Spectrum: From Right To Left In The World Of Ideas

Anderson, Perry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844671356 ISBN 13: 9781844671359

Publisher: Verso, 2007

Spectrum offers a critical survey of the ideas of rival intellectual groupings from the far right, the liberal center and the Marxist left, rarely considered in the same optic. The book opens with a comparative examination of four remarkable minds of the radical right: Michael Oakeshott, Friedrich Hayek, Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt. In the liberal and social-democratic center, it considers John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas and Norberto Bobbio. On the Marxist left, it assesses the work of three major historians: Edward Thompson, Robert Brenner and Eric Hobsbawm, and a great philologist, Sebastiano Timpanaro. Each is considered against the historical background institutional as well as intellectual that set the context of their ideas. Also considered is the impact of the most widely read periodicals that deal with ideas today, the Times Literary Supplement, New York Review of Books and London Review of Books.

Review:

'Sheer pleasure - one of the best political, historical and literary essayists of the age.' --Times Literary Supplement

'Dazzling and unyielding - Anderson remains an inspiring example of thinking in the world, about the world and for the world.' --The Nation

From the Author:

Perry Anderson is the author of Lineages of the Absolutist State, Considerations on Western Marxism, Arguments in English Marxism, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism, A Zone of Engagement and The Origins of Postmodernity; he teaches history at UCLA, and serves on the editorial board of New Left Review.