The Mathematical Imagination
This book gives us a more capacious version of critical theory, providing humanists with tools to confront the digital age.This book joins a renaissance of scholarly interest in German-Jewish intellectuals, such as Siegfried Kracauer and Gershom Scholem, offering a unique synthesis of their insights...
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| Главный автор: | |
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| Формат: | Online |
| Язык: | английский |
| Опубликовано: |
Fordham University Press
2023
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| Предметы: | |
| Online-ссылка: | ONIX_20231005_9780823283859_192 |
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| _version_ | 1869528644855005184 |
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| author | Handelman, Matthew |
| author_browse | Handelman, Matthew |
| author_facet | Handelman, Matthew |
| author_sort | Handelman, Matthew |
| collection | Directory of Open Access Books |
| description | This book gives us a more capacious version of critical theory, providing humanists with tools to confront the digital age.This book joins a renaissance of scholarly interest in German-Jewish intellectuals, such as Siegfried Kracauer and Gershom Scholem, offering a unique synthesis of their insights into language, messianism, and cultural critique.This book shows the surprising yet salient contribution of not only mathematics, but also Jewish thought to the project of critical theory. This book offers an archeology of the undeveloped potential of mathematics for critical theory. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno first conceived of the critical project in the 1930s, critical theory steadfastly opposed the mathematization of thought. Mathematics flattened thought into a dangerous positivism that led reason to the barbarism of World War II. The Mathematical Imagination challenges this narrative, showing how for other German-Jewish thinkers, such as Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, and Siegfried Kracauer, mathematics offered metaphors to negotiate the crises of modernity during the Weimar Republic. Influential theories of poetry, messianism, and cultural critique, Handelman shows, borrowed from the philosophy of mathematics, infinitesimal calculus, and geometry in order to refashion cultural and aesthetic discourse. Drawn to the austerity and muteness of mathematics, these friends and forerunners of the Frankfurt School found in mathematical approaches to negativity strategies to capture the marginalized experiences and perspectives of Jews in Germany. Their vocabulary, in which theory could be both mathematical and critical, is missing from the intellectual history of critical theory, whether in the work of second generation critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas or in contemporary critiques of technology. The Mathematical Imagination shows how Scholem, Rosenzweig, and Kracauer's engagement with mathematics uncovers a more capacious vision of the critical project, one with tools that can help us intervene in our digital and increasingly mathematical present. The author's prose is lucid, engaging, and accessible, requiring no specialty knowledge of mathematics.This is the first study in English to call into question Horkheimer and Adorno's antagonism toward mathematics and to reveal and recover the lines of critical thought that it covered up. |
| format | Online |
| id | doab-20.500.12854ir-114408 |
| institution | Directory of Open Access Books |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publishDateRange | 2023 |
| publishDateSort | 2023 |
| publisher | Fordham University Press |
| publisherStr | Fordham University Press |
| record_format | ojs |
| spelling | doab-20.500.12854ir-1144082024-04-08T20:10:39Z The Mathematical Imagination Handelman, Matthew Philosophy Mathematics Language & Literature Jewish Studies bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HP Philosophy::HPC History of Western philosophy::HPCF Western philosophy, from c 1900 - bic Book Industry Communication::P Mathematics & science::PB Mathematics::PBX History of mathematics bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies::DS Literature: history & criticism::DSA Literary theory bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences::JF Society & culture: general::JFS Social groups::JFSR Religious groups: social & cultural aspects thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDH Philosophical traditions and schools of thought::QDHR Western philosophy from c 1800 thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PB Mathematics::PBX History of mathematics thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSA Literary theory thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSR Social groups: religious groups and communities This book gives us a more capacious version of critical theory, providing humanists with tools to confront the digital age.This book joins a renaissance of scholarly interest in German-Jewish intellectuals, such as Siegfried Kracauer and Gershom Scholem, offering a unique synthesis of their insights into language, messianism, and cultural critique.This book shows the surprising yet salient contribution of not only mathematics, but also Jewish thought to the project of critical theory. This book offers an archeology of the undeveloped potential of mathematics for critical theory. