Albrecht Wellmer Book order

This collection of thirteen essays by a prominent figure in contemporary German philosophy explores the concept of postmetaphysical modernity. The preface connects the title, Endgames, to the central theme: historical utopias from the Marxist tradition and Kantian programs of ultimate justification represent endgames within metaphysics. Their deconstruction serves as a critique of these metaphysical constructs, addressing the ultimate telos of history, knowledge, and human life. The title also critiques postmodernist approaches that seek to dismiss modernity; Wellmer defends the essential moral and political aspects of modernity that must be preserved in a postmetaphysical context, distinguishing his work. In the first section, "Negative and Communicative Freedom," he examines the relationship between liberal rights and modern democracy. Part II, "Postmetaphysical Perspectives," develops insights on aesthetics, metaphysics, truth, and hermeneutics, engaging with thinkers like Adorno, Rorty, Habermas, and Gadamer. The final section, "Images of the Times," features essays on Wittgenstein, the Frankfurt School, Hans Jonas, and architecture. The book concludes with a critical essay on Hannah Arendt, highlighting her political philosophy's significance to Wellmer's thought.

The Persistence of Modernity presents four essays, drawn from works by one of Germany's foremost philosophers, that go to the heart of a number of contemporary Adorno's aesthetics, the nature of a postmodern ethics, and the persistence of modernity in the so-called postmodern age.Albrecht Wellmer defends the general thesis that modernity contains its own critique and that what has been called postmodernism is in fact a further articulation of that critique. More specifically, his essays offer a reinterpretation of Adorno's aesthetics in the framework of a postutopian philosophy of communicative reason, an analysis of the postmodern critique of instrumental reason and its subject that becomes an argument for democratic pluralism and universalism, a discussion of the dialectics of modernism and postmodernism in the context of architecture and industrial design, and a dialogical ethics that is inspired by and yet takes issue with Habermas's discourse ethics.