Week 5 // All that is Solid Melts into Air // Marshall Berman

Marshall Berman

Marshall Berman known as a “radical intellectual” and former student of Isaiah Berlin, was a Distinguished American philosopher who had great admiration for the early thought of Karl Marx.

According to an obituary produced by the guardian, the book which is the subject of this blog ‘All that is Solid melts into Air’ is recognised as a major work of his whereby “he reclaimed the idea of modernity from the cultural pessimists who saw in contemporary life cultural decline and disintegration”.

Towards the end of this section of the book in the chapter ‘The Tragedy of Development’ we see how a city is formed, a collection of people from different lands in this case small villages and towns of closed communities seeking “ to form a new kind of community: a community that thrives not on repression of free individuality in order to maintain a closed social system” but a community that offers a new kind of freedom, thriving on “ free constructive action in common to protect the collective resources that enable every individual to become tatig-frei (active-free)”.  

It interests me, especially being someone who was born in London and then once completing Primary school moved out to a much smaller town to continue my studies in Hertfordshire, how cities in general are usually likened to open environments with a whole array of personalities as opposed to smaller towns where ones individuality is considered to be suppressed. I would agree with this to a degree especially regarding the time this text is referring too, modernisation in the case of Faust is like a devouring beast. 

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