Full Description
Hughes' ideas, and the way they are expressed in Consciousness and Society, have become paradigms of twentieth-century scholarship. In dealing with the changing social thought after 1890 in Europe, Hughes covers a wide array of thinkers and issues in a scholarly, yet graceful manner. His is a study of the "cluster of genius" of Europe at that time: Croce, Durkheim, Freud, Weber, and Nietzsche, as well as other great European minds. The book explores questions that are still relevant in today's society: Is the separation of facts and values tenable, or even desirable? Can rationality accommodate the ideas of a Bergson or a Freud? Is there, or should there be, a relationship between science and religion? And does history have any ultimate meaning for later generations?
Contents
INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 1. Some Preliminary Observations, 2. The Decade of the 1890's: The Revolt against Positivism, 3. The Critique of Marxism, 4. The Recovery of the Unconscious, 5. Georges Sorel's Search for Reality, 6. Neo-Idealism in History, 7. The Heirs of Machiavelli: Pareto, Mosca, Michels, 8. Max Weber and the Transcending of Positivism and Idealism, 9. The European Imagination and the First World War, 10. The Decade of the 1920's: The Intellectuals at the Point of Cleavage, BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE, INDEX
