Social and political philosophy Books

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewImagining governments and citizenship unbeholden to rules of birth-that is, cleaving the state from the family (i.e. the nation)-is the single most important thought experiment in political theory since John Rawls asked us to consider justice from a position of veiled ignorance. Jacqueline Stevens is not just a punchy provacateur, she is a careful scholar and an engaging writer. States without Nations is a must read for any scholar of the politics, sociology, or legal studies of the state-and anyone concerned with distributive justice. -- Dalton Conley, Dean for the Social Sciences, New York University No myth needs exploding more urgently than that of the tight association of state with nation, of the exigencies of governance with the idea of people defined by culture and common descent. No misconception has done more damage in modern political theory. And no theorist is better positioned to explode this myth-in its birthright, where it lives, in its premises of blood and land and birth-than Jacqueline Stevens. -- Jeremy Waldron, University Professor, New York University School of Law States Without Nations is a brutal expose of the violent and mutually implicating underpinnings of liberal theory and national identity, and it constitutes nothing less than an early attempt to reconceptualize and reorganize world citizenship anew. I find it brilliant, bold, breathtaking, pioneering, far-reaching, and visionary. There's nothing else quite like it. -- John Evan Seery, professor of politics, Pomona College States without Nations is a scathing indictment of kinship-based membership. In an argument as unrelenting as it is brilliant, Jacqueline Stevens challenges feminists, liberals, and, indeed, anyone who values peace and security, to join her in recognizing and rejecting kinship as the ultimate source of violence. This original and much-needed intervention will reshape debates in international relations, political science, and women's studies. -- Jodi Dean, author of Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Stevens is provocative in rethinking many assumptions people take for granted... Highly recommended. Choice The breadth and creativity of [Stevens's] arguments are refreshing... A welcome addition to the citizenship literature. -- Elizabeth F. Cohen Perspectives on Politics While the book's learned and wide-ranging arguments do not always convince, they invariably inform and provoke, startle and rouse; States without Nations is a stunning work of radical theoretical imagination. -- Jason Frank Theory and EventTable of ContentsPreface Introduction 1. The Persistence and Harms of Birthright Citizenship in So-called Liberal Theory and Countries 2. Abolishing Birthright Citizenship 3. A Theory of Wealth for Mortals 4. Abolishing Inheritance 5. The Law of the Mother 6. Abolishing Marriage 7. Abolishing Private Land Rights: Toward a New Practice of Eminent Domain 8. Religion and the Nation-State Appendix: Methods for an Open Society Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThey used to say in Warsaw of the globetrotting, four-time Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, "God is everywhere. Kolodko's already been there." In his latest book Truth, Error, and Lies, Grzegorz W. Kolodko takes us on a breathtaking journey through territories, centuries, and disciplines, including some formerly uncharted, at nerve-wracking speed. One will always be entertained, inspired, and enlightened. -- D. Mario Nuti, University of Rome La Sapienza Truth, Errors, and Lies distills lessons for development learned from a whole life of work and observations by a thinker and practitioner of economic transition and real-world politics. -- Justin Yifu Lin, chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank Kolodko has been an important player in the transition of the Polish economy and has wide experience and original insights into themes and trends in the international economy. Every reader with an interest in economic development can benefit from reading this book. -- Robert A. Mundell, Nobel laureate in economic sciences Kolodko astounds the reader with his erudition and, something of immeasurable value in a book on economics, never permits him to become bored. Thanks to the successful marriage of economics, history, sociology, politics, and literature, Truth, Errors, and Lies is light reading but not devoid of theoretical gravity, ideal for the beach and, at the same time, just right for a university seminar. Le Monde Diplomatique This huge canvas depicting recent developments in economic policy is an outcry against the neoliberalism that dominated policymaking in the last quarter of the twentieth century and a hopeful assessment of the departures in economic thinking over the past two decades. Although I do not agree with Kolodko that the neoliberals have a monopoly on lying and the neo-left are pure in heart, I believe this book is a valuable meditation on the heterodox approach to economic policy now springing up across the world. -- Edmund S. Phelps, Nobel laureate in economic sciences Grzegorz Kolodko has written an extraordinarily wide-ranging and thought-provoking book. It is easy to disagree with parts of his argument. But the book makes plain not only the scale of the challenges humanity now confronts but the potential for humane, pragmatic and co-operative solutions. -- Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times The book is splendidly written, brimming with riches, and, like the Bible, can be studied from beginning to end and from end to beginning. -- Janusz Czapinski Books of a similar nature to "Truth, Errors and Lies: Politics and Economics in a Volatile World" include Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock," published in 1970, and Francis Fukuyama's "1989 The End of History"...The whole civilized world talked about them...This book will play a similar role. -- Andrew Ziemski In a world that focuses on trees or even on the barks of the trees, Professor Kolodkobook deals with all the forests of the world, and not only the forests of today but alsothose of the past and the future. -- Professor Vito Tanzi, Former Director of Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF Professor Kolodko is certainly very outspoken; he does not mince words. My own specialty is theory,which inter alia is meant to inform policy; the book gets directly at the policy matters themselves. -- Robert J. Aumann, Hebrew University, Nobel Prize Laureate in Economic Sciences Grzegorz Kolodko - an economist who sets out in pursuit of the volatile world to unravel the nexusof humanity's concerns - is not daunted by the complexity of the task. His ever-vigilant optimism cutsthrough the conundrum and leads him to boldly denounce conformism, hypocrisy and opportunistic thinking. Aided by his knowledge, practical experience and erudition of a humanist equally at home with Hafez, Montaigneor Orwell, he wields with panache his narrative spiced with anecdote and irony. A real tour de force! -- Jozef Hen, writer But this book is well worth reading, even if you disagree with its arguments and dislike its conclusions. Eastern Approaches - Economist blog ...an extraordinarily wide-ranging and thought-provoking book. -- Manju Agarwal Finance IndiaTable of ContentsThe Navigator 1: The World, by Words 2: How Things Happen: Economic Processes-What Science, by Policy 3: A Brief History of the World and What We Can Learn from It: Why Some Countries Are Wealthy and Others Poor, by and Whether It Must Always Be So 4: Globalization-and Then What? Where Globalization Originated and How to Come Out Ahead in the Era of Worldwide Interdependence 5: The World As It Is: How People Are Coping in Various Corners of a Changing World 6: The Withering of Neoliberalism and Its Tattered Legacy: Why a Harmful Concept Rose to Temporary Ascendancy in Half the World and What to Do about It 7: What Development Is and What It Depends On: Where Socioeconomic Development Comes from and How It Can Make Us Happy 8: Stagnation and Development-Institutions, by Policy 9: The Coincidence Theory of Development and the New Pragmatism: What Output Growth and Economic Development Depend On and How to Make Them Better 10: The Uncertain Future: What Awaits Us in the Near and Distant Future, by and What Say We Have in It A Letter Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewTerror, Religon, and Liberal Thought is a volume with plenty to consider, a key addition to any political science collection. Midwest Book Review Miller offers readers a brilliant exercise in liberal social criticism, which stands firmly at the crossroads of moral theory, political philosophy, and pragmatic cultural criticism...it stands heads above many recent works on religion, violence, and terrorism in its thoughtful application of the tools of social criticism. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. The Problem of Religious Violence 2. 9/11 and Varieties of Social Criticism 3. Rights to Life and Security 4. Toleration, Equality, and the Burdens of Judgment 5. Respect and Recognition 6. Religion, Dialogue, and Human Rights 7. Liberal Social Criticism and the Ethics of Belief Appendix 1: The Right to War and Self-Defense Appendix 2: Is Attacking the Taliban and al Qaeda Justified? Notes Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewTerror, Religon, and Liberal Thought is a volume with plenty to consider, a key addition to any political science collection. Midwest Book Review Miller offers readers a brilliant exercise in liberal social criticism, which stands firmly at the crossroads of moral theory, political philosophy, and pragmatic cultural criticism...it stands heads above many recent works on religion, violence, and terrorism in its thoughtful application of the tools of social criticism. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. The Problem of Religious Violence 2. 