Men Of Ideas: A Sociologist's View
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
What does it mean to live a life devoted entirely to the power of ideas? Lewis A. Coser's Men of Ideas: A Sociologist's View investigates the social worlds that produce, constrain, and elevate the intellectual, charting the complex relationships between thinkers and the societies that both nourish and frequently persecute them. Drawing on a sweeping cast of philosophers, writers, scientists, and scholars across history, Coser presents a rigorous sociological anatomy of the intellectual as a social type — examining the salons of Enlightenment France, the coffee houses of England, the universities of Germany, and the publishing houses of America as the institutional arenas where ideas are born, contested, and disseminated. Coser argues with clarity and conviction that intellectuals are never truly free agents; they are shaped by patronage, class, audience, and the shifting tides of political power. Written in a style that is simultaneously scholarly and accessible, the work stands as a landmark contribution to the sociology of knowledge, sitting comfortably alongside the traditions of Karl Mannheim and C. Wright Mills. For anyone who has ever wondered why some ideas change the world while others vanish without a trace, this landmark study offers an answer that is as unsettling as it is illuminating.
Author: Lewis A. Coser
Format: Hardback
Genre: Society & culture
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
What does it mean to live a life devoted entirely to the power of ideas? Lewis A. Coser's Men of Ideas: A Sociologist's View investigates the social worlds that produce, constrain, and elevate the intellectual, charting the complex relationships between thinkers and the societies that both nourish and frequently persecute them. Drawing on a sweeping cast of philosophers, writers, scientists, and scholars across history, Coser presents a rigorous sociological anatomy of the intellectual as a social type — examining the salons of Enlightenment France, the coffee houses of England, the universities of Germany, and the publishing houses of America as the institutional arenas where ideas are born, contested, and disseminated. Coser argues with clarity and conviction that intellectuals are never truly free agents; they are shaped by patronage, class, audience, and the shifting tides of political power. Written in a style that is simultaneously scholarly and accessible, the work stands as a landmark contribution to the sociology of knowledge, sitting comfortably alongside the traditions of Karl Mannheim and C. Wright Mills. For anyone who has ever wondered why some ideas change the world while others vanish without a trace, this landmark study offers an answer that is as unsettling as it is illuminating.