Leonidas Donskis Book order

The collection of interpretive essays delves into the evolving identities and fates of Eastern and Western Europe over the past two decades. It explores the shifting distinctions, including the emergence of a dividing line between the EU and Eastern partners, and examines the historical and contemporary implications of these changes. Through a nuanced analysis, the book sheds light on the complex dynamics that have shaped the relationship between these two regions.

To entail, scan and embrace more knowledge of "what is" and "what ought to be done" in fewer words -- to make a statement as short, concise, terse and pithy as possible while rendering the sights it opens as vast as possible -- is the principal intention of the practitioners of the difficult art of the aphorism. Many writers have tried it, few have succeeded. A successful aphorism, true to its mission, allows a small step to go a long, perhaps an infinitely long, way. But as knowledge needed to find one's way in our increasingly crowded and complex world grows at a mind-boggling pace, so do the difficulties on the road to success. In our liquid-modern times horizons tend to break up or dissolve as soon as they are drawn. It is this unprecedented quality of our condition that Leonidas Donskis attempts to grasp and convey by resurrecting the badly missed and badly needed art of the aphorism, injecting into it a new impetus, a perfect match to the vertiginous pace of our life, and bringing that art up to the gravity and grandiosity of the challenge we confront. We should all be grateful to him for this exquisitely harrowing task he has performed.

Happy are those epochs marked by clear dramas and decisive figures. Today, technology has eclipsed politics, which has become a mere supplement to technological advancements, risking the establishment of a fully technological society. This society, with its deterministic mindset, views any refusal to engage with technological innovations and social networks—essential for social and political control—as justification to marginalize those who resist globalization or reject its ideals. This is the central theme of Leonidas Donskis's latest work. Echoing Jean Baudrillard, Donskis suggests that an era of fragmentation necessitates fragmentary writing. Short essays, sketches, or letters—like messages in bottles—can illuminate our self-perception and our understanding of the world. Donskis, a former Member of the European Parliament and a visiting professor of politics in Lithuania, intertwines political theory, cultural philosophy, and literary analysis in his writing. His previous works include collaborations and solo projects that explore themes of moral blindness, identity, and the interplay between politics and literature, reflecting his deep engagement with contemporary societal issues.

The only attribution I have seen concerning the illustrations ... is to the Bolognese engraver Edoardo Fialet.--Introd.

This volume offers the insights of Baltic and Western European scholars into present socioeconomic, migration, identity, gender, race, media, and historical memory issues in the Baltic States. The book attempts to show the intensity and depth of social, economic and cultural change in the Baltic region. It throws light on why and how three small countries have become a litmus test case of modernity and its sensibilities, stretching from authoritarian and totalitarian past to liberal-democratic present. An historic jump from the Soviet Union to the European Union was accompanied by a dramatic struggle of the Baltic States for their inalienable right to return to the political map of the world. The Baltic States allow us a glimpse of the twentieth century history better than anything else. This interdisciplinary volume, by virtue of different perspectives employed by political scientists, gender and race scholars, communication and journalism researchers, linguists, and anthropologists will enable a readership to get the first-hand knowledge about an unprecedented social and political change that took place in the Baltic States over the past nineteen years. In addition, the book allows a point of departure into some historical memory clashes, controversies, and moral and political debates over the past and its impact on the present.

Classical and modern literature often reveal more about the organized world’s forms of power and authority structures than do works of political philosophy. What are the origins of political consciousness? How does our understanding of political power and its exercise originate in literature? Why do the early manifestations of political and religious tolerance appear in utopian literature, rather than in philosophical treatises? Is it possible to do fictionally what others tend to do academically and theoretically? Exploring these questions allows Leonidas Donskis to analyze the relationship between power and imagination, politics and literature, and the principles of reality and imagination.

Are ideology and utopia exhausted and dead on the threshold of the twenty-first century? According to Leonidas Donskis, they survive in the modern social sciences and humanities as well as in various critiques of society and culture, as the inner spring of the cultural and moral imaginations. In tracing what he terms the modern moral imagination, Donskis works out a theory of tolerance, dialogue, human intersubjectivity, the discovery and demonization of the Other, and ideology and utopia as a framework for social and cultural criticism. In portraying four major critics of culture of the twentieth century (Vytautas Kavolis, Ernest Gellner, Louis Dumont, and Lewis Mumford), this book reveals four modes of being of the contemporary critique of culture. Leonidas Donskis shows how modern critiques of culture originate in political philosophy, philosophy of culture, sociology, and the comparative study of civilizations.