9/11 and Varieties of Social Criticism 3. Rights to Life and Security 4. Toleration, Equality, and the Burdens of Judgment 5. Respect and Recognition 6. Religion, Dialogue, and Human Rights 7. Liberal Social Criticism and the Ethics of Belief Appendix 1: The Right to War and Self-Defense Appendix 2: Is Attacking the Taliban and al Qaeda Justified? Notes Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThere is no better guide to Gianni Vattimo's philosophy than Franca D'Agostini's introduction to this book. One of Vattimo's most skilled students, D'Agostini manages to present both the logic behind weak thought and the novelty of this text, which reveals the Italian master's intuitions on crucial problems of contemporary philosophy. -- Santiago Zabala, author of The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology After MetaphysicsTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Strong Reasons for Weak Thought, by Franca D'Agostini Weakness French Nihilism and Italian Nihilism Nihilism and Difference Difference and Dialectic Nihilism, Hermeneutics, and Postmodernity Verwindung Argumentation and Provenance This Book Postscript (2009) 1. Philosophy and Science After Kant, After Hegel The Flash of the Ereignis The Story of a Comma Science and "Being-not beings" The Edification of Humanity Cumulative Knowledges 2. Philosophy, History, Literature Truth, Rhetoric, History Are History and Ontology Compatible? Mythization of the World Fugues Sciences of Nature and Sciences of the Spirit? 3. Logic in Philosophy Logic and the Logics Logic and the History of Being Philosophy of Logic and Logic of Philosophy Logic and Ontology 4. To Speak the Truth Redemisti nos Domine Deus veritatis The Endless Banquet Do Vampires Exist? 5. The Vocation to Philosophy and the Responsibility of Philosophy Writing for the Newspapers Writing in the First Person The Dive Into Politics Politics Philosopher-style Losing your Soul Filling in the Blanks The Construction of Universality is Political Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDemocracy in What State? is timely, represents a wide variety of thinkers, and displays the political themes that are of concern to these thinkers. This allows the reader not only to have access to a general progressive critique of current political practice but also to compare different approaches to progressive thought and action, particularly (although not exclusively) in the contemporary French scene. If I saw it on a bookstore shelf, I would undoubtedly reach for it with one hand while reaching for my wallet with the other. -- Todd May, Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities, Clemson University A timely and thought-provoking collection that shows that radical thinking and the politics of dissent are more than ever necessary in order to create a different kind of politics. Perhaps what most makes this book admirable is its attempt to start the dialogue that will rattle the sacrosanct cage of liberal democratic thinking. Marx and Philosophy Review of Books The slim but hugely incisive volume, Democracy in What State?, in which well-known intellectuals articulate their radical critique of the democratic theory, its philosophical impasse and its logical conundrums, provides a convenient access to the current debate on democratic theory and its discontents. Muslim World Book ReviewTable of ContentsForeword by the French Publisher Translator's Note Introductory Note on the Concept of Democracy, by Giorgio Agamben The Democratic Emblem, by Alain Badiou Permanent Scandal, by Daniel Bensaid "We Are All Democrats Now... ", by Wendy Brown Finite and Infinite Democracy, by Jean-Luc Nancy Democracies Against Democracy, by Jacques Ranciere Democracy for Sale, by Kristin Ross From Democracy to Divine Violence, by Slavoj Zizek Authors

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewGianni Vattimo has long had his finger squarely on the pulse of a world weary of strong, aggressive claims to truth, precisely for fear that such assertions too often result in belligerent intolerance and even in spiritual and physical violence. In A Farewell to Truth, he continues to offer thoughtful and provocative challenges to all those who hold for a naively objective notion of truth. Vattimo's signature 'weak thought' offers readers a theoretical basis for tolerance and pluralism without sacrificing truth claims entirely. Everyone will find in this highly readable volume a stimulating incitement to further thought and animated debate. -- Thomas G. Guarino, Seton Hall University When a major thinker takes pains to bid farewell to a defining project of humanity, as Immanuel Kant did with metaphysics, Karl Marx did with religion, Martin Heidegger did with philosophy, and Gianni Vattimo has done with truth, it is usually not to get rid of it but to reopen it and realize its promise. This is the truth of this provocative book. -- Jean Grondin, Universite de Montreal, author of Introduction to Metaphysics: From Parmenides to Levinas Clearly written, rigorously yet passionately argued, A Farewell to Truth is Gianni Vattimo's exciting philosophical manifesto for a credible political liberation, recognizing how, when faced with postmodern pluralism, the truth can only and necessarily appear as a matter of consensus over collective interpretations and shared paradigms. In this sense, Vattimo's claim that a farewell to (absolute and objectivistic) truths is 'the commencement and the very basis of democracy' is not only highly plausible but extraordinarily inspiring for those who have not lost hope that philosophy may (still and always) contribute politically and ethically to the fate of our contemporary globalized world. -- Silvia Benso, Rochester Insitute of TechnologyTable of ContentsForeword, by Robert T. Valgenti Introduction 1. Beyond the Myth of Objective Truth 2. The Future of Religion 3. The End of Philosophy Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe fact that Moeller has written such a convincing thesis is a major achievement in itself. It is made more impressive by the fact that he has, through the avoidance of sociological jargon and copious examples to illustrate his points, succeeded in conveying complex, abstract ideas in a way that makes them accessible to readers across a wide range of academic disciplines. -- Michael King, University of Reading Hans-Georg Moeller's timely and brilliant book marks a significant turn in the debate on Niklas Luhmann's great theory: the transition from the opposition pro/against to an external observation of the motives for enthusiasm or rejection. With his usual clarity and fascinating wealth of references, Moeller places Luhmann's theory at the heart of current intellectual reflection, indicating and demolishing the barriers that so far prevented its reception. -- Elena Esposito, Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia Eminently readable and provocative... MonatshefteTable of ContentsPreface I. Introduction 1. The Trojan Horse: Luhmann's (Not So) Hidden Radicalism 2. Why He Wrote Such Bad Books II. From Philosophy to Theory 3. The Fourth Insult: A Refutation of Humanism 4. From Necessity to Contingency: A Carnivalization of Philosophy 5. The Last Footnote to Plato: A Solution to the Mind-Body Problem 6. Ecological Evolution: A Challenge to Social Creationism 7. Constructivism as Postmodernist Realism: A Teaching of Differences 8. Democracy as a Utopia: A Deconstruction of Politics 9. Conclusion. Nec spe nec metu: Neither Hope nor Fear Appendix: Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998): A Short Intellectual Biography Abbreviations Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe fact that Moeller has written such a convincing thesis is a major achievement in itself. It is made more impressive by the fact that he has, through the avoidance of sociological jargon and copious examples to illustrate his points, succeeded in conveying complex, abstract ideas in a way that makes them accessible to readers across a wide range of academic disciplines. -- Michael King, University of Reading Hans-Georg Moeller's timely and brilliant book marks a significant turn in the debate on Niklas Luhmann's great theory: the transition from the opposition pro/against to an external observation of the motives for enthusiasm or rejection. With his usual clarity and fascinating wealth of references, Moeller places Luhmann's theory at the heart of current intellectual reflection, indicating and demolishing the barriers that so far prevented its reception. -- Elena Esposito, Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia Eminently readable and provocative... MonatshefteTable of ContentsPreface I. Introduction 1. The Trojan Horse: Luhmann's (Not So) Hidden Radicalism 2. Why He Wrote Such Bad Books II. From Philosophy to Theory 3. The Fourth Insult: A Refutation of Humanism 4. From Necessity to Contingency: A Carnivalization of Philosophy 5. The Last Footnote to Plato: A Solution to the Mind-Body Problem 6. Ecological Evolution: A Challenge to Social Creationism 7. Constructivism as Postmodernist Realism: A Teaching of Differences 8. Democracy as a Utopia: A Deconstruction of Politics 9. Conclusion. Nec spe nec metu: Neither Hope nor Fear Appendix: Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998): A Short Intellectual Biography Abbreviations Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewConcerned with the links connecting ethical positions and political reality, this ambitious and appealing contribution to critical theory guides our understanding of power and judgment, democracy and justice. Ranging wisely across multiple literatures and considerations, The Scandal of Reason offers compelling arguments about the level, type, and validity of ordered reflection most likely to advance good judgment and decent values under vexing conditions. -- Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University With this original and incisive book, Albena Azmanova develops a new hermeneutic for reconciling two models of reasoning that have long been opposed to one another: contextually sensitive political judgments on the one hand versus procedurally-oriented models of discursive validity on the other. She argues that the more ideal a model of judgment, the less applicable in practice, and the more applicable in practice, the less morally rigorous-this has been the dilemma. She tries to resolve this by developing a model of critical political judgment, sensitive to shared matrices of meaning as well as hierarchies