Description

The thinkers who have been most influential on the attitudes of the New Left are examined in this study by one of the leading critics of leftist orientations in modern Western civilization. Scruton begins with a ruthless analysis of New Leftism and concludes with a critique of the key strands in its thinking. He conducts a reappraisal of such major left-wing thinkers as: E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, Jurgen Habermas, Gyorgy Lukacs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Zizek, Ralph Milliband and Eric Hobsbawm. In addition to assessments of these thinkers' philosophical and political contributions, the book contains a biographical and bibliographical section summarizing their careers and most important writings.

In Thinkers of the New Left Scruton asks, what does the Left look like today and as it has evolved since 1989? He charts the transfer of grievances from the working class to women, gays and immigrants, asks what can we put in the place of radical egalitarianism, and what explains the continued dominance of antinomian attitudes in the intellectual world? Can there be any foundation for resistance to the leftist agenda without religious faith?

Scruton's exploration of these important issues is written with skill, perception and at all times with pellucid clarity. The result is a devastating critique of modern left-wing thinking.

Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, non-fiction and reviews. He was the author of over fifty books.
A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London; University Professor at Boston University, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was one of the founders of the Salisbury Review, contributed regularly to The Spectator, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and was for many years wine critic of the New Statesman. Sir Roger Scruton died in January 2020.

1 What is Left? / 2 Resentment in Britain: Hobsbawm and Thompson / 3 Disdain in America: Galbraith and Dworkin / 4 Liberation in France: Sartre and Foucault / 5 Tedium in Germany: Downhill to Habermas /6 Nonsense in Paris: Althusser, Lacan and Deleuze / 7 Culture Wars Worldwide: The New Left from Gramsci
to Said / 8 The Kraken Wakes: Badiou and Zizek /9 What is Right?

Informations sur le produit