Fifty Letters from the Troubled Modern World
A Philosophical-Political Diary 2009-2012
Published on 28. February 2013
Book
204 pages
978-3-88309-800-5 (ISBN)
Description
Happy are those epochs that had clear dramas, dreams, and doers of good or evil. Today technology has surpassed politics, the latter having in part become a supplement to technology and threatening to bring the creation of a technological society to completion. This society with its determinist consciousness regards a refusal to participate in the technological innovations and social networks (so indispensable for the exercise of social and political control) as sufficient grounds to remove all those who lag behind in the globalization process (or have disavowed its sanctified idea) to the margins of society.
This is the message of the Lithuanian philosopher and politician Leonidas Donskis's new book. Donskis echoes Jean Baudrillard in his assumption that an epoch of fragmentation calls for fragmentary writing. A short essay for a friend, a sketch, or a letter from nowhere, as if it was meant to be found in the bottle in the middle of the sea or on the coast of a remote country, can shed new light on the way in which we perceive ourselves and the world around us.
About the author: Leonidas Donskis is a Member of the European Parliament (2009-2014) and acts as a visiting professor of politics at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. He combines political theory, history of ideas, philosophy of culture, philosophy of literature, and essayistic style. Among other books, he is coauthor (together with Zygmunt Bauman) of Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity (2013), and the author of Modernity in Crisis: A Dialogue on the Culture of Belonging (2011), Troubled Identity and the Modern World (2009), Power and Imagination: Studies in Politics and Literature (2008), and Forms of Hatred: Troubled Imagination in Modern Philosophy and Literature (2003).
This is the message of the Lithuanian philosopher and politician Leonidas Donskis's new book. Donskis echoes Jean Baudrillard in his assumption that an epoch of fragmentation calls for fragmentary writing. A short essay for a friend, a sketch, or a letter from nowhere, as if it was meant to be found in the bottle in the middle of the sea or on the coast of a remote country, can shed new light on the way in which we perceive ourselves and the world around us.
About the author: Leonidas Donskis is a Member of the European Parliament (2009-2014) and acts as a visiting professor of politics at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. He combines political theory, history of ideas, philosophy of culture, philosophy of literature, and essayistic style. Among other books, he is coauthor (together with Zygmunt Bauman) of Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity (2013), and the author of Modernity in Crisis: A Dialogue on the Culture of Belonging (2011), Troubled Identity and the Modern World (2009), Power and Imagination: Studies in Politics and Literature (2008), and Forms of Hatred: Troubled Imagination in Modern Philosophy and Literature (2003).
More details
Person
Content
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
1. The Cycle of Abuse, or a Grimace of the New Europe
2. Trapped by Half-Truths
3. Unnoticed Fascism
4. The Miraculous Year 1989, or In Praise of Weakness
5. European Citizens, or How the Culture of Curiosity Works
6. Memory Wars
7. Reason or Treason?
8. The Tragedy with Fragile Signs of Hope
9. The Springtime of Our Discontents?
10. Does the Baltic Region Exist?
11. The Treason of Intellectuals, Or An Identity Crisis?
12. We Are Faster than History, Yet Slower Than a Lifetime
13. A Lonely Voice of Despair
14. The Craving for Liberty in the Arab World
15. Belgique mon amour.
16. Freedom and Democracy in Decline 60
17. Do Old-Fashioned Intellectuals and Politics Have a Future?
18. The Culture of Fear
19. The Dissonances of Realpolitik and Human Rights
20. Postimperialism
21. A Dangerous Delusion
22. A New Technocratic Revolution or the End of Modern Nations?
23. Where Does Memory Live?
24. Spenglerian Fallacy and Europe as Mutual Rediscovery
25. The Individuals by Default
26. The New Russia with the Worn-Out Leader
27. Commercialism or a Cult of Brutality and Power?
28. The End of Modern Politics?
29. Discursive Handicap of Central and Eastern Europe
30. Remembering a Friend of the Baltics
31. The Blind Leading the Blind?
32. Democrats and Dictators
33. The Revolt of Crooks
34. The Source of Success
35. Searching for the Europe of Czeslaw Milosz
36. From the Revolution of Dilettantes to the Managerial Revolution
37. Human Rights and Multiculturalism in Our Troubled World
38. Nationalism and Postimperial Syndrome
39. The Crisis of Liberalism?
40. Liquid Totalitarianism
41. The New Class of Political Entertainers
42. The Ukrainian Perspective on Politics
43. It Happens Overnight
44. Is Football just Another Name for Politics?
45. When Treachery Becomes Virtue
46. Criminals in Politics
47. Is European Culture a Fantasy?
48. Our Ambiguous New World, or
Can We Reverse a Tragedy of the EU?
49. A Heroic Narrative in Violation of Good Conscience
50. The Inflation of Genocide
Epilogue Sketching and Mapping
the Moral and Political Sensibilities of Our Time
Foreword
Acknowledgments
1. The Cycle of Abuse, or a Grimace of the New Europe
2. Trapped by Half-Truths
3. Unnoticed Fascism
4. The Miraculous Year 1989, or In Praise of Weakness
5. European Citizens, or How the Culture of Curiosity Works
6. Memory Wars
7. Reason or Treason?
8. The Tragedy with Fragile Signs of Hope
9. The Springtime of Our Discontents?
10. Does the Baltic Region Exist?
11. The Treason of Intellectuals, Or An Identity Crisis?
12. We Are Faster than History, Yet Slower Than a Lifetime
13. A Lonely Voice of Despair
14. The Craving for Liberty in the Arab World
15. Belgique mon amour.
16. Freedom and Democracy in Decline 60
17. Do Old-Fashioned Intellectuals and Politics Have a Future?
18. The Culture of Fear
19. The Dissonances of Realpolitik and Human Rights
20. Postimperialism
21. A Dangerous Delusion
22. A New Technocratic Revolution or the End of Modern Nations?
23. Where Does Memory Live?
24. Spenglerian Fallacy and Europe as Mutual Rediscovery
25. The Individuals by Default
26. The New Russia with the Worn-Out Leader
27. Commercialism or a Cult of Brutality and Power?
28. The End of Modern Politics?
29. Discursive Handicap of Central and Eastern Europe
30. Remembering a Friend of the Baltics
31. The Blind Leading the Blind?
32. Democrats and Dictators
33. The Revolt of Crooks
34. The Source of Success
35. Searching for the Europe of Czeslaw Milosz
36. From the Revolution of Dilettantes to the Managerial Revolution
37. Human Rights and Multiculturalism in Our Troubled World
38. Nationalism and Postimperial Syndrome
39. The Crisis of Liberalism?
40. Liquid Totalitarianism
41. The New Class of Political Entertainers
42. The Ukrainian Perspective on Politics
43. It Happens Overnight
44. Is Football just Another Name for Politics?
45. When Treachery Becomes Virtue
46. Criminals in Politics
47. Is European Culture a Fantasy?
48. Our Ambiguous New World, or
Can We Reverse a Tragedy of the EU?
49. A Heroic Narrative in Violation of Good Conscience
50. The Inflation of Genocide
Epilogue Sketching and Mapping
the Moral and Political Sensibilities of Our Time