The term “ideology” can cover almost any set of ideas, but its power to bewitch political activists results from its strange logic. It is part philosophy, part science, and part spiritual revelation, all tied together in leading to a remarkable paradox—that the modern Western world, beneath its liberal appearance, is actually the most systematically oppressive system of despotism the world has ever seen. In Alien Powers, Kenneth Minogue takes this complex intellectual construction apart, analyzing its logical, rhetorical, and psychological devices, (...) and thus opening it up to critical analysis. This new, ISI Books’ Background edition of Alien Powers includes a new introduction to the text by Martyn P. Thompson and critical essays on the text by political theorist Paul Gottfried and philosopher Stephen A. Erickson. (shrink)

From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals, in their role as intellectuals, had been a breed apart. This book tells how in the early decades of the twentieth century, intellectuals abandoned their attachment to the traditional panoply of philosophical and scholarly ideals. It is of interest to those who teach and preach the human sciences.

Looks at the contemporary problems of alienation and separation, and discusses the attempts of various Jewish groups to learn from the mistakes and accomplishments of modernism.