In this unflinching look at the experience of suffering and one of its greatest manifestations—torture—J. M. Bernstein critiques the repressions of traditional moral theory, showing that our morals are not immutable ideals but fragile constructions that depend on our experience of suffering itself. Morals, Bernstein argues, not only guide our conduct but also express the depth of mutual dependence that we share as vulnerable and injurable individuals. Beginning with the attempts to abolish torture in the eighteenth century, and then sensitively examining what is suffered in torture and related transgressions, such as rape, Bernstein elaborates a powerful new conception of moral injury. Crucially, he shows, moral injury always involves an injury to the status of an individual as a person—it is a violent assault against his or her dignity. Elaborating on this critical element of moral injury, he demonstrates that the mutual recognitions of trust form the invisible substance of our moral lives, that dignity is a fragile social possession, and that the perspective of ourselves as potential victims is an ineliminable feature of everyday moral experience.

Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury

Business & Money

Bernstein, J. M.

Business Culture

University of Chicago Press

<div>In this unflinching look at the experience of suffering and one of its greatest manifestations--torture--J. M. Bernstein critiques the repressions of traditional moral theory, showing that our morals are not immutable ideals but fragile constructions that depend on our experience of suffering itself. Morals, Bernstein argues, not only guide our conduct but also express the depth of mutual dependence that we share as vulnerable and injurable individuals. &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Beginning with the attempts to abolish torture in the eighteenth century, and then sensitively examining what is suffered in torture and related transgressions, such as rape, Bernstein elaborates a powerful new conception of moral injury. Crucially, he shows, moral injury always involves an injury to the status of an individual as a person--it is a violent assault against his or her dignity. Elaborating on this critical element of moral injury, he demonstrates that the mutual recognitions of trust form the invisible substance of our moral lives, that dignity is a fragile social possession, and that the perspective of ourselves as potential victims is an ineliminable feature of everyday moral experience.&nbsp;</div>

Aesthetic alienation may be described as the paradoxical relationship whereby art and truth have come to be divorced from one another while nonetheless remaining entwined. J. M. Bernstein not only finds the separation of art and truth problematic, but also contends that we continue to experience art as sensuous and particular, thus complicating and challenging the cultural self-understanding of modernity. 
Bernstein focuses on the work of four key philosophers—Kant, Heidegger, Derrida, and Adorno—and provides powerful new interpretations of their views. Bernstein shows how each of the three post-Kantian aesthetics (its concepts of judgment, genius, and the sublime) to construct a philosophical language that can criticize and displace the categorical assumption of modernity. He also examines in detail their responses to questions concerning the relations among art, philosophy, and politics in modern societies.

The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno (Literature and Philosophy)

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Penn State University Press

Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Modern European Philosophy)

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was the leading philosopher of the first generation of the Frankfurt School and is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J.M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music.

History

Cambridge University Press

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

This book focuses on the work of four key thinkers - Kant, Heidegger, Derrida and Adorno - and provides a new interpretation of their writings on art, aesthetics and politics. Bernstein argues that our experience of art today is conditioned by the loss of the truth-function of art: with the growth of modern science and technological reasons, art is relegated to a separate and autonomous domain of the aesthetic. This condition of "aesthetic alienation" - the raging discord between art and truth - is one of the most perspicuous signs of the fragmentation of modernity. Aesthetic alienation is challenged in differing ways by modern Continental philosophers like Heidegger, Derrida and Adorno. Bernstein shows how each of these philosophers uses the experience of art and the discourse of aesthetics to criticize the fragmentation of modernity. He examines in detail their responses to aesthetic alientation and raises a range of fundamental questions concerning the relations between art, philosophy and politics in modern societies.

The Fate of Art

Blackwell Pub.

This original and wide-ranging book, now available in paperback, is a major contribution to contemporary philosophy. Bernstein focuses on the work of four key thinkers - Kant, Heidegger, Derrida and Adorno - and provides a powerful new interpretation of their writings on art, aesthetics and politics.Bernstein argues that our experience of art today is conditioned by the loss of the truth-function of art: with the growth of modern science and technological reason, art is relegated to a separate and autonomous domain of the aesthetic. This condition of 'aesthetic alienation' - the raging discord between art and truth - is one of the most perspicuous signs of the fragmentation of modernity.Aesthetic alienation is challenged in differing ways by modern Continental philosophers like Heidegger, Derrida and Adorno. Bernstein shows how each of these philosophers uses the experience of art and the discourse of aesthetics to criticize the fragmentation of modernity. He examines in detail their responses to aesthetic alienation and raises a range of fundamental questions concerning the relations between art, philosophy and politics in modern societies.

The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno

Polity

Against Voluptuous Bodies: Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting (Cultural Memory in the Present)

The aim of this book is to provide an account of modernist painting that follows on from the aesthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno. It offers a materialist account of modernism with detailed discussions of modern aesthetics from Kant to Arthur Danto, Stanley Cavell, and Adorno. It discusses in detail competing accounts of modernism: Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, Yve-Alain Bois, and Thierry de Duve; and it discusses several painters and artists in detail: Pieter de Hooch, Jackson Pollock, Robert Ryman, Cindy Sherman, and Chaim Soutine. Its central thesis is that modernist painting exemplifies a form of rationality that is an alternative to the instrumental rationality of enlightened modernity. Modernist paintings exemplify how nature and the sociality of meaning can be reconciled.

Stanford University Press

The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukacs, Marxism and the Dialects of Form

Literature & Fiction

Univ of Minnesota Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bernstein, J. M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bernstein, J. M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bernstein, J. M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury

Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury

The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno (Literature and Philosophy)

The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno (Literature and Philosophy)

Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Modern European Philosophy)

Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Modern European Philosophy)

The Fate of Art

The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno

Against Voluptuous Bodies: Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting (Cultural Memory in the Present)

The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukacs, Marxism and the Dialects of Form