Modernity and Postmodernity Knowledge, Power and the Self [Paperback]

This accessible and comprehensive overview of the main issues on the modernity-postmodernity controversy is the first clear-sighted book on the subject. It surveys modern social theory, from Kant to Weber with economy and masterly precision. And evaluates the work of the Frankfurt School, Arendy, Strauss, Luhmann, Habermas, Heller, Castoriadis and Touraine, before moving on to consider the approaches of the leading writers on postmodenrity: Lyotard, Vattimo, Derrida, Foucault and Jameson.

The result is a new way of conceptualizing the modernity-postmodernity debate, and an exciting new approach to the roots of contemporary social theory.

This accessible and comprehensive overview of the main issues on the modernity-postmodernity controversy is the first clear-sighted book on the subject. It surveys modern social theory, from Kant to Weber with economy and masterly precision. And evaluates the work of the Frankfurt School, Arendy, Strauss, Luhmann, Habermas, Heller, Castoriadis and Touraine, before moving on to consider the approaches of the leading writers on postmodenrity: Lyotard, Vattimo, Derrida, Foucault and Jameson.

The result is a new way of conceptualizing the modernity-postmodernity debate, and an exciting new approach to the roots of contemporary social theory.

Introduction
Knowledge, Power and the Self
The Discourses of Modernity
Enlightenment, Modernism and <i>Fin-de-si[e]cle </i> Sociology
Modernity and Secularization
Religion and the Postmodern Challenge
The Pathogenesis of Modernity
The Limits of Enlightenment
The Impossibility of Modernity
Cultural Crystallization and the Problem of Contingency
Rescuing Modernity
The Recovery of the Social&llC/