18 books like To hell with culture, and other essays on art and society

What to read after To hell with culture, and other essays on art and society — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault · 1975 · ★ 4.1 · 333p · ≈ 11h · Moderate English version of "Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison" Shares: Essays, Philosophy

The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin · 1974 · ★ 4.3 · 352p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the planet, Anarres, to challenge… Shares: Community pick

Towards democracy Edward Carpenter · 1883 · ★ 4.1 · 526p · ≈ 17h · Challenging Il Carpenter non è nome nuovo in Italia. Alcuni suoi libri di psicologia furon già tradotti, ma nessuno aveva finora pensato a tradurre l'opera sua più famosa, che fa di lui, con spiriti un pò diversi, un degno continuatore del grande Walt Whitman. (G. Papini) Shares: Democracy, Socialism

Culture and religion in some of their relations John Campbell Shairp · 1871 · 197p · ≈ 6h · Challenging Shares: Culture, Essays, Philosophy

Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur Arnold Hauser · 1951 · ★ 3.8 · 304p · ≈ 10h · Moderate First published in 1951 as Socialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur, Arnold Hauser's comprehensive work explores the interaction between art and society. Through the detailing of social and historical movements Hauser provides insight into the origins of visual art. Shares: Art and society, Art, Philosophy

Democracy and Education John Dewey · 1916 · ★ 4.0 · 218p · ≈ 7h · Challenging Publisher description: John Dewey (1859-1952) believed that learning was active and schooling unnecessarily long and restrictive. His idea was that children came to school to do things and live in a community which gave them real, guided experiences which fostered their capacity to contribute to society. For example, Dewey believed that students should be involved in real-life tasks and… Shares: Democracy, Philosophy

De la démocratie en Amérique Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835 · ★ 4.1 · 349p · ≈ 11h · Challenging A contemporary study of the early American nation and its evolving democracy, from a French aristocrat and sociologist. In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, set out from post-revolutionary France on a journey across America that would take him 9 months and cover 7,000 miles. The result was Democracy in America, a subtle and prescient analysis of… Shares: Democracy, Essays

Kant; a collection of critical essays Robert Paul Wolff · 1967 · ★ 3.5 · 415p · ≈ 13h · Moderate This book analyses and explains the central passage of Kant's philosophy, the "Transcendental Analytic" of the Critique of Pure Reason. It proceeds in the manner of a textual commentary, discussing and explaining each section of the Analytic in turn. The purpose, however, is not merely to comment chapter by chapter on what Kant has written, but rather to reorganise and interpret his argument so… Shares: Essays, Philosophy

Herders sämmtliche Werke Johann Gottfried Herder · 1877 · ★ 5.0 · 414p · ≈ 13h · Challenging Shares: Aesthetics, Philosophy

News from nowhere, or, An epoch of rest, being some chapters from a utopian romance William Morris · 1890 · 258p · ≈ 8h · Challenging "Written in 1890, at the close of William Morris's most intense period of political activism, News from Nowhere is a compelling articulation of his mature views on art, work, community, family, and the nature and structure of the ideal society. A utopian narrative of a future society, it is also an immensely entertaining novel.". "This Broadview edition includes a wide variety of contextualizing… Shares: Socialism, English literature

Imaginary portraits Walter Pater · 1887 · 173p · ≈ 5h · Challenging Walter Pater is best known for his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) and for his first novel Marius the Epicurean (1885). His short fiction deserves a much wider audience. This edition includes the four intricate and influential narratives he published as Imaginary Portraits in 1887 together with five of his other portraits, published only in periodical form. Fully annotated and… Shares: Aesthetics, Essays, English literature, Philosophy

Unto This Last John Ruskin · 1860 · ★ 3.8 · 162p · ≈ 5h · Challenging Unto This Last is an essay on economy by John Ruskin, critical of the 18th and 19th century capitalist economists. When first published as four magazine articles in 1860 they were, in the words of Ruskin himself, "very violently criticized" and the publisher was force to halt publication. But Ruskin persevered and released the four articles in this book form in 1862. Gandhi read Unto This Last in… Shares: Socialism, Art, Philosophy

Roads to Freedom Bertrand Russell · 1918 · ★ 3.9 · 158p · ≈ 5h · Challenging THE attempt to conceive imaginatively a better ordering of human society than the destructive and cruel chaos in which mankind has hitherto existed is by no means modern: it is at least as old as Plato, whose Republic'' set the model for the Utopias of subsequent philosophers. Whoever contemplates the world in the light of an ideal - whether what he seeks be intellect, or art, or love, or simple… Shares: Socialism, Essays, Philosophy

Culture and anarchy; an essay in political and social criticism Matthew Arnold · 1869 · ★ 3.4 · 164p · ≈ 5h · Challenging "Matthew Arnold's famous series of essays, which were first published in book form under the title Culture and Anarchy in 1869, debate important questions about the nature of culture and society. Arnold seeks to find out what culture really is, what good it can do, and if it is really necessary. He contrasts culture, which he calls the study of perfection, with anarchy, the mood of unrest and… Shares: Culture, Philosophy

Pointed Roofs. Pilgrimage Dorothy Richardson · 1915 · 160p · ≈ 5h · Challenging Pointed Roofs is the first installment in Dorothy M. Richardson’s Pilgrimage sequence of autobiographical novels. It is also one of the first novels identified with the modernist technique of stream of consciousness. Set in the early 1890s, Pointed Roofs centers on seventeen-year-old Miriam Henderson. After her family runs into financial troubles, Miriam is sent to Germany to teach English at a… Shares: Democracy, English literature

The Seven Lamps of Architecture John Ruskin · 1800 · ★ 3.8 · 206p · ≈ 6h · Challenging Beauty, life, memory, obedience, power, sacrifice, and truth – these are the seven lamps of architecture. In this illustrated edition, Ruskin explains that the value of architecture hinges on both “the image it bears of the natural creation” and “the impression it receives from human power.”First published in 1880, The Seven Lamps of Architecture remains a primary reference on design at the turn… Shares: Art, Essays, Philosophy

State and Revolution Vladimir Il’ich Lenin · 1900 · ★ 4.3 · 143p · ≈ 4h · Challenging Lenin wrote ‘State and Revolution’ in 1917, while he was hiding from the Russian secret police. The book describes the inherent nature of the State as a tool for class oppression, a creation born of one social class’s desire to control all other social classes. Drawing on detailed quotes from Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels, Lenin lays down a Marxist view of the state, describes how a… Shares: Socialism, Philosophy

An inquiry into the original of our ideas of beauty and virtue Francis Hutcheson · 1725 · ★ 5.0 · 304p · ≈ 10h · Demanding "The Inquiry was written as a critical response to the work of Bernard Mandeville and as a defense of the ideas of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury. It consists of two treatises exploring our aesthetic and our moral abilities. The first treatise argues that human beings possess a natural internal sense of beauty, whereas the second focuses on the "moral sense" that enables us to… Shares: Aesthetics, Philosophy

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