Fifty key contemporary thinkers

Description

"Now in its second edition the Key Guide surveys the most influential thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With a new introduction by the author as well as two new sections on Phenomenology and the Post-Human, full cross referencing and up-to-date guides to major primary and secondary texts, this is an essential read for anyone interested in the thinking that drives today's world. Students and general readers alike will be pleased to find such an accessible guide to some of the most hard-to-grasp ideas around."--BOOK JACKET.

Description

In this book, John Lechte focuses both on the development of structuralist theory and on key thinkers opposed to this tendency. It is, for both the specialist and the general reader, an indispensable reference book on this century's most important intellectual revolution. In each of the fifty entries, John Lechte skilfully illuminates complex thought with unusual clarity. He also provides complete biographical information and suggestions for further reading. From early structuralism, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers guides us through post-structuralism, semiotics, post-Marxism, Annales history, on to modernity and post-modernity. It includes chapters on Bahktin, Freud, Bourdieu, Chomsky, Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, Saussure, Irigaray and Kafka among others. Literary figures who have changed the way language is conceived are considered, together with philosophers, linguists, social theorists, feminists and historians. Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers shows that thought in the twentieth century emphasises the relational dimension of existence rather than an essential dimension. This kind of thought leads on to nihilism, but also to the point where nihilism might be overcome.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Fifty key contemporary thinkers: from structuralism to postmodernityRoutledge1994-01-01
• Fifty key contemporary thinkersRoutledge2007-01-01
• 50 key contemporary thinkersRoutledge2008-01-01