Theorie-Apotheke

by Jochen Hörisch

Book by Jochen Hörisch

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

322 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Kai Weber]

Jochen Hörisch is a media studies scholar with a strong grounding in philosophy and an impressive overview (at the same time deep and wide in extent) of 20th century humanities theories. This book is aimed as an introduction for a general audience. At times it can be still demanding, but so are the theories treated, so Hörisch needs to strike a balance between making those theories accessible without trivializing them. If you're a specialist for this or that, you might miss your favorite theory or theorist here. (In my case I'd have liked to see New Critcism, New Historicism, or Postcolonialism be included, and when dealing with Structuralism, I'd have liked to have heard about Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukařovský as well.) But I think overall the selection is well made: You'll find analytical philosophy, anarchist perception theory, anthropology, Bourdieu's habitus theory, cultural studies, deconstruction, discourse theory of Foucault, existentialism, feminism and gender studies, justice theory of Rawls, hermeneutics, iconic turn, a funny short dig at interdisciplinary studies, Watzlawick's communcation theory, (radical) constructivism, critical rationalism, critical theory, media theories, metaphorology, Kuhn's ideas of paradigm shifts, political theology, psychoanalysis, reception theory, Daseinsanalysis, speech act theory, structuralism, systems theory, totalitarism theory, and civilization theory. Following the metaphor of the title ("A Pharmacy for theories"), every chapter closes with an evaluative section on "effects, risks, and adverse effects". Hörisch does favour some theories over others, but I felt he treated them all quite fairly - and he really achieved the not so easy feat to present abstract theories in an entertaining manner.