Martin Evan Jay (born May 4, 1944) is an American

intellectual historian Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual hist ...

whose research interests connected history with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School,

social theory Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena.Seidman, S., 2016. Contested knowledge: Social theory today. John Wiley & Sons. A tool used by social scientists, social theories rel ...

cultural critic A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole. Cultural criticism has significant overlap with social and cultural theory. While such criticism is simply part of the self-consciousness of the culture, the social positions of ...

ism, and

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians h ...

. He is currently the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History Emeritus at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

. He was elected a Member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2019.

Career

Jay received his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree from

Union College Union College is a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, and second in the state of New York, after Columbia Co ...

in 1965. In 1971, he completed his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree in history at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

under the tutelage of H. Stuart Hughes. His dissertation was later revised into the book ''The Dialectical Imagination,'' which covers the history of the

Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...

from 1923 to 1950. While he was conducting research for his dissertation, he established a correspondence and friendship with many Frankfurt School members.

Leo Löwenthal Leo Löwenthal (; 3 November 1900 – 21 January 1993) was a German sociologist and philosopher usually associated with the Frankfurt School. Life Born in Frankfurt as the son of assimilated Jews (his father was a physician), Löwenthal came of ...

provided him access to personal letters and documents for his research. Jay's work since then has explored

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...

cultural criticism Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.T ...

visual culture Visual culture is the aspect of culture expressed in visual images. Many academic fields study this subject, including cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, media studies, Deaf Studies, and anthropology. The field of vi ...

, and the place of

post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critiques ...

and

post-modernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moder ...

in European intellectual history. His current research is focused on nominalism and photography. He is a recipient of the 2010/2011 Berlin Prize Fellowship from the

American Academy in Berlin The American Academy in Berlin is a private, independent, nonpartisan research and cultural institution in Berlin dedicated to sustaining and enhancing the long-term intellectual, cultural, and political ties between the United States and Germany ...

. He also has a regular column in the quarterly journal ''

Salmagundi Salmagundi (or salmagundy or sallid magundi) is a cold dish or salad made from different ingredients which may include meat, seafood, eggs, cooked vegetables, raw vegetables, fruits or pickles. In English culture, the term does not refer to a s ...

''.

Personal life

Jay was born on May 4, 1944, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He is Jewish. He married English professor and literary critic Catherine Gallagher circa 1973; they met in 1970 at Berkeley when she was an English graduate student and he was an assistant professor of history.

Published works

*1973
The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-50
' * “The Concept of Totality in Lukács and Adorno”
''Telos''
32 (Summer 1977). New York: Telos Press. *1984 ''Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas'' *1984 ''Adorno''.

Fontana Modern Masters The Fontana Modern Masters was a series of pocket guides on writers, philosophers, and other thinkers and theorists who shaped the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. The first five titles were published on 12 January 1970 by Fontana ...

. *1985 ''Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America'' *1988 ''Fin-de-Siècle Socialism and Other Essays'' *1993 ''Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism'' *1993 ''Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought'' *1998 ''Cultural Semantics: Keywords of the Age'' *2003 ''Refractions of Violence'' *2004 ''Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme'' *2010 ''The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics *2011 ''Essays from the Edge: Parerga and Paralipomena'' *2016 ''Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory'' *2020 ''Splinters in Your Eye: Frankfurt School Provocations''

References

External links

Martin Jay's Faculty PageAn Interview with Martin Jay on the topic of ConsumptionHistory, Experience, and Politics: An Interview with Martin Jay
*The Modernist Imagination:Intellectual History and Critical Theory: Essays in Honor of Martin Jay, eds. Warren Breckman, Peter E. Gordon, A. Dirk Moses, Samuel Moyn and Elliot Neaman (New York, Berghahn Books, 2009).
"Pants on Fire: The Straight Goods on Lying - A Conversation with Martin Jay"
''Ideas Roadshow'', 2015
An Interview with Martin Jay about his 2020 work ''Splinters in Your Eye'' with the New Books Network
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jay, Martin 1944 births Jewish American academics American philosophers Jewish American historians American male non-fiction writers Harvard University alumni Intellectual historians Living people Scholars of Marxism Union College (New York) alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Members of the American Philosophical Society The Bronx High School of Science alumni Historians from New York (state) Historians from California

Career

Personal life

Published works

See also

References

External links