Sunday, December 12, 2010

Review: Arthur Frank on Norbert Elias

Norbert Elias. The Loneliness of the Dying AND Humana Conditio. Edited by Alan Scott and Brigitte Scott. Chester Springs PA: University College Dublin Press / Dufour Editions, 2010, 192 pp. $US 99.95 hardcover (978-1-906359-06-5)

The present volume includes one of Elias’s most frequently cited books, The Loneliness of the Dying, published in German in 1979 and in English in 1985. The other text, Humana Conditio, was published in German in 1985 as an expansion of lectures that Elias gave at the University of Bielefeld on the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II. The present publication is the first English translation.  … The Loneliness of the Dying analyzes how peculiarities of contemporary social structure have produced characteristic problems for dying. The book’s interest is not the observation that dying persons are lonely, but rather understanding why this loneliness is predictable, if not at all inevitable.  Read more