of reference. This is a major contribution to theories of judgment and is also written with flair and humor. -- Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University Can deliberation avoid reproducing structural injustice? Dissatisfied with standard procedural models of public reason, Albena Azmanova proposes a new approach that foregrounds the ways in which power asymmetries prestructure deliberators' judgments. Combining philosophical rigor with sociological sensitivity, she extends the reach of critique to crucial regions that liberals ignore: namely, the sociocultural frames that simultaneously enable and constrain our capacity to perceive injustices. The result is a fascinating and convincing book that clarifies reason's 'scandalous' ability to serve both domination and emancipation. -- Nancy Fraser, Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science, the New School for Social Research Albena Azmanova navigates between abstract, universalist conceptions of justice and legitimacy and situated, particularistic claims that disguise their implicit norms. Her work on judgment solves many of the problems of existing theories of deliberative democracy without surrendering normative justification. What is especially valuable in her work is that she transforms deliberative theory in a way that will be more usable for both empirical analysis and political orientation. -- Andrew Arato, Dorothy Hirshon Professor in Political and Social Theory, The New School for Social Research Albena Azmanova identifies what seems to have been a paradox in deliberative theory--that it be either relevant or normative but not both. She resolves this paradox with here own 'critical consensus model,' which shows that we need not give up on social criticism and political relevance in order to develop a theory with normative force. -- Noelle McAfee, Emory University Azmanova's original and theoretically incisive book reveals new connections between deliberative democracy and judgments about social injustice. Highly relevant for those interested in connecting critical theory to democratic deliberation. -- James Fishkin, director, Center for Deliberative Democracy, Stanford University Moving well beyond the earlier generation of discursive theories, [Azmanova] open[s] up new modalities of politics and provide[s] us with new ways of thinking about them. -- Kevin Olson ConstellationsTable of ContentsPreface Introduction: The Scandal of Reason and the Paradox of Judgment 1. Political Judgment and the Vocation of Critical Theory 2. Critical Theory: Political Judgment as Ideologiekritik 3. Philosophical Liberalism: Reasonable Judgment 4. Liberalism and Critical Theory in Dispute 5. Judgment Unbound: Arendt 6. From Critique of Power to a Theory of Critical Judgment 7. The Political Epistemology of Judgment 8. The Critical Consensus Model 9. Judgment, Criticism, Innovation Conclusion: Letting Go of Ideal Theory Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations References Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe work is an extremely interesting synthesis of current scholarship on political theology and radical democracy, -- David McKenzie Journal of Church and StateTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I. Radical Democracy 1. Democracy, More or Less Interlude: Managing Democracy Abroad 2. Democracy, Radically Conceived Part II. Political Theology 3. Political Theology and the Postsecular Interlude: The Iranian Revolution Redux 4. Political Theology, Beyond Despair 5. Political Theologies, or Finding an Alternative to Schmitt 6. The Theopolitics of Democracy Interlude: The Messianic as a Democratic Political Theology Conclusion: From the One to the Many Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis is an excellent book, very original and elegantly written. Chiara Bottici's contribution to the field of politics is an original one, since, even though there exist other theories about the social imaginary, Bottici's is pivotal in allowing us to understand contemporary politics and its paradoxes. It is a great addition to the field of academic discussions about politics, religion, imagination, and conceptual history. -- Maria Pia Lara, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana Chiara Bottici's Imaginal Politics is an original, suggestive, and solid contribution to political philosophy broadly understood. The strength of Bottici's work lies in its scope and potential for unifying several strands of inquiry into one integrated theory of the imaginal and working out the consequences of this notion for a variety of disciplines. The whole field of 'politics and the imagination' is rapidly expanding, and I would not be surprised if this book were to turn into one of the key references in the field. -- Alessandro Ferrara, University of Rome Tor Vergata, and former president of the Italian Association of Political Philosophy In her new book, Chiara Bottici continues her pathbreaking work in imaginal cultural analysis. Neither properly imaginary nor precisely imaginative, the imaginal is the image broken free of the restraints of both indexicality and referentiality, becoming in the process free-floating agencies in modernity's advertising, spectacular, sports, military, and political games. -- Hayden White, University Professor, Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz Insightful, wide-ranging, and exciting. -- Laura Hengehold Notre Dame Philosophical ReviewsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part 1. Imagining 1. From Phantasia to Imagination 2. From Imagination to the Imaginary and Beyond? 3. Toward a Theory of the Imaginal Part 2. Politics 4. A Genealogy of Politics: From Its Invention to the Biopolitical Turn 5. Imaginal Politics 6. Contemporary Transformations Between Spectacle and Virtuality Part 3. The Global Spectacle 7. The Politics of the Past: The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations 8. The Repositioning of Religion in the Public Sphere: Imaginal Consequences 9. Imagining Human Rights: Gender, Race, and Class The Freedom of Equals: A Conclusion and a New Beginning Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBates's own position is supremely original and perfectly and clearly articulated. He shows that the political does not have to lead to fascism and violence and exclusion (clearly it has not prevented these things from taking place) but can have a more progressive, individualist, and anti-exclusionary form. -- James Martel, San Francisco State University In this breakthrough rereading of early-modern thought, David William Bates discovers the origins of liberal norms in and through the creation of a fully autonomous political domain. As Bates shows, it was no accident that construction of internal constitutionalist restraints on the state occurred just as the modern state emerged to its full external potential for global violence. Bates's argument is at the cutting edge in the history of political thought, and his interpretations of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau renovate the study of each author. -- Samuel Moyn, Columbia University [A] masterful study. -- David Tkach The Review of PoliticsTable of ContentsForeword by Dick Howard Preface Introduction: Constitutional Violence and Enlightenment Thought 1. The Autonomous State and the Origin of the Political 2. States of Reasoning: Modern Natural-Law Theory 3. Locke's Natural History of the Political 4. Systems of Sovereignty in Montesquieu 5. Rousseau's Cybernetic Political Body Conclusion: From the Concept of the Political to the Rule of Law Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive biography of Erich Fromm, capturing the personal, social, clinical, philosophic, and political aspects of an influential figure.Trade ReviewIn mid-century America, a peak era for public intellectuals, Erich Fromm's psychological and sociological writings were required reading among the intelligentsia. What's more, his ideas were widely discussed by others, ranging from the millions who devoured The Art of Loving to U.S. Senators and even President John Kennedy. In this compelling biography, historian Lawrence Friedman, author of the definitive biography of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, details the cornucopia of ideas that issued from Fromm's fertile mind as well as the fascinating and little known details of his lengthy, controversial and exceedingly full life. -- Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education Through this thorough portrait, Love's Prophet emerges as an exemplar of enjoying an examined life to its fullest potential. Publishers Weekly The brilliantly comprehensive study of psychoanalyst Erich Fromm's (1900-1980) many 'lives' as a clinician, philosopher, social critic and political activist... Academic biography at its best. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Accessible to general readers - a sympathetic, stimulating biography of one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. Library Journal (starred review) A thoroughly absorbing history of the cultural and political context within which Fromm's life was lived. -- Vivian Gornick Boston Review Friedman is a consummate intellectual biographer. -- Michael M. Canaris America Meticulous, detailed... A model of intellectual biography. -- Alan Ryan New York Review of Books A valuable contribution to Fromm scholarship and to American political and social history. -- Daniel Burston PsycCritiques A deep, insightful, and very human portrait of one of the great public intellectuals of the 20th century. Choice Friedman's biography tracks Fromm through the various phases of his life in detail, providing a thickness of description that hasn't been available before. -- Paul Reitter Times Literary Supplement The most thoroughly, well-researched, and balanced biography so far of Erich Fromm... A clear and richly detailed overview of Fromm's life and work. American Historical Review An intellectual biography of the first order. Journal of American History An outstanding intellectual and biographical study... Lawrence Friedman effectively helps us understand the lives and transformations of Erich Fromm as analyzed in this lucid book. SocietyTable of ContentsForeword, by Gerald N. Grob Acknowledgments Prologue: Writing Lives Part 1: Germany 1. The Unsteady Apprentice 2. Frankfurt Scholar Part 2: The Americas 3. The Americanization of a European Intellectual 4. Escape from Freedom 5. Clinician and Ethicist 6. To Love and to Mentor 7. Politics and Prose Part 3: Global Citizenship 8. Prophecies for a Troubled World 9. A Third Way 10. "Life Is Extravagance": Almost 11. Hope and Stasis 12. Love and Death A Bibliographical Note Notes Index

