From Kant to Lévi-Strauss The Background to Contemporary Critical Theory

An accessible basic guide to critical post-Enlightenment European thinking, this book introduces fifteen key figures in modern Western philosophy. The intellectual tradition covered is broadly the Continental philosophy and theory that has had a significant impact on many theoretical innovations in the humanities and social sciences. The book covers those thinkers whose work serves as the background for many contemporary thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Habermas. There are individual chapters on Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lukacs, Adorno and Horkheimer, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, Arendt, and Levi-Strauss. Each chapter offers contextualization, explains major concepts and the thinker's relevance to an ongoing tradition, and offers suggestions for further reading.

Jon Simons has been the director of the MA in Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham since 1995