, the phrase “beyond civilization” refers to the new and unprecedented condition the world is now entering—specifically, the condition commonly known as globalization. Redner approaches globalization from the perspective of history and seeks to interpret it in relation to previous key stages of human development. His account begins with the Axial Age (700–300 BC) and proceeds through Modernity (after AD 1500) to the present global condition. What is globalization doing to civilization? In answering this question, Redner studies the role played by capitalism, the state, science and technology. He aims to show that they have had a catalytic impact on civilization through their reductive effect on society, culture, and individualism. However, Redner is not content to diagnose the ills of civilization; he also suggests how they might be ameliorated by cultural conservation. Above all, it is to the problem of decline in the higher forms of literacy that he addresses himself, for it is on the culture of the book that previous civilizations were founded. This study will be of interest to sociologists, historians, and social and political theorists. Its style makes it accessible also to general readers, interested in civilization past, present, and future.

Harry Redner's Aesthetic Life examines the arts - all the arts from the earliest Paleolithic painting to the latest post-Modern music. Its aim is to account for the nature of art in its historical totality and to assess the role it has played in human life throughout the ages.

Ethical Life sets out to act as a guide for those of us who want to better understand ethics. It offers answers to the two simplest and yet most difficult questions facing individuals who have fallen into the perplexities of contemporary life: Why be ethical, and how? Redner enlightens his readers with a comprehensive survey of the nature of ethics, touching briefly in his introduction on present ethical concerns and then drawing his readers into a deeper examination of the ethical systems and cultures from which those concerns emerge. The author poses the question: To what extent is our global technological civilization conducive or averse to ethical matters, and how does it compare in this respect to the cultures of the past, both in the West and the East? The book is an excellent and thought provoking introduction to ethics, and an engaging resource for new students of ethics and moral theory. Ethical Life is distinctive in its format and approach, synthesizing in one book both an historical and comparative account of ethical systems, and an engaging discussion of contemporary ethical challenges. The book begins with an introduction to the ethics of ancient Israel, Greece, China, India, and Persia, before moving on to a diagnosis of the twentieth century crisis in ethics, and finally, a discussion of contemporary ethical concerns, exploring our social, cultural, and individual responses to them. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: This book examines the dominant modern ideas on Man, Time, and Nihilism with reference to Foucault, Derrida, and Althusser.