Mastery of many sorts emerges in new configurations in Peter Burger's "The Thinking of the Master" as an idea developed by Hegel in the master/slave dialectic in his "Phenomenology of Spirit" as a quality embodied in the work of certain twentieth-century "maitre-penseurs, " or "master thinkers"; and, not least, in the expertise of Burger himself as he negotiates and clarified a critical intersection of contemporary French and German thought. The author of the classic "Theory of the Avant-Garde, " Burger here considers what several seminal thinkers--among them Bataille, Barthes, Foucault, and...

Mastery of many sorts emerges in new configurations in Peter Burger's book: as an idea developed by Hegel in the master-slave dialectic in his Phenomenology of Spirit; as a quality embodied in the work of certain 20th century master-thinkers; and, not least, in the expertise of Burger himself, as he negotiates and clarifies a critical intersection of contemporary French and German thought. Burger here considers what several seminal thinkers - Bataille, Blanchot, Barthes, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Heidegger, as well as novelist Michel Tournier - owe to Hegel's dialectic, and measures their...