What it Contains

Front Cover
Lexington Books, 2002 - Philosophy - 159 pages
What It Contains brings together the newest and most important essays of one of the most eminent and creative twentieth-century social theorists, Kurt H. Wolff. More than simply a collection of essays, this is a unified book with a highly self-reflexive and self-referential commentary running throughout the text. Extending and expanding on some of Wolff's important earlier work, the book covers topics that are of vital importance today: surrrender-and-catch, the ineluctable, man as a mixed phenomenon, and the paradox of socialization. In the course of presenting an important and coherent statement of his sociology, Wolff explores the work of Heidegger, Arendt, Simmel, and Mannheim and the themes of dualism and the abyss of language. This work will stimulate debate among phenomenologists, existentialists, continental thinkers, and anyone interested in sociological analysis that is not only extraordinarily learned but also deeply personal.
 

Contents

Sociology and Meaning
1
Reconsider 1
5
Toward a Conception of Sociology
11
Reconsider 2
21
From Dualism of Human Nature to Human Being as a Mixed Phenomenon
23
Reconsider 3
33
Surrender and the Other
37
Reconsider 4
48
Reconsider 8
82
On the Landscape of the Relation between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger
83
Reconsider 9
94
I Feel I Am
97
Reconsider 10
106
Toward Things and the Good Society
109
Reconsider 11
118
A Structure to Play With On the Italian Adage Se Non È Vero È Ben Trovato
125

The Two Secret Poets
51
Reconsider 5
54
Karl Mannheim and Surrender and Catch An Essay in Autobiographical History of Ideas
57
Reconsider 6
62
On the Way to Simmel
65
Reconsider 7
75
On My Interaction with SimmePs The Personality of God
79
Reconsider 12
142
Sources
147
Acknowledgments
149
Index
151
About the Author
Copyright

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About the author (2002)

The late Kurt H. Wolff was Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Brandeis University. A prolific author of many books and essays, he was perhaps best known as a translator of the work of Georg Simmel and Karl Mannheim.

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