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Book SynopsisÉtienne Balibar explores the tensions between cosmopolitanism and secularism in order to advance a truly democratic and emancipatory cosmopolitanism, which requires a secularization of secularism. Going beyond circumscribed notions of religion and the public sphere, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a profound rethinking of identity and difference.Trade ReviewOne of our best European activist philosophers here considers the question of secularism, religion, and cosmopolitanism in a broad range: Islam, the historical contradictions of secularism in the Israeli state, the implications of French laïcité, the history of the term 'monotheism' from European antiquity, and serious considerations of gender at every step. 'Generalized heresy as philosophical fiction' is, for Balibar, our persistent, repeated, heterogeneous, and collective political task of invention. Those of us trying to work away from the Abrahamic and toward the rural subaltern electorate find in Balibar a powerful ally. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of Death of a Discipline and Other AsiasSecularism and Cosmopolitanism is the textual equivalent of a rich ongoing seminar with one of our most erudite, astute living philosophers. In writings spanning more than a decade, Balibar opens rather than stipulates the meanings of religion, secularism, and laïcité as well as those of universalism and multiculturalism. From the veil controversy to the Charlie Hebdo bombing, from reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau to reading Joan Scott, Balibar teaches us not what to think about contemporary religious-secular conflicts in Europe, but how. -- Wendy Brown, University of California, BerkeleyOver the years, Étienne Balibar has perfected a style of polemic both so ruthless and so sweet that his antagonists—whether postsecularism or "official" secularism, whether the champions of biopolitics or of euroskepticism—are still smiling even as their heads are separated from their bodies, and will often keep smiling as they lie lifeless on the ground. A revolutionary for our times, a revolutionary without slogans, Balibar brings all of philosophy's resources to bear on the conceptual challenges buried in today's news, and tomorrow's. The concepts he has inspected and re-thought with his signature rigor are fresh and ready for action. -- Bruce Robbins, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia UniversityÉtienne Balibar has been one of the world's leading political philosophers for the last several decades and has had an enormous impact around questions concerning the relation among notions of individuality, selfhood, and state sovereignty in the modern era. Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a short but trenchant book by an important thinker on a vital topic. -- William Egginton, Johns Hopkins UniversityBaliber’s writing on religion and politics contains remarkable insights for scholars working on secular ethics and contemporary religious quarrels. * Publishers Weekly *Balibar is therefore still an Enlightenment thinker, even if a chastened one. He sees our problems clearly and diagnoses them with vigor. * Commonweal *...a vital read, both challenging and probing, and one which we can all benefit from. -- Lewis George Bloodworth * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction. Critique in the Twenty-First Century: Political Economy Still, Religion AgainPart I: Saeculum1. Circumstances and Objectives2. Secularism and Cosmopolitanism: An Aporia?3. Double Binds: Politics of the Veil4. Cosmo-Politics and Conflicts between Universalities5. Finishing with Religion?6. Culture, Religion, or Ideology7. Religious Revolutions and Anthropological Differences8. Secularism Secularized: The Vanishing Mediator9. EnvoiPart II: Essays10. Note on the Origins and Uses of “Monotheism”11. “God Will Not Remain Silent”. Zionism, Messianism, and Nationalism12. What Future for Laïcité? Part III: Statements13. Three Words for the Dead and the Living (after Charlie Hebdo)14. On "Freedom of Expression" and the Question of "Blasphemy"15. Identitarian LaïcitéNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisÉtienne Balibar explores the tensions between cosmopolitanism and secularism in order to advance a truly democratic and emancipatory cosmopolitanism, which requires a secularization of secularism. Going beyond circumscribed notions of religion and the public sphere, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a profound rethinking of identity and difference.Trade ReviewOne of our best European activist philosophers here considers the question of secularism, religion, and cosmopolitanism in a broad range: Islam, the historical contradictions of secularism in the Israeli state, the implications of French laïcité, the history of the term 'monotheism' from European antiquity, and serious considerations of gender at every step. 'Generalized heresy as philosophical fiction' is, for Balibar, our persistent, repeated, heterogeneous, and collective political task of invention. Those of us trying to work away from the Abrahamic and toward the rural subaltern electorate find in Balibar a powerful ally. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of Death of a Discipline and Other AsiasSecularism and Cosmopolitanism is the textual equivalent of a rich ongoing seminar with one of our most erudite, astute living philosophers. In writings spanning more than a decade, Balibar opens rather than stipulates the meanings of religion, secularism, and laïcité as well as those of universalism and multiculturalism. From the veil controversy to the Charlie Hebdo bombing, from reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau to reading Joan Scott, Balibar teaches us not what to think about contemporary religious-secular conflicts in Europe, but how. -- Wendy Brown, University of California, BerkeleyOver the years, Étienne Balibar has perfected a style of polemic both so ruthless and so sweet that his antagonists—whether postsecularism or "official" secularism, whether the champions of biopolitics or of euroskepticism—are still smiling even as their heads are separated from their bodies, and will often keep smiling as they lie lifeless on the ground. A revolutionary for our times, a revolutionary without slogans, Balibar brings all of philosophy's resources to bear on the conceptual challenges buried in today's news, and tomorrow's. The concepts he has inspected and re-thought with his signature rigor are fresh and ready for action. -- Bruce Robbins, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia UniversityÉtienne Balibar has been one of the world's leading political philosophers for the last several decades and has had an enormous impact around questions concerning the relation among notions of individuality, selfhood, and state sovereignty in the modern era. Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a short but trenchant book by an important thinker on a vital topic. -- William Egginton, Johns Hopkins UniversityBaliber’s writing on religion and politics contains remarkable insights for scholars working on secular ethics and contemporary religious quarrels. * Publishers Weekly *Balibar is therefore still an Enlightenment thinker, even if a chastened one. He sees our problems clearly and diagnoses them with vigor. * Commonweal *...a vital read, both challenging and probing, and one which we can all benefit from. -- Lewis George Bloodworth * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction. Critique in the Twenty-First Century: Political Economy Still, Religion AgainPart I: Saeculum1. Circumstances and Objectives2. Secularism and Cosmopolitanism: An Aporia?3. Double Binds: Politics of the Veil4. Cosmo-Politics and Conflicts between Universalities5. Finishing with Religion?6. Culture, Religion, or Ideology7. Religious Revolutions and Anthropological Differences8. Secularism Secularized: The Vanishing Mediator9. EnvoiPart II: Essays10. Note on the Origins and Uses of “Monotheism”11. “God Will Not Remain Silent”. Zionism, Messianism, and Nationalism12. What Future for Laïcité? Part III: Statements13. Three Words for the Dead and the Living (after Charlie Hebdo)14. On "Freedom of Expression" and the Question of "Blasphemy"15. Identitarian LaïcitéNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisRestoring the legacy of four critics who used their foreignness to challenge America’s political complacency.Trade ReviewRitivoi lends her lucid, careful, well balanced analysis to a topic to which our years of heightened suspicion concede heightened relevance. She offers a wealth of material on the American, German, Russian and Palestinian historical and cultural contexts in a mix organized according to the variety of Arendt, Marcuse, Solzhenitsyn, and Said's stranger personae. I would have titled this book Hannah and Her Others, had I written it. But I have not. -- Calin-Andrei Mihailescu, University of Western Ontario Andreea Ritivoi provides a combination of poignant biography with insightful analysis of how the rhetorical strategy of the stranger persona reveals the tightrope that we walk when we converse in the public sphere with those who are part of a social configuration that we enter from the outside. The insight she provides into this insider/outsider relation is bolstered by the rigor and concreteness of her analysis of the public rhetoric of four prominent immigrant intellectuals during their sojourn in the U.S. just before and after the Second World War. -- Fred Evans, Duquesne University This book is important. It is ambitious, thorough and sensitively written by one whom herself is an intimate stranger in America. It is about the discourse of foreign intellectuals and their receptions. Intimate Strangers highlights the diverse stories of four iconic figures--Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Edward Said--and how their "stranger personas" were ambivalently received in America. It says as much about American culture as it does about "foreign" intellectuals. This book is a "must-read" for anyone interested in the politics and challenges of cultural identity. -- Michael Krausz, author of Oneness and the Displacement of Self: Dialogues on Self-Realization A superb endeavor to understand the thorny dialectics of uprootedness and the reinvention of intellectuals forced into exile by the ideological follies of the twentieth century. This book is not only a major achievement in intellectual history but also a vibrant invitation to empathy, lucidity, and moral clarity. -- Vladimir Tismaneanu, author of The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century A finely argued contribution to the discussion of immigration. Kirkus Reviews Unusual and illuminating... Essential reading for students of literature, philosophy, and post-World War II American intellectual history. Library JournalTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. The Stranger Persona 2. Hannah Arendt: The Thinker and the American Republic 3. Herbert Marcuse's German Revolution in America 4. Cold War Prophesies: Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Mythological America 5. Edward Said and the Clash of Identities Conclusion Notes Index

