Customer Reviews

Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Postmodernity (Routledge Key Guides)

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As a student in my final semester of art school, I keep Lechte on my shelf next to other essential texts: Berger's Ways of Seeing; McLoud's Understanding Comics; Forward Through The Rearview Mirror; and Braudy and Cohen's Introduction to Film Theory. Like these other books, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers is a valuable and succinct introduction to elements of our cultural landscape. Although at first I found the author's style intimidating (not to mention the topic), I quickly was not only put at ease with the subject, but was also engaged and excited by the ideas presented. Soon, I was scribbling in the margins my reactions and thoughts. By presenting various schools of thought and their proponents in a concise yet rigorous manner, Lechte enables the novice reader to join the discouse of current theory. By the end of the book, I had put aside my stereo-type of current philosophers being obscure, incomprehensible, and French (well, they are still French, but two out of three isn't bad). The book's organizational structure makes it an excellent reference volume and the further readings sections are especially usefull for both introductory and advanced students of the subject.

Any good survey of thought in any discipline or of any particular period ought to meet a few critieria to be highly useful.

1. It must be representative.
2. It must be more descriptive rather than judgmental in its exposition.
2. It must be informative.
3. It must be concise.
5. It must be lucid.
6. It must set the expectation right.

This survey of contemporary thought meets 4 of these 6 criterion. However it fails to be representative, which I believe is the most important chracteristic of a survey of thought. It also sets the expectation wrong with the phrase 'Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers'. It fails to be representative in the following few ways:

A. Most thinkers are French.
B. Most thinkers are those who rose to prominence in 1970s and were on wane in the 1990s.
C. Most thinkers are from philosophy.
D. Some thinkers celebrated here have hardly any widespread influence on contemporary thought like Canguillhem, Cavailles, Pateman, LeDeouff et al. Nor are these thinkers originators of any breakthrough ideas.
E. Some thinkers who have had a major influence on contemporary thought like Giddens, Elias and Luhmann in sociology, Alisdair MacIntyre et al. in philosophy, have not been represented.
6. Written about ten years ago, it is already a little dated with new thinkers like Alain Badiou, Richard Rorty, Daniel Dennett, Roberto Magngabeira Unger, David Chalmers, Michael Walzer, George Sher, Antonio Negri et al., who rose to international proimenence in social sciences/philosophy in the 1990s, not being covered.
7. Scientists will hate this book. It makes it seem as if thought is only social science.

That stated, there are also significant merits of this work which makes it worth reading.

1. I had not heard about influential thinkers like Deleuze/Guattari, Lyotard and others before reading this book.
2. This book gives a very good, concise and lucid overview of the thought of the thinkers selected (irrespective of the bias) in the tradition of Diane Collinson's work (which provided the model for this).
3. The trends covered here are certainly the more dominant or controversial trends rising to prominence in recent decades (in social sciences, especially philosophy).
4. Many (but not all) of the trends/thinkers covered have had a cross-domain influence, although they originated in philosophy.

Perhaps this book would have been more satisfactory if it had been titiled right, maybe Fifty Key French Post-Modern and Miscellaneous Thinkers. With its current title, this book has the bias of leading the reader towards developing an interest in post-modern thinkers. If taken as a reference bible it would opens reader's minds to new thought but end up closing their minds with post-modern rantings.

For a good survey of thought, the readers may also consult some of my favourite sources for catching up with information important thinkers (in areas as indicated in brackets):

1. Thinkers of the Twentieth Century (all subjects till from 1900 to 1970s/1980s)
2. Dagobert Runes' Pictorial History of Philosophy (for philosophy -- ancient to 1950s)
3. Frank Magill's Masterpieces in World Philosophy (for philosophy -- ancient to 1950s)
4. William Ebenstein's Great Political Thinkers (for political thought -- ancient to 1950s)
5. 18-volume International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Biographical Supplement (for social sciences - late nineteenth and first half of twentieth century)
6. Charles Coulston Gillespie's Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists (for science - not sure this is the exact title).
7. Lewis Haney's History of Economic Thought (for economics, somewhat dated - covers economics till the Keynesian revolution only)
8. Other volumes in the Routledge Key Series (much better written).
9. Ross Stagner's A History of Psychological Theories (for psychology -- ancient to 1960s)
10. Robert Gorman's Biographical Dictionary of Marxism and Biographical Dictionary of Neo-Marxism (for Marxism - the Marxism dictionary has a lot of trivial thinkers of very minor consequence making it seem a laundry list; the Neo-Marxism diciotnary is somewhat better.)
11. Tom Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought (for Marxism)
12. Elmer Borklund's Contemporary Literary Critics (twentieth century literary critics).

