Bücher von Raphael Sassower

Raphael Sassower examines the concept of hypocrisy for its strategic potential as a means of personal protection and social cohesion.

This book asks what are the common assumptions - or frames of references - that underlie our understanding of political economy today. How many of them are worthy of retaining? Could others be discarded?

Since the 18th century, artists have played a conflicting role in society. Part of the reason for this, argues this analysis, is the survival of the culture of idolatry in the modern age. They can either paint scenes of worship of the golden calf or they can fabricate the idol themselves.

In order to better understand the conditions of the twenty-first century Raphael Sassower and Louis Cicotello revisit the twentieth century in Political Blind Spots: Reading the Ideology of Images. Sassower and Cicotello revisit some of the most significant periods in art and politics in the twentieth century paying close attention to the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

Solo: Postmodern Explorations provides a postmodern approach to technoscience and economics. Sassower pulls together postmodern motifs and attitudes with his own experience to provide a unique perspective on political history and economics. Solo raises the question of whether it is possible to be an objective observer and what that means for scholarship, especially when it concerns making assessments of other cultures in the developing world. Sassower questions the usefulness of applying external economic measurements on the economic development of these countries.

Contemporary society is rife with instability. Our active and invasive study of genetics has given life to one of the great specters of biological science: the clone. The scarcity of natural energy sources has led to an increased manipulation of atomic or nuclear energy and regressive environmental policies, resulting in a greater sense of danger for everyone. The promises of economic globalization have, in some cases, been delivered, but in many other ways globalization has created even greater gaps in social and economic life. Despite the expansion of our productive and technological capabilities, our workdays grow longer, not shorter. We find ourselves in exile from our families, our friends, and from other meaningful forms of social connection. And as 'freedom' is bandied about in the popular press and media as the preeminent global social value, it actually seems that the reigning contemporary ethos of our time is stress and anxiety. While Raphael Sassower's previous work has focused extensively on science and technology, this book is significantly different. It is an urgent commentary in the tradition of Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man or even Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents; a culmination of many years of research and thought carefully arranged into an extended essay on our contemporary social, cultural, and existential orientation in the modern world. This book is written for advanced graduate students, informed and concerned citizenry, and especially the young student who, in the face of mounting anxiety, must be able to make critical choices towards an uncertain future.

What is at stake in compromising the Enlightenment ideals of liberal education with educational policies engendered by a neo-liberalized, global marketplace? This text explores Western culture's longstanding ambivalence toward "the life of the mind".