Author Description

"A contemporary of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) achieved recognition as a social philosopher during the three decades following World War II."--BOOK JACKET. "In The Limits of Community (1924), Plessner presents the appeal and the dangers of rejecting modern society for the sake of the ideal of community. The ideal, he suggests, is to escape the anonymity of mass society; the danger is the eventual loss of human dignity and the rise of an authoritarian politics based on violence and fanaticism. Social radicalism is born from the underside of modern society. It takes root among the disenfranchised and, especially, among the young. Attuned to the political undercurrents of his own society, Plessner anticipated the rise of German fascism nine years before its fateful emergence onto the world stage."--BOOK JACKET. "The Limits of Community will be of interest to scholars and students of German intellectual history and of political and social theory."--BOOK JACKET.