Experiments Against Reality
Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age is a book criticizing the literary and philosophical foundations of postmodernity. Examining the work of Eliot, Auden, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and more, Kimball critiques the ways in which these writers deal with what he views as the intellectual and moral deterioration of modernity. He also laments the state of modern culture, focusing his analysis on the realms of contemporary art and academia. Kimball argues against nihilist, deconstructionist, and anti-enlightenment perspectives prevalent in modern theory, contending that objective truth is an important tenant of any discourse. As one review put it, "Kimball’s writings offer weapons of resistance to such indoctrination" and "they set a traditional criterion: the lessons of history, ordinary experience, beauty, reality." The New York Times Book Review calls Kimball a “scathing critic…whose tirades are usually justified” and whose “intellectual rigor is refreshing”.
Read more about this topic: Roger Kimball
Famous quotes containing the words experiments and/or reality:
“The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The reality is more excellent than the report.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)