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Book SynopsisHannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Edward Said each steered major intellectual and political schools of thought in American political discourse after World War II, yet none of them was American. Intimate Strangers rereads these thinkers to reconsider ideas of citizenship, universalism, and belonging.Trade ReviewRitivoi lends her lucid, careful, well balanced analysis to a topic to which our years of heightened suspicion concede heightened relevance. She offers a wealth of material on the American, German, Russian and Palestinian historical and cultural contexts in a mix organized according to the variety of Arendt, Marcuse, Solzhenitsyn, and Said's stranger personae. I would have titled this book Hannah and Her Others, had I written it. But I have not. -- Calin-Andrei Mihailescu, University of Western OntarioAndreea Ritivoi provides a combination of poignant biography with insightful analysis of how the rhetorical strategy of the stranger persona reveals the tightrope that we walk when we converse in the public sphere with those who are part of a social configuration that we enter from the outside. The insight she provides into this insider/outsider relation is bolstered by the rigor and concreteness of her analysis of the public rhetoric of four prominent immigrant intellectuals during their sojourn in the U.S. just before and after the Second World War. -- Fred Evans, Duquesne UniversityThis book is important. It is ambitious, thorough and sensitively written by one whom herself is an intimate stranger in America. It is about the discourse of foreign intellectuals and their receptions. Intimate Strangers highlights the diverse stories of four iconic figures--Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Edward Said--and how their "stranger personas" were ambivalently received in America. It says as much about American culture as it does about "foreign" intellectuals. This book is a "must-read" for anyone interested in the politics and challenges of cultural identity. -- Michael Krausz, author of Oneness and the Displacement of Self: Dialogues on Self-RealizationA superb endeavor to understand the thorny dialectics of uprootedness and the reinvention of intellectuals forced into exile by the ideological follies of the twentieth century. This book is not only a major achievement in intellectual history but also a vibrant invitation to empathy, lucidity, and moral clarity. -- Vladimir Tismaneanu, author of The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth CenturyA finely argued contribution to the discussion of immigration. * Kirkus Reviews *Unusual and illuminating... Essential reading for students of literature, philosophy, and post-World War II American intellectual history. * Library Journal *

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Book SynopsisThese outspoken intellectuals seek to reclaim "people" as an effective political concept by revisiting its uses and abuses over time. By engaging this topic linguistically, ethnically, culturally, and ontologically, these scholars help separate "people" from its fraught associations to pursue more vital formulations.Trade ReviewThis exciting and provocative collection of essays reflects on the exclusionary perils and emancipatory potentialities of the concept of 'people' and its myriad cognates: popular, peoples, populism, and so forth. With contributions from leading philosophers and social theorists from France, Tunisia, and the United States, What is a People? is a must-read for anyone interested in cutting-edge work in the tradition of French and Francophone critical theory. -- Amy Allen, Pennsylvania State University, author of The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory The central ambition of this powerful book is to leverage the term 'people' away from its conservative recuperations to maintain it in the lexical war chest of the politics of emancipation. All of the authors address, in this regard, the same central issue of the problematic status of this category, though their perspectives and approaches diverge significantly, ranging from linguistic and conceptual analysis to a concern with implicit racial and nationalist politics. The book as a whole therefore makes a significant contribution to the critical debate on the category of the people in all of its conceptual extensions: popular sovereignty, populism, popularity, and ambiguous expressions like 'we the people.' -- Gabriel Rockhill, Villanova University, author of Radical History and the Politics of Art A critical arsenal with which to think the tensions embedded in popular politics Marx & PhilosophyTable of ContentsPreface Introduction: This People Which Is Not One, by Bruno Bosteels 1. Twenty-Four Notes on the Uses of the Word "People", by Alain Badiou 2. You Said "Popular"?, by Pierre Bourdieu 3. "We, the People": Thoughts on Freedom of Assembly, by Judith Butler 4. To Render Sensible, by Georges Didi-Huberman 5. The People and the Third People, by Sadri Khiari 6. The Populism That Is Not to Be Found, by Jacques Ranciere Conclusion: Fragile Collectivities, Imagined Sovereignties, by Kevin Olson Notes Index

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Book SynopsisCelebrated scholars, including Joan Scott, Noam Chomsky, Stanley Fish, Judith Butler, Jon Elster, Akeel Bilgrami, and Jonathan R. Cole, examine contemporary pressures on the free pursuit of knowledge.Trade ReviewWho's Afraid of Academic Freedom? is a fantastic compilation of essays about a critically important and understudied topic. It has been one hundred years since the definition of academic freedom was laid out by the academy and seventy-five years since it has been studied and synthesized in any significant way, therefore making this collection of essays one of the most important documents in that last century regarding the academy and its role in our society. I would consider this to be the leading compendium of ideas and thinking on academic freedom yet produced. -- Michael Crow, president, Arizona State University Cogent essays about a topic crucial to the university and to all discourse in a democracy. Kirkus Reviews Academic freedom, the editors of this lively and challenging volume tell us, is a value because 'it enables the pursuit of other values.' It can even be at odds with some of those values, and this is why the topic needs the careful and varied attention it receives in these essays. Is academic freedom a subset of the freedom of speech, and if not, what is it? Who sets the rules for freedom of this or any kind? Who changes the rules when they don't seem to be working? And what does 'working' mean in this context? There are no easy answers in this book, but there are ideas and counter-ideas in abundance, and it handsomely illustrates and defends (and shows it is not afraid of) the value it names in its title. -- Michael Wood, author of Literature and the Taste of Knowledge and Yeats and Violence The phrase 'academic freedom' is often used carelessly: here is a work that will allow a more careful conversation about those many crucial issues facing the academy, in which a well-worked out understanding of conceptions of academic freedom is, as its authors show, an essential tool. -- Anthony Appiah, author of The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen and Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity This impressive collection of 17 essays, with its broad range of social, scientific, legal and philosophical analyses, will be vitally important to democratic and political dialogue. -- Miriam E. David Times Higher Education A sober reminder that while academic freedom may be a 'given,' its proponents can never rest on their laurels... Recommended. Choice An impressive body of seminal scholarship... an extraordinary and highly recommended addition to community, college, and university library collections. Midwest Book ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: Who Is Afraid of Academic Freedom?, by Akeel Bilgrami and Jonathan R. Cole 1. A Brief History of Academic Freedom, by Geoffrey R. Stone 2. Truth, Balance, and Freedom, by Akeel Bilgrami 3. Academic Freedom and Its Opponents, by David Bromwich 4. Academic Freedom Under Fire, by Jonathan R. Cole 5. Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom, by Joan W. Scott 6. Obscurantism and Academic Freedom, by Jon Elster 7. What's So Special About Academic Freedom?, by Michele Moody-Adams 8. Academic Freedom and the Constitution, by Robert Post 9. IRB Licensing, by Philip Hamburger 10. To Follow the Argument Where It Leads: An Antiquarian View of the Aim of Academic Freedom at the University of Chicago, by Richard A. Shweder 11. What Is Academic Freedom For?, by Robert J. Zimmer 12. Academic Freedom: Some Considerations, by Matthew Goldstein and Frederick Schaffer 13. Academic Freedom and the Boycott of Israeli Universities, by Stanley Fish 14. Exercising Rights: Academic Freedom and Boycott Politics, by Judith Butler 15. Israel and Islamic Freedom, by John Mearsheimer 16. Academic Freedom and the Subservience to Power, by Noam Chomsky 17. Academic Freedom: A Pilot Study of Faculty Views, by Jonathan R. Cole, Stephen Cole, and Christian C. Weiss List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisCelebrated scholars, including Joan Scott, Noam Chomsky, Stanley Fish, Judith Butler, Jon Elster, Akeel Bilgrami, and Jonathan R. Cole, examine contemporary pressures on the free pursuit of knowledge.Trade ReviewWho's Afraid of Academic Freedom? is a fantastic compilation of essays about a critically important and understudied topic. It has been one hundred years since the definition of academic freedom was laid out by the academy and seventy-five years since it has been studied and synthesized in any significant way, therefore making this collection of essays one of the most important documents in that last century regarding the academy and its role in our society. I would consider this to be the leading compendium of ideas and thinking on academic freedom yet produced. -- Michael Crow, president, Arizona State University Cogent essays about a topic crucial to the university and to all discourse in a democracy. Kirkus Reviews Academic freedom, the editors of this lively and challenging volume tell us, is a value because 'it enables the pursuit of other values.' It can even be at odds with some of those values, and this is why the topic needs the careful and varied attention it receives in these essays. Is academic freedom a subset of the freedom of speech, and if not, what is it? Who sets the rules for freedom of this or any kind? Who changes the rules when they don't seem to be working? And what does 'working' mean in this context? There are no easy answers in this book, but there are ideas and counter-ideas in abundance, and it handsomely illustrates and defends (and shows it is not afraid of) the value it names in its title. -- Michael Wood, author of Literature and the Taste of Knowledge and Yeats and Violence The phrase 'academic freedom' is often used carelessly: here is a work that will allow a more careful conversation about those many crucial issues facing the academy, in which a well-worked out understanding of conceptions of academic freedom is, as its authors show, an essential tool. -- Anthony Appiah, author of The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen and Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity This impressive collection of 17 essays, with its broad range of social, scientific, legal and philosophical analyses, will be vitally important to democratic and political dialogue. -- Miriam E. David Times Higher Education A sober reminder that while academic freedom may be a 'given,' its proponents can never rest on their laurels... Recommended. Choice An impressive body of seminal scholarship... an extraordinary and highly recommended addition to community, college, and university library collections. Midwest Book ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: Who Is Afraid of Academic Freedom?, by Akeel Bilgrami and Jonathan R. Cole 1. A Brief History of Academic Freedom, by Geoffrey R. Stone 2. Truth, Balance, and Freedom, by Akeel Bilgrami 3. Academic Freedom and Its Opponents, by David Bromwich 4. Academic Freedom Under Fire, by Jonathan R. Cole 5. Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom, by Joan W. Scott 6. Obscurantism and Academic Freedom, by Jon Elster 7. What's So Special About Academic Freedom?, by Michele Moody-Adams 8. Academic Freedom and the Constitution, by Robert Post 9. IRB Licensing, by Philip Hamburger 10. To Follow the Argument Where It Leads: An Antiquarian View of the Aim of Academic Freedom at the University of Chicago, by Richard A. Shweder 11. What Is Academic Freedom For?, by Robert J. Zimmer 12. Academic Freedom: Some Considerations, by Matthew Goldstein and Frederick Schaffer 13. Academic Freedom and the Boycott of Israeli Universities, by Stanley Fish 14. Exercising Rights: Academic Freedom and Boycott Politics, by Judith Butler 15. Israel and Islamic Freedom, by John Mearsheimer 16. Academic Freedom and the Subservience to Power, by Noam Chomsky 17. Academic Freedom: A Pilot Study of Faculty Views, by Jonathan R. Cole, Stephen Cole, and Christian C. Weiss List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisA fresh interpretation of Nietzsche's engagement with the work of Paul the Apostle, reorienting the relationship between the two thinkers while embedding modern philosophy within early Christian theology.Trade ReviewWritten in a precise and economical style, crystallizing its points with aphoristic clarity, Nietzsche Versus Paul reconstructs a series of "Christian" moments found throughout the Nietzschean corpus and so reveals a surprisingly consistent, sophisticated, and cunning structure. This contribution goes far beyond the circles of Nietzsche scholarship, where it will certainly be received as a fresh and powerful intervention. Indeed, it is an original conceptualization of atheism, nihilism, secularization, and modernity as well, and will be warmly received by scholars of philosophy and religion, especially, those interested in their intersection. -- Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley Nietzsche versus Paul is a wonderful, philosophically engaging book, meticulous -- even relentless -- in its argumentation, arresting in its interpretive scope, and dedicated to the surprisingly neglected presence of Christianity in Nietzsche. -- Gil Anidjar, Columbia University A brilliant reconstructive projective which fills a genuine lacuna in recent scholarship in history, philosophy, and theology alike. Nietzsche versus Paul is coherent, well formulated, and of extraordinary importance for all of the larger philosophical and historical discussions which have emerged, surprisingly, to become some of the most pressing 'theory' topics of our time. -- Ward Blanton, University of KentTable of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. From Dionysian Tragedy to Christianity 2. From Judaism to Christianity 3. Jesus-Christ and the Two Worlds of Early Christianity 4. Paul: The First Christian 5. Science and Art After the Death of God 6. Beyond Modern Temporality Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBrown and Forst are the authors of two of the most important books on tolerance to be published in the last decade. This book not only offers an overview of their positions but also puts these two authors into a surprisingly productive dialogue. The Power of Tolerance is a rich and compelling exchange between two of the best political theorists working today. -- Amy Allen, Dartmouth College In today's world of divisive politics and divided civilizations, what could be more germane than a spirited debate on the topic of tolerance conducted by two of the world's most respected political theorists? The Power of Tolerance records for those of us who could not be there in person the searching and profound but also fast-paced and witty exchange of ideas between two giants of contemporary political thought: Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst. Ranging from historical insights into the origins of our current concepts to provocative examples from the spheres of culture, sexuality, and religion, what this exchange reveals above all is how deeply complex tolerance is, and how that most laudable goal of generating a politics of tolerance adequate to the problems of our time can only be achieved by running the gauntlet of that concept's inevitable imbrication with the discourses of power. -- William Egginton, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, The Johns Hopkins University It is almost half a century since Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr. and Herbert Marcuse published the radical provocation to liberal orthodoxy they called A Critique of Pure Tolerance, a seminal text for the New Left. Two of today's most eminent political theorists, the American Wendy Brown and the German Rainer Forst, pick up where they left off, debating with far more light than heat the abiding power--to do both good and ill--of a concept that remains central to Western political culture. -- Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley In recent years the discourse and practice of tolerance have been subjected to sustained critique because of the way they subtly constitute and discipline those who are being tolerated. Brown and Forst have been important voices in opening up this topic. But they differ in how we should think about the value of tolerance after critique. Their debate generates a little heat and a large amount of light. The participants disagree, but they keep carefully speaking to each other's points, not past them. The result is a marvelously engaging and valuable volume. -- Stephen K. White, James Hart Professor of Politics, University of Virginia As a practice and a concept, tolerance counts as a major historical discovery in struggles against domination. Yet by casting the tolerant as the figure of virtue, and the tolerated or intolerant as its other, political discourses of toleration often mask and sustain relations of domination. In this brilliant exchange between the two leading theorists of toleration in contemporary political theory, Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst trace the tangled embrace of power and toleration in all its intricacy. The clarity, grace and humor of the dialogue make for highly enjoyable reading, as accessible to students as it is illuminating for experts. With an insightful context-setting epilogue by Christoph Holzey and Luca Di Blaso, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the paradoxes and moral importance of toleration. -- Melissa Williams, University of Toronto Brown and Forst are outstanding scholars as well as authors of important books on this ambiguous term... Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews We can gain much from reading and discussing this slim, insightful book. Marx & Philosophy Review of BooksTable of ContentsEditorial Note The Power of Tolerance: A Debate Between Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst Epilogue: Tensions in Tolerance, by Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey Notes on the Contributors

