Modernity And Its Discontents: Making And Unmaking The Bourgeois From Machiavelli To Bellow

Steven B. Smith examines the concept of modernity, not as the end product of historical developments but as a state of mind. He explores modernism as a source of both pride and anxiety, suggesting that its most distinctive characteristics are the self-criticisms and doubts that accompany social and political progress. Providing profiles of the modern project's most powerful defenders and critics--from Machiavelli and Spinoza to Saul Bellow and Isaiah Berlin--this provocative work of philosophy and political science offers a novel perspective on what it means to be modern and why discontent and sometimes radical rejection are its inevitable by-products.

• | Author: Steven B. Smith
• | Publisher: Yale University Press
• | Publication Date: Aug 07, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 416 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0300240236
• | ISBN-13: 9780300240238