Many of these works except Routledge Key Series are out-of-print although not completely dated, and anyone who gets hold of a copy will find a lot to explore in the areas these books pertain to. For other specific subject areas, I have not been able to find good biographical dictionaries or subject histories, although I tried, and had to pick up references the hard way, through citations and book indexes.

"Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers : From Structuralism to Postmodernity" is not a bad introduction to the seemingly incomprehensible world of modern and postmodern thought. However, the author John Lechte is only slightly less murky in his analysis of postmodern thinkers than they are within their often impenetrable worlds. He clearly identifies with their camp, as well as their (often unintended) support of the political New Right.

Lechte is especially hard on those critics of postmodernism, such as Noam Chomsky - calling him an "embattled rationalist painfully trying to make headway against the forces of empiricism." In my oprinion, Chomsky's wonderfully convincing denunciation of much of postmodern thought has caused this overreaction.

Lechte even dredges up the disproved "Faurisson affair" - stating that Chomsky had a "tremendous lapse of political judgement" in writing "a Preface to Faurisson's notorious book against the Nazi gas chambers". Countless right winged detractors have used this myth in an attempt to undermine Chomsky (who is Jewish). It is false. Although Chomsky did state that all shades of opinion have the right to be heard (which Lechte calls misguided!?), it is now well established that Chomsky never did give his permission to "publish a Preface" for Faurisson.

Although some of my students have found this book useful, considering the above inconstancies and po-mo murkiness, I would caution customers in purchasing this book.

'... an indispensable reference book on this century's most important intellectual revolution' - from the blurb.

Is it relativity or quantum theory? Does it overturn our ideas on the origin and fate of the universe, or elucidate the deep foundations of mathematics? No, it's pomo. How many people would take this stuff seriously if it didn't sustain an academic job-creation program? Strange that a book calling itself 'Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers' could be published near the end of the twentieth century and contain not a word about about Russell, Carnap, Popper or Wittgenstein. I suppose that, as advertised, this tells us something about our culture.

Chomsky makes the grade, though under grave suspicion of rationality (he can't get his head round post-structuralist doubletalk, even fashionable relativism eludes him); also Freud and Nietzsche for their iconic status and power of myth-making; Saussure, too, of course. Then it's on with the chorus of important revolutionary intellectuals, who happen to be mostly French: Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Lyotard, dozens of other Key Thinkers you never knew you needed. By this time, if higher education has left you with any critical faculty, you may be thinking: if these are the keys, where is the door?

The book is not badly written by the standards of its subjects, and in a way this is an achievement, but the author's judgment is questionable. Elsewhere he thinks, for example, that Kristeva's early semiotics was marked by 'intricate rigor' - important intellectual-speak for bits of mathematical decoration stuck on at random. I have read it. Whatever it was, it did the trick; Kristeva has been an important intellectual ever since. If you want to find out about these people, this book is as good a starting point as any. The bad news is that you have to read some of the original works. Important lists of 'Major writings' and 'Further reading' are provided for that very purpose. But life is short; read 'Postmodern Pooh' by Frederick Crews instead. And if you find yourself starting to take the title of this book seriously, try and get out more.

A good account, at the same level, of really key thinkers (sadly not all contemporary) is 'The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers', ed. Urmson & Ree. It even mentions Einstein.

