The Forty-Nine Steps by Roberto Calasso (9780712697408)

Description - The Forty-Nine Steps by Roberto Calasso

In this first translation of his most important essays, Calasso discusses the essential thinkers of our time, providing a sweeping analysis of the current state of Western culture. "The Forty-nine Steps" refers to the Talmudic doctrine that there are forty-nine steps to meaning in every passage of the Torah. Employing this interpretative approach, Calasso offers a "secret history" of European literature and philosophy in the wake of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud. Calasso analyzes how figures ranging from Gustav Flaubert, Gottfried Benn, Karl Kraus and Martin Heidegger to Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno have contributed to, or been emblematic of, the current state of Western thought. This book's theme is the power of the fable - specifically, its persistence in art and literature, despite its exclusion from orthodox philosophy.

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