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Book SynopsisOver thirty years, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida conversed across texts about the interrelation of philosophy, religion and literature. In Broken Tablets, Sarah Hammerschlag traces that conversation and argues for its political significance, highlighting the role that Judaism played in their relationship.Trade ReviewThis text offers a careful tracking of the intellectual dynamic between Derrida and Levinas, showing how a biographical and philosophical proximity coexisted with divergent views on religion and language. The ethical claim in Levinas's work is taken up by Derrida with gravity and irony. This careful historical and textual analysis allows us to see how these thinkers are bound up with one another even as Levinas presses philosophy toward religion and for Derrida, it is literature that is at the heart of sanctity and betrayal. At stake in this copious and attentive comparative work is the question, what is it to be a Jewish thinker? In the end, it appears that 'otherness' remains and persists as a broken tablet whose secret meaning is never fully revealed but hides out in public view. This is a welcome book, exacting and detailed, that gives us a story and a theory, a scene of enigmatic and provocative encounter between Levinas and Derrida. -- Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley A remarkably clear, incisive, and important book. It will be required reading for those interested in Levinas and Derrida and for all of those in the study of religion who wish to explore the relationship between ethics, politics, religion, and literature. -- Amy Hollywood, Harvard Divinity School Deconstruction teaches us to question the integrity of binary oppositions, destabilizing conventional wisdom about the fixity of our categorical distinctions. But what if the field of contesting terms has three or more components? Beginning with the legacies of Derrida and Levinas, Hammerschlag investigates the oscillating similarities that united and dissimilarities that divided them. But then with her customary analytical acumen, she builds upon that exercise to explore their dynamic implications for the triangulated relationship between philosophy, religion, and literature, while complicating the argument still further by adding politics to the mix. The result is a remarkable, four-dimensional map of the rolling and jagged landscape of recent theoretical discourse. -- Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley From early texts such as Violence and Metaphysics to late works such as Adieu, Derrida sustained a powerful and philosophically productive bond with Levinas. But their differences, in matters of metaphysics and on the question of Jewish 'communitarianism,' were profound. In this searching and suggestive meditation, Hammerschlag asks us to consider anew this troubled affiliation and examines the dialectic of fidelity and betrayal that marked their intellectual friendship across the decades. -- Peter E. Gordon, Harvard UniversityTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Abbreviations 1. "What Must a Jewish Thinker Be?" 2. Levinas, Literature, and the Ruin of the World 3. Between the Jew and Writing 4. To Lose One's Head: Literature and the Democracy to Come 5. Literature and the Political-Theological Remains Epilogue: "There Is Not a Pin to Choose Between Us" Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTraces the roots of contemporary anti-relativist fears to the antimodern rhetoric of the Catholic Church and rescues a form of philosophical relativism for modern, pluralist societies.Trade ReviewSince the emergence of democracy in the Western world, the Catholic Church has warned that democracies' association with cultural relativism would lead to a new totalitarianism. In this compelling book, Accetti reveals the origins of this demand for absolute moral and political truths. He defends a challenging point of view: individual moral relativism not only complements but reinforces democracy. Clear and convincing! -- Patrick Weil, Yale University An original and bold argument that offers a compelling and critical account of how particular religious institutions aim to impose their views on politics by using the 'authority' of religious beliefs. It sheds light on our present debates concerning religion and politics. -- Maria Pia Lara, author of The Disclosure of Politics: Struggles Over the Semantics of Secularization An important and timely book that provides an outstandingly well-researched reconstruction of the history of the religious discourse of anti-relativism, and then advances a bold and original response, defending relativism as the most adequate philosophical foundation for democracy. The scholarship is impeccable and the argument is both challenging and persuasive: it will become a reference point. -- Justine Lacroix, Universite Libre de Bruxelles Relativism and Religion offers a lucid and creative reinterpretation of Hans Kelsen's still neglected democratic theory. -- Jan-Werner Mueller, author of Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe A courageous and truly original contribution to the study of democracy as a society that is structurally based on opinions that citizens form in their free and open exchange of their political and moral judgments and decisions. This makes democracy not easily welcomed by supporters of absolute visions of truth, religious or otherwise. Accetti shows very convincingly how the call for the reassertion of a reference to a notion of absolute truth in contemporary politics constitutes one of the most resilient expressions of the resistance against the democratic principle of self-government from within democratic societies. -- Nadia Urbinati, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. The Discourse of Anti-Relativism in the Political Thought of the Catholic Church 2. Elements for a Public Critique of the Catholic Discourse of Anti-Relativism 3. Rationalism: Between Relativism and Religion 4. Defense of a Relativist Conception of Democracy Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Scaffolding of Sovereignty deploys a comparative and theoretically rich conception of sovereignty to reconsider the different schemes on which it has been based or renewed, the public stages on which it is erected or destroyed, and the images and ideas on which it rests.Trade ReviewThat sovereign power is often fragile and never established once and for all is the startling proposition that organizes this spectacularly interesting sequence of investigations. Sovereignty is impossible to study, the essays propose, without attention to its 'scaffolding,' defined as all the symbolic management that power continually requires. Leaping across time and spanning the world, The Scaffolding of Sovereignty showcases scholarly gems that together reflect how the crown of sovereignty is kept in place-and sometimes slips. -- Samuel Moyn, Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law and Professor of History, Harvard University coeditor of "Global Intellectual History" This volume showcases the best of global intellectual history. Sovereignty emerges as a complex force: aesthetically layered, politically mutable, historically contingent, and consistently elusive. At the same time, despite the apparent Eurocentrism of the concept's recent lineage, readers will come away convinced of the importance of sovereignty as an analytical category, key to making sense of political culture in world history and political thought in global context. -- Lauren Benton, author of A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in World History, 1400-1900 Joining performance studies with philosophy, theology, and ethnography, the figure of the scaffold aptly evokes the symbolic supports and global visibility of sovereignty today. The contributors to this ambitious collection of essays fearlessly disclose recurrent features of sovereignty across time and space, often beginning immanently with the cosmic cartographies generated by particular regimes and projected in aesthetic displays, liturgical exercises, and citational enterprises that reveal common themes in the global drama of majesty. -- Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine This is a wide-ranging, stimulating, challenging collection of essays. -- Jerrold Seigel, William J. Kenan, Jr., Professor of History Emeritus at New York University.Table of ContentsForeword, by Dick Howard Editors' Introduction, by Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Nicole Jerr Part I. Stages Preface 1. Sad Stories of the Death of Kings: Sovereignty and Its Constraints in Greek Tragedy and Elsewhere, by Glenn W. Most 2. Contested Sovereignty: Heaven, the Monarch, the People, and the Intellectuals in Traditional China, by Yuri Pines 3. Nurhaci's Gambit: Sovereignty as Concept and Praxis in the Rise of the Manchus, by Nicola Di Cosmo 4. The Living Image of the People, by Jason Frank Part II. Courts Preface 5. Public Health, the State, and Religious Scholarship: Sovereignty in Idris al-Bidlisi's Arguments for Fleeing the Plague, by Justin Stearns 6. The Dancing Despot: Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Performative Symbolism of Power, by Stanca Scholz-Cionca 7. Liberal Constitutionalism and the Sovereign Pardon, by Bernadette Meyler 8. The Vanishing Slaves of Paris: The Lettre de Cachet and the Emergence of an Imperial Legal Order in Eighteenth-Century France, by Miranda Spieler 9. Re-touching the Sovereign: Biochemistry of Perpetual Leninism, by Alexei Yurchak Part III. Acts Preface 10. Hijra and Exile: Islam and Dual Sovereignty in Qing China, by Zvi Ben-Dor Benite 11. The Neurology of Regicide: Decapitation Experiments and the Science of Sovereignty, by Cathy Gere 12. The "Millennium" of 1857: The Last Performance of the Great Mughal, by A. Azfar