“Eurocentric modernist” thinking is exploding
The review makes it sound as if nobody else pointed out the interwovenness of &quot;the&quot; Enlightenment, capitalism and increasingly isolated, individualist modern societies. Yet, while they might fall under the category of &quot;Utopia&quot; which are supposedly not needed, these points have been investigated extensively (and rather famously) by people like Adorno &amp; Horkheimer in their &quot;Dialektik der Aufklärung&quot; (Dialect of Enlightenment) and their individual works, in various essays within Marcuse&#x27;s &quot;Kultur &amp; Gesellschaft&quot;, in Deleuze&#x2F;Guattari&#x27;s L&#x27;anti-Œdipe (Anti-Oedipus) as well as many similar scholars that can be described perhaps most broadly as successors to the &quot;Left-Hegelians&quot;, among whom especially Feuerbach and Marx also stand out in their respective appraisals of a capitalist, utilitarian society and the heritage of christianity, respectively.<p>When it comes to &quot;huddling&quot;, Heidegger&#x27;s &quot;Sein &amp; Zeit&quot; (Being &amp; Time) at the very latest emphasised the importance of being-in-the-world and being-with-others, rendering being entirely social (and this is despite the fact that the book remained, in essence, a fragment). Similarly, Wittgenstein&#x27;s &quot;Philosophischen Untersuchungen&quot; (Philosophical Investigations) also highlights the shared nature of language games and the importance of society when he ponders the overall possibility whether private language(s) can exist. In doing so, both remain thoroughly wed to the modern world and do not harken back to a &quot;simple society&quot; or some such.<p>However, this list seems to suggest a different bias by describing the Western World chiefly as one designed by Smith &amp; Hobbes, leaning on a relatively narrowly defined notion of anglophone philosophy to define the status quo as a direct consequence of the Enlightenment. It also betrays a fairly narrow focus on the US, since, as one comment on the site itself rightfully asks, this fails to account for developments such as the modern welfare state in various places outside the US, which would have to be impossible for a strictly isolated and&#x2F;or egoistic society that forgot the importance of living together. And while the review off-handendly discounts both capitalism and communism, it fails to account for any of the real-world examples of societies located somewhere between these two polar opposites, as these social contracts seem to fulfil exactly the kind of &quot;moral economy&quot; that seems to be at play. That said,because these countries, in turn, face their own turmoil and challenges, this would seemingly get us back to where we started, except that we would already have gotten rid of an overly simplistic dichotomy that seems to have Smith and Lenin as their respective strawmen-come-cornerstone. In that case, however, we&#x27;re faced with an interesting conundrum: If neither capitalism nor communism is the right answer, and if seemingly moderated in-between states face similar challenges, what exactly does the book advocate that is not yet another utopia that somehow safeguards the individual&#x27;s freedom while also including it in a network of social interaction, responsibility and mutual assistance without being like any of the discounted examples or extremes?