Radical Thinkers Set 08 – serie

In The Concept of Nature in Marx, Alfred Schmidt examines humanity's relation to the natural world as understood by the great philosopher-economist Karl Marx, who wrote that human beings are 'part of Nature yet able to stand over against it; and this partial separation from Nature is itself part of their nature'. In Marx, industry and science are the mediation between historical man and external nature, leading either to reconciliation or mutual annihilation. Schmidt explores this tension between man and nature in Marx and shows how his understanding of nature is reflected in the work of writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch.

In this vehement defence of democracy, Jacques Rancière explodes the complacency of Western politicians who pride themselves as the defenders of political freedom. As America and its allies use their military might in the misguided attempt to export a desiccated version democracy, and reactionary strands in mainstream political opinion abandon civil liberties, Rancière argues that true democracy-government by all-is held in profound contempt by the new ruling class. In a compelling and timely analysis, Hatred of Democracy rethinks the subversive power of the democratic ideal.

Louis Althusser is remembered today as the scourge of humanist Marxism, but that was his later incarnation, an identity formed by years grappling with the intellectual inheritance of Hegel and Catholicism. The Spectre of Hegel collects the writings of the young Althusser, before his final epistemological break with the philosopher's work in 1953. The Spectre of Hegel gives a unique insight into Althusser's engagement with a philosophy he would later renounce.

The Melancholy Science is Gillian Rose's investigation into Theodor Adorno's work and legacy. Rose uncovers the unity discernable among the many fragments of Adorno's oeuvre, and argues that his influence has been to turn Marxism into a search for style. The attempts of Adorno, Lukács and Benjamin to develop a Marxist theory of culture centred on the concept of reification are contrasted, and the ways in which the concept of reification has come to be misused are exposed. Adorno's continuation for his own time of the Marxist critique of philosophy is traced through his writings on Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger. His opposition to the separation of philosophy and sociology is shown by examination of his critique of Durkheim and Weber, and of his contributions to the dispute over positivism, his critique of empirical social research and his own empirical sociology.Gillian Rose shows Adorno's most important contribution to be his founding of a Marxist aesthetic that offers a sociology of culture, as demonstrated in his essays on Kafka, Mann, Beckett, Brecht and Schönberg. Finally, Adorno's 'Melancholy Science' is revealed to offer a 'sociology of illusion' that rivals both structural Marxism and phenomenological sociology as well as the subsequent work of the Frankfurt School.