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno first conceived of the critical project in the 1930s, critical theory steadfastly opposed the mathematization of thought. Mathematics flattened thought into a dangerous positivism that led reason to the barbarism of World War II. The Mathematical Imagination challenges this narrative, showing how for other German-Jewish thinkers, such as Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, and Siegfried Kracauer, mathematics offered metaphors to negotiate the crises of modernity during the Weimar Republic. Influential theories of poetry, messianism, and cultural critique, Handelman shows, borrowed from the philosophy of mathematics, infinitesimal calculus, and geometry in order to refashion cultural and aesthetic discourse. Drawn to the austerity and muteness of mathematics, these friends and forerunners of the Frankfurt School found in mathematical approaches to negativity strategies to capture the marginalized experiences and perspectives of Jews in Germany. Their vocabulary, in which theory could be both mathematical and critical, is missing from the intellectual history of critical theory, whether in the work of second generation critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas or in contemporary critiques of technology. The Mathematical Imagination shows how Scholem, Rosenzweig, and Kracauer's engagement with mathematics uncovers a more capacious vision of the critical project, one with tools that can help us intervene in our digital and increasingly mathematical present. The author's prose is lucid, engaging, and accessible, requiring no specialty knowledge of mathematics.This is the first study in English to call into question Horkheimer and Adorno's antagonism toward mathematics and to reveal and recover the lines of critical thought that it covered up. 2023-10-05T10:05:09Z 2023-10-05T10:05:09Z 2019 book ONIX_20231005_9780823283859_192 9780823283859 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/114408 eng image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctv8jp0g3 Fordham University Press 10.2307/j.ctv8jp0g3 10.2307/j.ctv8jp0g3 37ec2b5e-0d2c-4625-aaec-dd64680a22fe 29bed139-aa4c-4edd-b7ff-f3b424868118 9780823283859 [...] open access |
| spellingShingle | Philosophy Mathematics Language & Literature Jewish Studies bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HP Philosophy::HPC History of Western philosophy::HPCF Western philosophy, from c 1900 - bic Book Industry Communication::P Mathematics & science::PB Mathematics::PBX History of mathematics bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies::DS Literature: history & criticism::DSA Literary theory bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences::JF Society & culture: general::JFS Social groups::JFSR Religious groups: social & cultural aspects thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDH Philosophical traditions and schools of thought::QDHR Western philosophy from c 1800 thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PB Mathematics::PBX History of mathematics thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSA Literary theory thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSR Social groups: religious groups and communities Handelman, Matthew The Mathematical Imagination |
| title | The Mathematical Imagination |
| title_full | The Mathematical Imagination |
| title_fullStr | The Mathematical Imagination |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Mathematical Imagination |
| title_short | The Mathematical Imagination |
| title_sort | mathematical imagination |
| topic | Philosophy Mathematics Language & Literature Jewish Studies bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HP Philosophy::HPC History of Western philosophy::HPCF Western philosophy, from c 1900 - bic Book Industry Communication::P Mathematics & science::PB Mathematics::PBX History of mathematics bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies::DS Literature: history & criticism::DSA Literary theory bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences::JF Society & culture: general::JFS Social groups::JFSR Religious groups: social & cultural aspects thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDH Philosophical traditions and schools of thought::QDHR Western philosophy from c 1800 thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PB Mathematics::PBX History of mathematics thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSA Literary theory thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSR Social groups: religious groups and communities |
| topic_facet | Philosophy Mathematics Language & Literature Jewish Studies bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HP Philosophy::HPC History of Western philosophy::HPCF Western philosophy, from c 1900 - bic Book Industry Communication::P Mathematics & science::PB Mathematics::PBX History of mathematics bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies::DS Literature: history & criticism::DSA Literary theory bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences::JF Society & culture: general::JFS Social groups::JFSR Religious groups: social & cultural aspects thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDH Philosophical traditions and schools of thought::QDHR Western philosophy from c 1800 thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PB Mathematics::PBX History of mathematics thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSA Literary theory thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSR Social groups: religious groups and communities |
| url | ONIX_20231005_9780823283859_192 |
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