AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (European Perspectives) by Gillian Rose ISBN: 0-231-04584-0 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1979 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $54.50

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 2 (1 review)

Rating: 2
Summary: Interesting Reading, though Geared Towards Academics
Comment: The experience I had with Gillian Rose's _The Melancholy Science_ was generally one of misunderstanding and frustration. The primary complaint I have with the work is that does not serve its purpose as an "introduction" to Adorno's philosophy. Instead, it is geared towards the well-seasoned undergraduate or graduate philosophy/sociology student. While I was interested in philosophy at university, it was not my major and I did not take more than a few courses in it. This hardly provided the foundation for understanding modern, complex texts that make use of the past two milleniums worth of thought. I am, at best, an "armchair philosopher," and this is the position in which I review Rose's work.
Hoping _The Melancholy Science_ would help me better understand the intricacies of a thinker I am currently interested in, I found the exposition on the thought of Adorno to be anything but an introduction. While I was never expecting to have my "hand held" through the inevitably deep ridges of Adorno's thought, my impression was that his main views would be examined in relatively straightforward (that is, somewhat un-academic) language and bring in references to others when necessary.
Rose, however, expects the reader to be relatively familiar with most of Adorno's predecessors: Husserl, Heidegger, Horkheimer, Marx, Nietzsche, Kierkagaard, Benjamin, Lukacs, Weber, etc. and their terminology. This may be an unavoidable form of presentation, since Adorno grounded his philosophy heavily in response to other's thoughts (he seems to have been a reactionary thinker as much as a creative one), but it still strikes me as strange that a book about Adorno features more delineation on the views of others than Adorno.
Commentary about Adorno's thoughts are nestled inbetween paragraphs concerning the aforementioned thinkers, often a brief paragraph linking two larger ones on someone else's views. Occasionally, these insights that Rose offers are interesting and helpful (such as her attempt to instruct one how to read Adorno and what his method of writing was) at times, while difficult to understand or relate to previously mentioned thinkers' ideas at others.
The work would also benefit from better proofreading and editing (for example, several times throughout the work, parallel sentences begin with the same overused introductory method: 'on the other hand', 'to begin with', etc. and there are numerous grammatical errors).

Essentially, the work is to be read by experienced philosophers and sociologists who are familiar with those that contributed to Adorno's thought and understand the major arguments and situations of his day. This is not a title for neophytes to Adorno or the Frankfurt School - indeed, if I hadn't read anything by or of Adorno beforehand, I would have been completely lost. Perhaps the Frankfurt School Reader better serves this goal.