Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought

by James W. Ceaser

Book Overview

For too many people, America has become the primary symbol of all that is grotesque, deadening, and oppressive--or, as Heidegger once put it, the "emerging monstrousness of modern times." This image of a degenerate America, constructed by European intellectuals, has been gradually accepted within the United States, for America is now under siege by its own philosophers, literary critics, and postmodern thinkers. It is time, says James Ceaser in this...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300084536
• ISBN13: 9780300084535
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Reconstructing America

Ceaser eloquently captures the intellectual and political foundations of today's anti-america climate. Ceaser provides a clear, yet thorough genealogical analysis of this movement, and manages to spark occasional laughter while providing clever personal insight into the greatest intellectual debates of the 20th century, including the thought of Kojeve, Strauss, Heidegger, and Baudillard. This book has in it the spirit of Alan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind," Roger Kimball's "Tenured Radicals," and Peter Lawler's "Postmodernism Rightly Understood."

It's about anti-americanism

This book is about the intellectual roots of anti-american sentiment. It traces anti-americanism back to 18th century France where Buffon, a famous biologist, developed a theory about the degeneracy of animals and plants in the New World. Although Franklin and Jefferson reacted against Buffon thesis it was to have a brilliant future. James W. Ceaser shows how it morphed through two centuries of intellectual aberrations from having racial, economic to philosophical foundations. Central in his essay are figures like Heidegger and Baudrillard.