Thoughts Among The Ruins Collected Essays On Europe And Beyond George Lichtheim by George Lichtheim 9781412839990, 1412839998 instant download after payment.

The essays and reviews assembled in this volume were written and published over a period of two decades. It appears to me that they reflect certain underlying concerns which have not altered with the passing of time, but the judgment must be left to the reader. The book is not a critical anthology, nor is it an attempt to put a particular viewpoint across. There is heavy emphasis on political topics but no adherence to anything that could be described as a party line. There are likewise sporadic attempts to deal with literary and philosophical matters although not in the usual academic manner. On balance there is a gradual shift from political to sociological subjects, but I should state that, although I am heavily indebted to contemporary sociology, I am not a trained sociologist nor a professional historian in the conventional meaning of the term.

Some of the opinions expressed in the various essays and reviews that make up the volume may strike the reader as old fashioned, and I am in fact more heavily indebted to the philosophy, history, and sociology of the nineteenth century than is customary among present-day writers on these topics. I have brought together material of the most varied shapes and styles, but all deal with issues that I happen to regard as central to the present time. I trust I have learned something from modern scholarship and from the literature of the past four decades, but my instinctive sympathies lie with the representative thinkers of the age that ended in 1914.