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The Defeat of the Mind (European Perspectives: a Series in Social Thought & Cultural Ctiticism) by Alain Finkielkraut; translation and introduction by Judith Friedlander is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

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The Defeat of the Mind examines the opposition to Enlightenment thought from the eighteenth century to the present. Finkielkraut asserts that the ostensibly progressive cast of third world anticolonial and anti-Western sentiment, paradoxically, has its antecedent in Eurocentric sources - chiefly the German romantic concept of the Volksgeist, or spirit of the people. Straightforward and succinct, Finkielkraut draws a line between the idea of culture as an expression of the life of the mind and culture as an expression of national spirit. He deplores the appropriation of the concept of the Volksgeist by ethnic nationalists, who employ the notion in justification of such horrors as the Final Solution in Nazi Germany and the current waves of "ethnic cleansing." Equally worrying, he claims, are the seemingly harmless infusions of the Volksgeist into campaigns for ethnic diversity espoused by some social scientists and third world intellectuals. The Defeat of the Mind questions notions of cultural relativism espoused by such intellectual and political leaders as Claude Levi-Strauss and Frantz Fanon. Finkielkraut points to the United Nations and UNESCO - founded to propagate the universal

Who reads The Defeat of the Mind (European Perspectives: a Series in Social Thought & Cultural Ctiticism)?

Author

Alain Finkielkraut; translation and introduction by Judith Friedlander

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published

1995

Language

EN

ISBN

9780231080231

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

History, Social Science, Philosophy

Updated

2026-03-24