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9781350026100

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In a lengthy and highly sophisticated introduction, Petri (Ca' Foscari Univ. Italy) justifies the kind of intellectual history he is doing. In conceptual history, the author ranges freely among great philosophers, their epigones, and historical events to tell a story. * CHOICE * In this fascinating and important book Rolf Petri has created a concise history of Western ideology, each of the chapters a brilliant essay on its own terms, coming together to form a major historical statement that sums up what it has meant to think Western over the course of the last three centuries. This book compels us to rethink the most fundamental aspects of how we understand the role of ideology in the making of the modern world. * Larry Wolff, Professor of History, New York University, USA * A brilliant account of core elements of Western ideology, explaining how they emerged from eschatological thinking to inform our modern experience of the world. Instead of running his readers through a schematic list of authors and their thought, Petri takes a holistic approach, looking at the presumptions they share. It is a tour de force which leads us from Herodotus to the Abrahamic religions, from Enlightenment and colonisation to global warming. * Axel Koerner, Professor of Modern History, University College London, UK * What might western ideology mean after decades of postcolonial criticism and deconstruction? What's left of Eurocentrism and Westernness? Rolf Petri dives deep into this immense cultural tradition, scrutinizing it with intellectual devices that localize it in a concrete geographical and historical context and, at the same time, delocalize it, viewing it within a non-hierarchical global context. Present-day preoccupations with civic bonds and the environment, temporality and making sense of history set the stage for rediscovering, rereading (and reshaping) the western intellectual tradition. * Antonis Liakos, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Athens, Greece * Petri's discussion of the nature and history of western ideology discusses the writings of philosophers and historians from Locke to Hobbes, and from Adam Smith to Marx and Engels. In the process, the reader is exposed to a critical and often innovative interpretation of these writers' works; their commonalities and their differences. * Counterpunch *

In this fascinating and important book Rolf Petri has created a concise history of Western ideology, each of the chapters a brilliant essay on its own terms, coming together to form a major historical statement that sums up what it has meant to think Western over the course of the last three centuries. This book compels us to rethink the most fundamental aspects of how we understand the role of ideology in the making of the modern world. * Larry Wolff, Professor of History, New York University, USA * What might western ideology mean after decades of postcolonial criticism and deconstruction? What's left of Eurocentrism and Westernness? Rolf Petri dives deep into this immense cultural tradition, scrutinizing it with intellectual devices that localize it in a concrete geographical and historical context and, at the same time, delocalize it, viewing it within a non-hierarchical global context. Present-day preoccupations with civic bonds and the environment, temporality and making sense of history set the stage for rediscovering, rereading (and reshaping) the western intellectual tradition. * Antonis Liakos, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Athens, Greece * A brilliant account of core elements of Western ideology, explaining how they emerged from eschatological thinking to inform our modern experience of the world. Instead of running his readers through a schematic list of authors and their thought, Petri takes a holistic approach, looking at the presumptions they share. It is a tour de force which leads us from Herodotus to the Abrahamic religions, from Enlightenment and colonisation to global warming. * Axel Korner, Professor of Modern History, Univerity College London, UK *

In this fascinating and important book Rolf Petri has created a concise history of Western ideology, each of the chapters a brilliant essay on its own terms, coming together to form a major historical statement that sums up what it has meant to think Western over the course of the last three centuries. This book compels us to rethink the most fundamental aspects of how we understand the role of ideology in the making of the modern world. * Larry Wolff, Professor of History, New York University, USA * What might western ideology mean after decades of postcolonial criticism and deconstruction? What's left of Eurocentrism and Westernness? Rolf Petri dives deep into this immense cultural tradition, scrutinizing it with intellectual devices that localize it in a concrete geographical and historical context and, at the same time, delocalize it, viewing it within a non-hierarchical global context. Present-day preoccupations with civic bonds and the environment, temporality and making sense of history set the stage for rediscovering, rereading (and reshaping) the western intellectual tradition. * Antonis Liakos, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Athens, Greece *

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Rolf Petri is Professor of Contemporary History at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy.

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