Books by Fred Dallmayr

Challenges the ""desert character"" of modern culture. Political and economic corruption, incessant warmongering, spoliation of natural resources, and, above all, mindless consumerism and greedy self-satisfaction are all symptoms of what Fred Dallmayr contends is an expanding wasteland or desert where everything creative and nourishing decays and withers.

The life story of a German-American scholar deeply involved, over several decades, in evolving intellectual trends and movements and profoundly affected by successive geopolitical events and calamities.

Mindfulness and Letting Be: On Engaged Thinking and Acting is a protest against the extreme mindlessness or thoughtlessness of our age, a malaise covered by manipulative cleverness and by minds filled to the brim with opinions, doctrines, marching orders, and ideologies. Rather than concentrating on a self-contained mind, Fred Dallmayr pleads for an act of minding about oneself, one's fellow beings, society, and the world. What is required for such mindfulness is not a predatory reason, but a kind of reticence or mind-fasting as preparation for a genuine attentiveness able to let be without aloofness or indifference. Dallmayr explores the benefits of such mindfulness in the fields of philosophy or theory, practical conduct, language use, art works, historical understanding, and cosmopolitanism, and the insights that arise will be of benefit to students and scholars of continental, social, and political philosophy.

Small Wonder presents the dangers of the "underside of modernity": the unleashing of unlimited lust for (global) power and wealth. Relying on leading critical intellectuals, Dallmayr offers a critique of the self-deceptions of our age, pleading in favor of the cultivation of the "small wonder" of everyday life.

16th-century humanist Erasmus allows ""Peace"" to speak as a plaintiff, protesting her shabby treatment at the hands of humankind and our ever-ready inclination to launch wars. Against this lure of warfare, Erasmus pits the higher task of peace-building, which can only succeed through the cultivation of justice and respect for all human life.

Globalization can be seen as a process of universal standardization under the auspices of market economics, technology and hegemonic power. Resisting this process without endorsing parochial self-enclosure, Dallmayr seeks alternative visions that are rooted in distinct vernacular traditions and facilitate cross-cultural learning in a global arena.