"A fascinating evocation of changing styles of personal and public expression. . . ."--Robert Lekachman, Saturday Review
The Fall of Public Man
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“Sennett presses social theory and historical experience to his service in developing a provocative thesis: that the public world stage has been usurped by the private psychic scene to the detriment of both individual and society. Sennett's quest for the causes of the impoverishment of civil life in modern industrial society opens fascinating perspectives into the relationship between theater, politics, urban life, and the changing function of the family.” (Carl Schorske, Princeton University )
“One of the most stimulating and challenging books to be written in years. . . . A major attempt . . . to re-examine the assumptions and objectives of the 1960s and transcend them without compromising their ideals. One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett's erudition, the reach of his historical imagination. . . . By all means buy this book and read it.” (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times )
“[...] Sennett is at once a historian, sociologist, student of psychoanalytic doctrine . . . and celebrant of city life. . . . Seldom have I read a serious work of social theory that explains as much contemporary experience as Sennett's does.” (Robert Lekachman - Saturday Review )
“One of the most stimulating and challenging books to be written in years. . . . A major attempt . . . to re-examine the assumptions and objectives of the 1960s and transcend them without compromising their ideals. One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett's erudition, the reach of his historical imagination. . . . By all means buy this book and read it.” (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times )
“[...] Sennett is at once a historian, sociologist, student of psychoanalytic doctrine . . . and celebrant of city life. . . . Seldom have I read a serious work of social theory that explains as much contemporary experience as Sennett's does.” (Robert Lekachman - Saturday Review )
About the Author
Richard Sennett teaches sociology at the London School of Economics and New York University
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36 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Sennett scrutinizes those problems caused by the inbalance between personal and public life.According to Sennett, the 'public life' which is a significant piece of life besides the family and friendships was once so lively and meant much to individuals.There used to be a 'publicity' that contributed to the individuals' skills of 'play'through emotinal ties with strangers and to the civilization of the individual.Being a 'public man' well expressed in the 18th century European cities has become a gradually weakened phenomenon being replaced with the 'private life'.And has become as significant as the private life allows it to...Sennett asks,"How has the stranger been transformed into a threatening factor? How is it that today, keeping silent and remaining as the audience is the only way of joining the public life? In turn, how do these factors foster personality deficiencies? Solitude that is a result of modernism renders the individual a person captured by the private life.Sennett explains this process through works of Balzac and Diderot, theater, music, architecture,Dreyfus case and Richard Nixon. Richard Sennett is by no means hopeless; he is exploring the possibilites of getting to know 'the other' instead of imagining a 'lost public paradise'.
24 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Beyond Habermas' description of the changes that have taken place in the Western public sphere, with a better emphasis on empirical and historical data, the book gives a detailed account on the rise and fall of our interacting abilities. From the marketplace to the theater, the 19th century (and then the 20th) saw the decline of «play», along with its replacement by vicarious figures, like the «genius», the performing arts «vedettes» and now the politician as someone who feels (and does) what we are not anymore able to feel. Instead of hysteria, the civilizational disease is now narcissism, the unableness to act regardless of one's inner feelings. To be read along with Sennett's other masterpiece, a romance entitled «Palais-Royal».
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- Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) by Thomas Carlyle on 5 pages
- The Future of an Illusion (The Standard Edition) (Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud) by Sigmund Freud on page 271, page 272, and Back Matter
- The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin on page 146, page 171, and Back Matter
- Illusions Perdues by Honore de Balzac on page 24, page 154, and page 159
- Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga on page 317, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
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- American Folklore Studies: An Intellectual History by Simon J. Bronner on 6 pages
- Body, Place, and Self in Nineteenth-Century Painting by Susan Sidlauskas on 6 pages
- The Politics of Self-Expression: The Urdu Middleclass Milieu in Mid-Twentieth Century India and Pakistan (Royal Asiatic Society Books) by Markus Daechsel on 6 pages
- Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy (Morality and Society Series) by Jeff Weintraub on 5 pages
- Politics, Philosophy, Terror by Dana Villa on 4 pages
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