Remembering Riaz Hassan 1937–2022

by Iván Szelényi

Riaz Hassan passed away in Melbourne on June 8, 2022 after a long illness. His is a great loss to the Australian social sciences and to the social sciences in general. Riaz was a great scholar, a wonderful colleague, a good friend and an excellent teacher. He was the mentor of a whole generation of social scientists. His death is an especially great loss to me personally.

Retrospective: Harry Redner – Pursuing Philosophy as a Vocation

by Jill Redner

For Harry, philosophy was a vocation in Weber’s sense. But pursuing this ideal in today’s technocratic multiversity can seem almost quixotic, because specialist knowledge and technical expertise are cultivated, rather than a general intellectual grasp of problems affecting humanity. Generalists still exist but are increasingly likely to find themselves dismissed as mere “intellectuals”. Harry accepted this situation with good humour: “Though my academic sins be scarlet”, he quipped recently, “let my books be read”.

Harry Redner: An Introduction to three new works

by David Roberts

At the time of his sudden, unexpected death in September 2021, Harry Redner had just completed three book length manuscripts. The three books were conceived as a trilogy but one in which each part could be read independently on its own terms. Together they constitute a last comprehensive reflection on the themes that had constantly preoccupied him, which takes the form of a stock taking at the end of European civilization (see Redner, Beyond Civilization, 2013).

Extract: The Birth of Science from the Spirit of Art

by Harry Redner

Section I. The origin of the natural sciences in music and painting.

Western achievements in the arts and sciences began with the Greeks. During the great age of Classical civilization, that of the glory of Greece and the grandeur of Rome, the basis was laid for all the later achievements in the development of the arts and sciences in the West…