Critique of Rationality: Judgement and Creativity from Benjamin to Merleau-Ponty (Studies in Critical Social Sciences)

Critique of Rationality postulates aesthetic-consciousness as the site of socialization in communities of meaning, as a frame for judgment and creativity, arguing that struggling to awaken that consciousness is essential to an open society. In making this argument, O'Brien moves through phenomenology, epistemology, Romanticism, aesthetics, and psycho-analytics, drawing on many of the key thinkers of western philosophy on the way.

John Eustice O'Brien, Ph.D. (Wisconsin, 1971), formerly Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, Portland State University, Oregon, now independent researcher in Paris, recently published, Critical Practice from Voltaire to Foucault (Haymarket, 2015) and two articles on the Global Political Economy in Critical Sociology (2015 & 2016).