Brave New World Revisited
Brave New World Revisited is a 1958 (1960 in Germany as thirty years after or reunion with the brave new world ) published book by the British writer Aldous Huxley . In it he sheds light on the progress that has been made towards this scenario since the appearance of his novel dystopia Brave New World, published in 1932 . He concludes that many of the predictions he made for the year 2540 could come true in the foreseeable future.
Huxley calls and explains the conditions that are conducive to his opinion, the creation of a scientific dictatorship: overpopulation ( Overpopulation ) About organization ( Over-organization ), propaganda , brainwashing ( brainwashing ), chemical conviction ( Chemical persuasion ), unconscious belief ( Subconscious Persuasion ) and sleep school / hypnopedia ( Hypnopedia ). In his chapter, The Art of Selling , he criticizes the tendency for political opinion-forming to be flattened in the United States and that it follows the laws of advertising . However, he expresses his conviction (chapter Education for Freedom ) that people can be educated for freedom better than is the case.
Edition history
The US-American first edition under the title Brave New World Revisited was published by the New York publisher Harper & Brothers in 1958. 1959 appeared in the London publishing house Chatto & Windus , the publisher of the works of Huxley, the British first edition. The Gütersloh Verlag Bertelsmann published the translation into German by Herberth E. Herlitschka as a double edition of Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited under the German title Schöne Neue Welt. Thirty years after that. The Munich publishing house Piper published further editions from 1960, initially as a single edition with the title Thirty Years Later or Reunion with the Wackeren Welt . Later editions - partly under license from other publishers - took over the first German title, often as double editions together with the world bestseller from 1932. Further German-language double editions appeared until the 1990s. The German-language double edition is currently out of print. The German-language single edition of Brave New World Revisited was reissued by Piper in May 2017 . Both a single edition from 2006 and a double edition from 2005 are available in English.
Structure and literary genre
Brave New World Revisited is divided into a foreword and twelve essays . The common bond of this is the reference back to the work Brave New World, which was published not quite 30 years earlier, and especially the foreword assigned to it in later editions . In this foreword those thoughts are laid out which are elaborated in the essays. The individual, chapter-like successive explanations carry the designations overpopulation / quantity, quality, morality / overorganization / propaganda in a democracy / propaganda in a dictatorship / selling arts / brainwashing / chemical persuasion / subconscious persuasion / hypnopedics / education for freedom / what can be done ? .
The chapter or essay headings lead from one topic to another and each highlight a certain socio-political aspect. The common starting point of the essays are political, economic and social developments of the 1920s and 1930s, which Huxley sees critically. The socio-political arc spans from demographic and population- sociological considerations through reflections on population policy ( eugenics , dysgenics ) to media policy considerations with regard to propaganda measures in fundamentally different political systems ( democracy , dictatorship ). From there, the arc extends to special problems of influencing such as advertising , indoctrination , drug-based ( psychotropic drugs , hormones ) and psychologically-based manipulations and finally picks up on two types of education : one, in the form of hypnopedics or sleep school, a socializing attraction of young people in mind an orientation towards desired political behavior, and one which pursues an education for freedom . The final essay examines what it takes to establish a free society.
The essays contain a number of quotations that Aldous Huxley does not substantiate. On the one hand, this was not unusual in academic circles at the time the collection of essays was created. On the other hand, they therefore lack an important criterion of scientific writing : their content, the argumentation becomes less easily comprehensible, the literature references cannot be found, read and checked, or only with great effort. This has to be seen in connection with the fact that Aldous Huxley was not a university-trained sociologist, political scientist or social scientist. The degree of scientific nature of the work also does not increase because Huxley relies on statements from scientists. The loose theoretical foundation of Huxley's explanations, given the lack of verifiability of the quotations, lends them a speculative and visionary aspect ; All the more so, since there is no scientifically convincing derivation or a stringent theoretical foundation for his forecasts . In the context of an essay, however, neither scientifically correct citations nor conclusive theoretical deductions are required. On the other hand, the work is also to be distinguished from a fiction in the sense of a utopia or a science fiction .
The work, referred to as a volume of essays, is neither a fiction nor a scientific analysis of society and prognosis, but rather a larger essay - as time-critical as it is socio-political - which is divided into smaller chapters or individual essays and which gives the reader their own reflections, the scientist new ones Able to stimulate research.
Book editions
Almost all of the older English-language editions are referenced, as they are often assigned to different years of publication or publishing houses.
English language editions
- Brave New World. A novel. Chatto & Windus, London 1932 (British first edition without foreword).
- Brave New World. A novel. Doubleday, Doran & Co, Garden City (NY) 1932 (American first edition without foreword).
- Brave new world, a novel by Aldous Huxley. With a foreword for this edition Harper & Brothers, New York 1946 (American edition with foreword).
- Brave new world . Chatto & Windus, London 1949 (British edition with foreword).
- Brave New World Revisited. Harper & Brothers, New York 1958 (American first edition).
- Brave New World Revisited. Chatto & Windus London 1959 (British first edition).
- Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited. (= Harper Perennial Modern Classics ). Reprint. HarperCollins, New York 2005 (Foreword by Christopher Hitchens) ISBN 978-0-06-077609-1 .
- Brave New World Revisited. (= Harper Perennial Modern Classics ). Reprint. HarperCollins, New York 2006 ISBN 978-0-06-089852-6 .
German-language editions
- Brave new world. A novel of the future. Translated by Herberth E. Herlitschka. Steinberg, Zurich 1950 (German second edition with the preface to the new English edition from 1949) OCLC 72070204 .
- Beautiful new world. Thirty years after that. Translated by Herberth E. Herlitschka. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1958 (German first edition, little known, edited together with the German translation of “Brave New World”).
- Thirty years after, or a reunion with the brave world. Translated by Herberth E. Herlitschka. Piper, Munich 1960 ( DNB 452152453 ).
- Goodbye to the brave new world. Piper-Verlag, paperback edition, from 1960.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ 100 Best Novels The American Modern Library currently, May 2017, places Brave New World in fifth place among 100 best novels worldwide.
- ↑ "" For example: Aldous Huxley: Brave New World. A novel of the future. Thirty years after, or a reunion with the brave new world. R. Piper & Co, Munich 1976.
- ↑ Information as of June 19, 2017.
- ↑ The names follow the German translation by Herberth E. Herlitschka as the only one.
- ↑ In the holdings of the Washington Library on May 17, 2016
- ↑ In the holdings of the Washington Library on May 17, 2016
- ↑ In the holdings of the Washington Library on May 17, 2016
- ↑ In the holdings of the Washington Library on May 17, 2016
- ^ In the holdings of the Vienna University Library on May 17, 2016
- ↑ with table of contents: DNB 1132349753