Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Polarity and Dialectic in Moral Experience and Cultural Expression Chapter 2 The Religion of the Transcendental Ego: The Case of Max Stirner Chapter 3 Art, Anomism, and Moral Consciousness: The Case of Arthur Rimbaud Chapter 4 Ramblin' for Miles Around: The Life and Art of Robert Johnson Chapter 5 Anomism, Puerilism and the Transmoral Consciousness: The Charles Manson Circle Chapter 6 Horrible Workers in Retrospect: Comparative and Theoretical Reflections

About the Author

Donald A. Nielsen is currently working as an independent scholar and writing a book on the concept of experience as a key idea in social theory.

Reviews

This is a fascinating little book that deals with characters usually regarded as marginal to or at the margins of Western culture and society.
*Culture and Religion, January 2009*

In reworking the famous categories that Durkheim developed in Suicide, Nielsen offers a fascinating and thoroughly engaging account of the moral careers of four figures who on the surface appear to share little in common: Max Stirner, Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Johnson, and Charles Manson. By emphasizing the dialectical interplay of categories and foregrounding the generally neglected concept of fatalism, he offers readers an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated comparative account of the culturally grounded vocations of these "horrible workers."
*Peter Kivisto, Richard A. Swanson Professor of Social Thought, Augustana College*