The Disenchantment of Reason

Download or read book The Disenchantment of Reason written by Paul R. Harrison and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an examination of nineteenth-century interpretations of Socrates by Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche in the light of the contemporary debates over rationality in the modern world. These interpretations of Socrates have fundamentally influenced modern and postmodern thought, and their complexity reflects both an attraction to, and a fear of, the peculiarly modern concept of reason that Socrates is read as embodying. Socrates is seen in this book as an emblematic figure through which the constitutive tensions between enlightenment and romanticism in modern thought can be understood. In the concluding chapter, Harrison analyzes the claims of discursive reason versus those of deconstruction in the postmodern conflict over the figure of Socrates.