Part 1940s period piece, part stimulus to ongoing thought on the social impact of technology, this first in a projected six volumes of Marcuse’s papers, many of them previously unpublished, merits the attention of critical theorists and general readers alike. Ably edited and annotated by former Marcuse student Kellner (Philosophy/Univ. of Texas, Austin), volume one collects papers and several letters (to Max Horkheimer and Martin Heidegger) from the period when Marcuse was moving from theoretical work for his beloved Institute of Social Research (ISR) to more practical studies for the US Office of War Information. The ISR, under Horkheimer’s direction, continued in the Frankfurt School’s tradition of Marxist-inspired social critique. The German concept of critique descends from Kant, who saw himself rescuing reason from its terrible proneness to self-deception. Critical theory in the Frankfurt School shifted the locus of deception from within the human mind outward, to social forces that inevitably transformed, dialectically, into the opposite of what they appeared to be. Marcuse’s critique of technology is that, having emerged out of moral human reason, it soon makes reason conform to its own amoral obsession with efficiency and means, regardless of ends. The resulting “technical reason” is a Frankenstein monster that, for Marcuse, explains what the War Office hired him to analyze and propagandize against: Nazi Germany. As new analyses of what Germans call the “Nazi time” continue to appear, Marcuse’s reduction of Naziism to technical reason run amok—an excrescence of capitalism, wholly discontinuous with classical German culture—provides a sober alternative to more inflammatory theories of inbred German anti-Semitism. Any German intellectual selected at random opens up onto that vast, uniquely integrated tradition of thought, bounded by Kant and Heidegger, that partially defines German culture. For the general reader, Marcuse’s early essays provide one entree to that world; for the specialist, they provide backdrop to Marcuse’s more famous published books. (9 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: July 19, 1998
ISBN: 0-415-13780-2
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
An internationally renowned scholar shows that the Spanish Inquisition was originally the result of a long build-up of anti- Semitic racism for which the defense of Catholic orthodoxy was only a pretext. Within a few years of the 1391 pogroms in Spain, notes Netanyahu (The Marranos of Spain, not reviewed), conversions to Christianity reduced the country's Jewish community, the largest in the world, by nearly one third. Descendants of these converts, known as ``conversos'' (and pejoratively as Marranos, ``swine''), became a powerful elite; but following accusations that they were ``Judaizing,'' i.e., secretly observing Jewish rituals, the Inquisition was set up in 1480 to inquire into their Christian orthodoxy. Netanyahu confesses how his assumption that the conversos were Jewish martyrs was shattered when his reading revealed that they were bona fide Christians, bent on assimilation, who were regarded by other Jews as renegades and hated by their fellow Christians on account of their economic and political ascendancy. Beginning with an incisive overview of anti-Semitism in the pre-Christian world and in Christian Spain, Netanyahu shows how the Jews, as a defenseless alien minority, aligned themselves with the ruler and earned the hostility of the majority; and thus how, throughout the 15th century, the conversos were caught in a struggle between the king, their protector, and the rising power of the cities. We hear of the brilliant but unstable fortunes of the conversos under Juan II's chief minister, Alvaro de Luna, and how the ideologue Marcos Garc°a de Mora of Toledo developed a racial theory that was at odds with Church teaching and aimed at stopping the conversions. Netanyahu carefully analyzes the writings of conversos, such as Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (uncle of the notorious Inquisitor General), of their foes, and of allies, such as Alonso de Oropesa, General of the Hieronymite Order. Throughout, Netanyahu handles his vast material with confidence and sensitivity, not least when dealing with Church teaching. A vivid, magisterial resource for students of Spanish history and Jewish-Christian relations.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41065-1
Page Count: 1392
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
Psychotherapist and Bible teacher Rosenblatt's first book is a well-meshed combination of her chosen fields: It's a self-help reading of the book of Genesis. With her longtime student Horwitz, a writer, Rosenblatt presents what is in many ways the most traditional form of biblical exegesisa line-by-line, literal-minded interpretation of the Scriptures. But Rosenblatt's explanations are colored by her experiences as therapist and by her obvious self-empowerment agenda. For her, Genesis is not so much a religious tract as a document of human relationships, sexuality, and spirituality. As such, it is a also a guide to life today, or ``a three-step approach to endowing our lives with meaning and direction.'' These steps are: identity, which is spiritual and flows from God; accountability, meaning that we are responsible for our actions; and purpose, which is to ``preserve creation by making our lives an expression of the innately divine qualities that make us human.'' In Rosenblatt's weltanschauungsome would argue a reactionary onehumanity should exert its dominion over the world and over its own nature. But Rosenblatt is at times less traditional, reading into the text whatever seems appropriate to her 20th-century career-woman sensibilities. However understandable this attitude, it makes for some exegetical acrobatics, as when she explains that God's telling Eve, ``And [your husband] shall rule over you,'' in fact means that man will protect woman when she is homebound caring for her childrenas women were forced to be throughout their childbearing years in biblical times, when, Rosenblatt apologizes, ``birth control was nonexistent.'' Still, an often insightful look at the eternal nature of human experience. (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club/Jewish Book Club selections; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-31330-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
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