Reviews for The melancholy science

The average rating for The melancholy science based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-12-23 00:00:00 Dan Mills Gillian Rose was a British philosopher whose work (most notably Hegel contra Sociology) tries to resuscitate properly Hegelian dialectical thinking for the purpose of social critique. Her knowledge of Kant, German Idealism, and its aftermath is accompanied by a truly unrivaled grasp of the roots of sociology (in the work of Durkheim and Weber and, most importantly, in the work of their Neo-Kantian forefathers) and a serious engagement with more recent developments in continental philosophy. This, Rose's dissertation, makes good use of this background in presenting a general overview of the thought of Theodor Adorno, whose voluminous and scattered writings, which are typically in essay form, Rose manages to bring into unity. Rose seems to have mastered Adorno's entire corpus ' an impressive feat, as it is a complex synthesis of Marx, Freud, and others that ranges over philosophy, sociology, literature, music, and psychology. In less than 200 pages, one gets an impressive overview of a many-sided figure. The book is also notable for its focus on the concept of reification, Adorno's views on style, Adorno's aesthetics, and the relation between Adorno and his predecessors and contemporaries. Rose's is a sympathetic but critical reading. She is a close reader, so she avoids many of the criticisms of Adorno that are based on simple misreadings. However, in the course of her close reading of Adorno, she does turn up some lacunae and inconsistencies in his thought'all of which she takes to indicate where one might take Adorno's thought further and where one might leave Adorno behind. Though a little dry, this is not nearly as dense as some of Rose's other writings, which, while brilliant, can be exceedingly difficult. I recommend this highly as an introduction to Adorno's thought, but those familiar with Adorno's writings will benefit from her critical perspective and her command of Adorno's texts. For an introduction to Adorno, this would serve much better than either Frederic Jameson's book (Adorno; or The Persistence of the Dialectic) or Susan Buck-Morss's (The Origin of Negative Dialectics); unlike these texts, Rose's book can both educate the expert and initiate the novice.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-06-03 00:00:00 Brandon French best criticism i've ever read of adorno, up there with some of the best criticism i've ever read of anyone