Yaron Ezrahi - Böcker

This is the first systematic examination of the contemporary and prior connections between technological progress and pessimism over the future. If the hallmark of the Enlightenment was a firm belief in technology as a principal instrument of universal progress, the hallmark of postmodernism may well be skepticism, even despair, over technology's role in shaping our world. This book incorporates the perspectives of historians, political scientists, philosophers, and literary scholars to illuminate the origins, evolution, and influence of technological pessimism and to evaluate its long-term prospects. The volume should appeal to specialists in technology studies and the history of ideas but also to general readers concerned with these dilemmas of technological progress.

This collection of essays from international scholars from various disciplines addresses the theme of technological pessimism, the conviction that technology has given us the means not only to achieve unlimited progress, but to destroy ourselves and our most cherished values.

'Can Democracy Recover?' explores the roots of the contemporary democratic crisis. It scrutinizes the evolution and subsequent fragmentation of modern political epistemology, highlighting citizens increasing inability to make sense of the political universe in which they live, their loss of confidence in political causality, distinguishing facts from fiction and objective from partisan attitudes. The book culminates in a speculative discourse on democracy's uncertain future. This work is the final part in Yaron Ezrahi's trilogy. The first, 'The Descent of Icarus' (1990), explored the scientific revolution's role in shaping modern democracy. The second, 'Imagined Democracies' (2012), examined the collective political imagination's impact on the rise and fall of political regimes, emphasizing the modern partnership between science and democracy. 'Can Democracy Recover?' traces the political implications of the erosion of the Nature-Culture dichotomy, the bedrock of modernity's cosmological imagination, and anticipates the emergence of new political imaginaries.

'Can Democracy Recover?' explores the roots of the contemporary democratic crisis. It scrutinizes the evolution and subsequent fragmentation of modern political epistemology, highlighting citizens increasing inability to make sense of the political universe in which they live, their loss of confidence in political causality, distinguishing facts from fiction and objective from partisan attitudes. The book culminates in a speculative discourse on democracy's uncertain future. This work is the final part in Yaron Ezrahi's trilogy. The first, 'The Descent of Icarus' (1990), explored the scientific revolution's role in shaping modern democracy. The second, 'Imagined Democracies' (2012), examined the collective political imagination's impact on the rise and fall of political regimes, emphasizing the modern partnership between science and democracy. 'Can Democracy Recover?' traces the political implications of the erosion of the Nature-Culture dichotomy, the bedrock of modernity's cosmological imagination, and anticipates the emergence of new political imaginaries.

This book proposes a revisionist approach to democratic politics. Yaron Ezrahi focuses on the creative unconscious collective imagination that generates ever-changing visions of legitimate power and authority, which compete for enactment and institutionalization in the political arena. If, in the past, political authority was grounded in fictions such as the divine right of kings, the laws of nature, historical determinism and scientism, today the space of democratic politics is filled with multiple alternative social imaginaries of the desirable political order. Exposure to electronic mass media has made contemporary democratic publics more aware that credible popular fictions have greater impact on shaping our political realities than do rational social choices or moral arguments. The pressing political question in contemporary democracy is, therefore, how to select and enact political fictions that promote peace and how to found the political order on checks and balances between alternative political imaginaries of freedom and justice.

This book proposes a revisionist approach to democratic politics. Yaron Ezrahi focuses on the creative unconscious collective imagination that generates ever-changing visions of legitimate power and authority, which compete for enactment and institutionalization in the political arena. If, in the past, political authority was grounded in fictions such as the divine right of kings, the laws of nature, historical determinism and scientism, today the space of democratic politics is filled with multiple alternative social imaginaries of the desirable political order. Exposure to electronic mass media has made contemporary democratic publics more aware that credible popular fictions have greater impact on shaping our political realities than do rational social choices or moral arguments. The pressing political question in contemporary democracy is, therefore, how to select and enact political fictions that promote peace and how to found the political order on checks and balances between alternative political imaginaries of freedom and justice.