Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Reading List Endurance Test

There is something about finishing a thesis that makes you just want to grab all those books you've been putting aside for just after you finish that last chapter, paragraph, or abstract, and start catching up on reading. And then you end up with this:
  • Horkheimer and Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment. I've been reading this in the morning. I don't know what possessed me to make that arrangement, but it has stuck. I'm only on the second Excursus, but I can say that I now remember how strident Adorno's work can be.
  • Annie Cohen-Solal, Jean-Paul Sartre: A Life. Sartre writes that "my life and my philosophy are one and the same." He also writes that "I have always considered quantity a virtue," so it's nice to have a good biography to put his thousands and thousands of pages of work into perspective.
  • I just finished Roberto Bolano's, The Skating Rink. Bolano's first novel, although in English, it's his most recent. It's funny how the order of translations can alter the reception of an author's work. I should have a review up by the end of this week.
  • Ronald Aronson, Living without God. Another read for the Sartre and New Atheism paper at the Sartre Society conference. Aronson will be there, so I suppose if I have questions for him...
  • For my course, I will be reading parts of Rousseau's The Social Contract. I haven't read it in over eight years, (or more?) but lately he seems to keep coming up in conversation. I also noticed a section on 'Civil Religion,' which might tie in with some of the work I did on what Schelling called 'new mythology.' We will see, and by 'we' I mean myself and 120 members of the captive audience called PHI 1104.
  • From the previous reading list: I mentioned Ulysses, but I didn't even manage to start it. (see above) Regarding the rest, I did. Still working slowly on the Benjamin, and I liked Pynchon's latest.

2 comments:

Ze'ev said...

Devin,
You may find it useful (if you haven't already) to look at the chapter in Habermas' _The philosophical discourse of modernity_ on the Dialectic of Enlightenment. I wrote my paper on the Adorno and Horkeimer's text. Ploughing through it is a rewarding effort.

D. Shaw said...

I'll look it over. I was also going to read the remarks on Benjamin.