From all the critical reviews the book receives here - one must know that something's up. Undoubtedly, Lechte has taken on a massive project. As he states either on Routledge's website or in the intro, the concept emerged as an attempt to write a continuation of Collinson's Fifty Major Philosophers: A Reference Guide (widely used in undergraduate classrooms), to which it is, as intended, a companion volume. Of what do these two books consist? A series of scholarly vignettes on each figure, each no more than five pages (the text is formatted in columns - reference style) in length, followed by a brief bibliography of the thinker's major writings and the foremost academic studies. In short, the book attempts to provide a solid, fairly wide-ranging, and most importantly, quick reference, aiming for precision and breadth, rather than depth. In this intent, the book succeeds, admirably. Where else, in English, are you going to find brief but incisive descriptions of the major concepts of this important and influential collection of thinkers, whose names are well-known, but whose thought, for various reasons (not the least of which is the notorious complexity of their writing), remains generally obscure?

Lechte here attempts an overview of basically four influential movements in 20th century philosophy: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Post (or Neo) - Marxism, Post-Modernism. Why are major thinkers of some of the seemingly more important schools such as Phenomenology, Existentialism, Analytic Philosophy excluded? Well, many of the "key thinkers" in these areas (in many ways continuations of 19th century thought) are discussed in Collinson: notably Marx, Heidegger, Sartre, Russell, Wittgenstein, James, and Quine. The idea is that the two books form a set. This condition is evidently maddening to many of the reviewers here, who wish that Lechte had attempted more. But, we must remember, that Lechte is providing a companion volume which compliments Collinson's. He is not trying to give a comprehensive genealogy of 20th century thought, rather a guide to contemporary thought. I grant, however, that, as some familiarity the work of such figures as Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger is essential to understanding many of the ideas of the thinkers discussed, Lechte is forced to perform a juggling act in which he is sometimes more, sometimes less successful. In the new edition, which I have not read as yet, he addresses a few of these thinkers directly, and covers 21st century developments such as the work of Butler and Zizek.

Another of the shortcomings of this svelte and well-proportioned study - unavoidable in a sense - is that a number of the figures are discussed in a limited dimension of their work. The reviewer who complains about the coverage of Chomsky is correct, and I would add that history will recognize Chomsky as an important but lesser figure in the Structuralist debate, and perhaps the greatest of late twentieth century Neo-Marxists (Lechte calls them Post-Marxists). An analysis of the enormous import of Chomsky's contribution to political philosophy is sadly absent, because Lechte has too narrowly categorized him by exclusively focusing on the less important aspect of his work. The section on Freud exhibits the same problem, but in a different way. Focusing entirely on Freud's noted Early Structuralism, confining his discussing to a few early works, Lechte misses entirely the importance of his much more exciting later works, The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and Its Discontents, and the seminal, Moses and Monotheism, which in many senses anticipate the project of Deconstruction. Why he doesn't simply list The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Freud in his bibliography is another curiosity. Lechte must realize that books such as his are as close as many readers will get to these thinkers, and in this understanding, he bears a responsibility, not only to the subjects of his study but to the public at large, as well.

On this note, perhaps the most eggregious and perhaps revealing omission is that of Herbert Marcuse, who lays claim to being the most influential Post/Neo-Marxist public intellectual. As Lechte appears to have been educated in the Reagan/Bush eighties and early nineties, when Marcuse was "out of fashion" in ever slavish, bourgeois academia, his preferences are understandable, however lamentable. Notwithstanding, his work remains valuable in its singularity. Twentieth-Century French Philosophy by Schrift (Blackwell) is the only other title I know of which comes close to providing the same service.

Although the book is not without its shortcomings, Lechte has made a real contribution to the fund of public knowledge about a crucial, yet, in the particulars of its development, largely inaccessible, body of thought. A great addition to the common reader's bookshelf, that is, the reader who doesn't want to spend years of study preparing to read The Post-Card or Negative Dialectics, in order to get the hang of what's written in those intriguing, yet often quixotic and intimidating tomes.

I bought this while beginning grad school in anthropology back in 1995, and still turn to it regularly. There is much to argue with in terms of interpretations of particular authors' work but as a well-documented and concise reference work it can't be beat.

This book is the treasure of my life. I have the first print of this book for a couple of years. This book could give you clear understanding of the philosophers' thinking without reading the original text. This is the only book in encyclopedia format that I know, can acheive this goal. This book is a must for philosophy, music and art students.