
To Relish the Sublime?
Culture and Self-Realization in Postmodern Times
Verso Books (Publisher)
Published on 17. December 2002
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-1-85984-686-5 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
More than 130 years from Matthew Arnold's pronouncement that human beings 'must be compelled to relish the sublime', education in the humanities still relies on the ideal of culture as the means of intellectual development. In this distinctive and original work, Martin Ryle and Kate Soper explore the growing tensions and contradictions between this and the contemporary world of work, pleasure, and consumption. While critical of the hypocrisies and elitism that can attach to notions of cultural self-realisation, the authors nonetheless defend its overall educational and social value. Their wide-ranging discussion takes in critiques of philosophers from Kant and Schiller to Nietzsche and Marx, and includes historically contextualized readings of novels by Wollstonecraft, Hardy, Gissing, London, and Woolf.In their sustained defence of a conception of personal worth and self-fulfillment for its own sake, Ryle and Soper not only offer a powerful critique of the continuing dominance of work in contemporary society, but also provide a compelling alternative to the standard postmodern scepticism about the relevance of high culture.
Reviews / Votes
This well-informed study of history, politics and literature ... makes an eloquent, powerful and timely book. Jonathan ReeMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 224 mm
Width: 142 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
469 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85984-686-5 (9781859846865)
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Book
12/2002
Verso Books
€28.50
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Persons
Martin Ryle is Senior Lecturer in Continuing Education at the University of Sussex. His previous books include The Politics of Nuclear Disarmament, Ecology and Socialism, and Journeys in Ireland.
Kate Soper teaches philosophy and cultural theory at the University of North London. Her previous works include On Human Needs, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human and, with Verso, Troubled Pleasures.
Kate Soper teaches philosophy and cultural theory at the University of North London. Her previous works include On Human Needs, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human and, with Verso, Troubled Pleasures.