The obsolescence of man - Volume 2 - Günther Anders
Now, for the first time in English translation, The Obsolescence of Man, Volume II, in its entirety, by Günther Anders, first published in Germany in 1980, an indispensable “philosophy of technology” by one of the most insightful philosophers and social critics of the 20th century, more relevant now than ever, the result of over twenty years of considerations “On the Destruction of Life in the Epoch of the Third Industrial Revolution”, featuring essays on consumerism, automation, work, leisure, “meaning”, totalitarianism, conformism, mass culture, sports, religion, surveillance, fascism, ideology, history, science fiction, art, “happenings”, psychotherapy, drugs, and more.
Ten theses on Chernobyl – Günther Anders
The text of a presentation delivered by the author to the Sixth World Congress of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1986.
The obsolescence of man, vol I , part 2: The world as phantom and as matrix: philosophical considerations on radio and television - Günther Anders
The first complete English translation of a remarkable 1956 essay about television from Vol. I of The Obsolescence of Man by Günther Anders, who—using phenomenological analyses, excerpts from his diaries and reflections on daily life—depicts a capitalist world that manufactures a warped “mass-man” by imposing nonparticipation, consumption of images, artificial “needs” (“drug addiction is the model for today’s needs”), separation, “conditioning”, an eternal present, commodified leisure and the dissolution of the individual in vapid mass produced roles, in a text that in many ways anticipates the theory of the “spectacle” of Guy Debord and the situationists.
Work will not set you free - Notes on Günther Anders – Franz Schandl
An annotated synopsis of the views of Günther Anders on the question of “work” or “labor”, including numerous quotations from Anders published here in English for the first time (which the author claims “are undoubtedly among the most radical and best examples of the critique of labor that appeared during the 20th century”), along with many choice selections from his pithy observations regarding conformism, technology, “duty”, “the right to a job”, “the humanization of labor”, consumerism, television, sports, etc., which in many respects anticipate some of the ideas later advocated by Guy Debord and the situationists.
State of emergency and self-defense: an imaginary interview with Gunther Anders
In this bitterly sardonic “imaginary interview” written in 1986 at the crest of the anti-nuclear protest movement in Germany, Günther Anders—best known in the United States for his 1961 book about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (Burning Conscience)—explains his rejection of pacifism and dogmatic non-violence under the permanent “State of Emergency” of the nuclear age, ridiculing the theatrical protest tactics (“happenings”) of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, evoking the right to self-defense as enshrined in international and ecclesiastical law and comparing today’s political and military leaders to those whose crimes led to the 60 million dead of WW2.