Moin 13. Exit the King? Modern Theater and the Revolution, by Nicole Jerr Part IV. Shifts Preface 14. Revolution in Permanence and the Fall of Popular Sovereignty, by Dan Edelstein 15. Exile Within Sovereignty: Critique of "The Negation of Exile" in Israeli Culture, by Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin 16. Affective Sovereignty, International Law, and China's Legal Status in the Nineteenth Century, by Li Chen 17. The Sovereignty of the New Man After Wagner: Artist and Hero, Symbolic History, and the Staging of Origins, by Stefanos Geroulanos List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisFollows the hollowing-out of "coolness" in modern American culture and its reflection of a larger evasion of race, racism, and ethics now common in neoliberal societyTrade ReviewWay Too Cool constitutes a significant and entirely original intervention into the literature on neoliberalism and biopolitics. The book's range, depth, and precision are breathtaking. -- Lynne Huffer, author of Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Se With keen, deliberate intellectual insight and daring, Winnubst elevates the discussion of cool to its rightful place in the pantheon of critical theory, highlighting aspects of popular culture and its impact on mainstream thought. -- bell hooks, activist and author Shannon Winnubst makes more sense of neoliberalism than any writer I have read. Mapping how neoliberalism in the United States de-racializes difference in its quest for cool, she theorizes race outside the parameters of identity politics by way of the Lacanian real. This wickedly smart and profoundly ethical book deserves a very wide readership. -- Tim Dean, author of Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking For Winnubst, the dehistoricization of cool produces an ethical crisis as it detaches coolness from efforts to imagine and produce a better social world. Way Too Cool is one of the most provocative texts that I have read on race, philosophy, and ethics in a long time. -- Roderick Ferguson, author of The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference In this intellectually vibrant text that reads economic doctrines, racialized class inequities, and the lasting residue of popular culture with equal grace, Winnubst uses the genealogy of cool to pen a riveting treatise on race, ethics, and the commodification of social difference. Winnubst's arguments are precise and persuasive, as rigorously crafted as they are creatively composed. This book is poised to shake up how we think, talk and teach about neoliberalism. -- Juana Maria Rodriguez, Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, University of California, Berkeley A provocative and field-changing book... This is an account to be reckoned with. HypatiaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: A Very Uncool Book 1. Excavating Categories: Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics Interlude 1: Old School Cool 2. Rethinking Difference: The Limits of Interpellation Interlude 2: Instant Cool! 3. From Instant Karma to Instant Wealth: The Fantasies and Cathexes of These Neoliberal Times Interlude 3: Neoliberal Cool 4. "How Cool Is That?": Gender and the Neoliberal Imaginary Interlude 4: The Birth of Cool 5. Reading Race as the Real: The Securities and Punishments of Neoliberal Cool Interlude 5: Real Cool, Now 6. Stop Making Sense: The Aporia of Race and Ethics Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFollows the hollowing-out of "coolness" in modern American culture and its reflection of a larger evasion of race, racism, and ethics now common in neoliberal societyTrade ReviewWay Too Cool constitutes a significant and entirely original intervention into the literature on neoliberalism and biopolitics. The book's range, depth, and precision are breathtaking. -- Lynne Huffer, author of Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Se With keen, deliberate intellectual insight and daring, Winnubst elevates the discussion of cool to its rightful place in the pantheon of critical theory, highlighting aspects of popular culture and its impact on mainstream thought. -- bell hooks, activist and author Shannon Winnubst makes more sense of neoliberalism than any writer I have read. Mapping how neoliberalism in the United States de-racializes difference in its quest for cool, she theorizes race outside the parameters of identity politics by way of the Lacanian real. This wickedly smart and profoundly ethical book deserves a very wide readership. -- Tim Dean, author of Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking For Winnubst, the dehistoricization of cool produces an ethical crisis as it detaches coolness from efforts to imagine and produce a better social world. Way Too Cool is one of the most provocative texts that I have read on race, philosophy, and ethics in a long time. -- Roderick Ferguson, author of The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference In this intellectually vibrant text that reads economic doctrines, racialized class inequities, and the lasting residue of popular culture with equal grace, Winnubst uses the genealogy of cool to pen a riveting treatise on race, ethics, and the commodification of social difference. Winnubst's arguments are precise and persuasive, as rigorously crafted as they are creatively composed. This book is poised to shake up how we think, talk and teach about neoliberalism. -- Juana Maria Rodriguez, Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, University of California, Berkeley A provocative and field-changing book... This is an account to be reckoned with. HypatiaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: A Very Uncool Book 1. Excavating Categories: Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics Interlude 1: Old School Cool 2. Rethinking Difference: The Limits of Interpellation Interlude 2: Instant Cool! 3. From Instant Karma to Instant Wealth: The Fantasies and Cathexes of These Neoliberal Times Interlude 3: Neoliberal Cool 4. "How Cool Is That?": Gender and the Neoliberal Imaginary Interlude 4: The Birth of Cool 5. Reading Race as the Real: The Securities and Punishments of Neoliberal Cool Interlude 5: Real Cool, Now 6. Stop Making Sense: The Aporia of Race and Ethics Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA provocative defense of meat eating as an affirmation of our vital relation and debt to animals.Trade ReviewWitty and comical yet always serious in its defense of meat eating, Eat This Book is a pure joy to read. -- Brett Buchanan, Laurentian University Eat This Book challenges ethical vegetarians with a variety of counterarguments to consider. Though some of the rhetoric may prove indigestible, such skepticism ultimately feeds the philosophic debate on diet. -- Ralph R. Acampora, Hofstra UniversityTable of ContentsTranslator's Preface A Sort of Aperitif Appetizer: How Does One Recognize an Ethical Vegetarian? Hors d'Oeuvre: A Short History of Vegetarian Practices First Course: Some (Good) Reasons Not to Become an Ethical Vegetarian Second Course: The Ethics of the Carnivore A Sort of Dessert Postface Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA provocative defense of meat eating as an affirmation of our vital relation and debt to animals.Trade ReviewWitty and comical yet always serious in its defense of meat eating, Eat This Book is a pure joy to read. -- Brett Buchanan, Laurentian University Eat This Book challenges ethical vegetarians with a variety of counterarguments to consider. Though some of the rhetoric may prove indigestible, such skepticism ultimately feeds the philosophic debate on diet. -- Ralph R. Acampora, Hofstra UniversityTable of ContentsTranslator's Preface A Sort of Aperitif Appetizer: How Does One Recognize an Ethical Vegetarian? Hors d'Oeuvre: A Short History of Vegetarian Practices First Course: Some (Good) Reasons Not to Become an Ethical Vegetarian Second Course: The Ethics of the Carnivore A Sort of Dessert Postface Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAmy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future for achieving emancipatory social goals.Trade ReviewAmy Allen has performed the long-overdue task of pulling contemporary Frankfurt School theory into the light that postcolonial theory sheds upon its quietude about imperialism and colonialism, its insufficient appreciation of global inequality and differences, and its fetishism and purification of European modernity. While honoring the power of the School's theoretical foundations and insights, she stages a steady and profound encounter with its worldly Others-an encounter that cannot be dismissed. -- Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley In this courageous and path-breaking text, Allen challenges critical theory to live up to its own pretensions and begin to decolonize itself, starting with its still insufficiently interrogated foundational Euro-progressivist assumptions. -- Charles Mills, Northwestern University The End of Progress is a beautifully written and engaging critique of critical theory. It challenges basic assumptions of the Frankfurt School to expand our field of view and builds bridges with other genres of critical thinking. This book charts a bold direction that breathes new life into critical theory. -- Kevin Olson, University of California, Irvine In this engaging, perceptive, and illuminating book, Amy Allen seeks to decolonize Critical Theory. Exposing weaknesses in the normative claims of Habermas, Honneth, and Forst and with a fresh interpretation of Adorno and Foucault, this book is stimulating and provocative for anyone interested in both the limitations and prospects of Critical Theory. -- Richard J. Bernstein, New School for Social Research I highly recommend this outstanding internal critique of the idea of universal, developmental progress in the critical theory tradition and its role in legitimating Western imperialism by a leading critical theorist. Allen also initiates a promising dialogue with postcolonial theorists who have advanced external critiques, a dialogue oriented to decolonizing normative political theory together. -- James Tully, University of Victoria In her perspicacious and penetrating discussion of major figures of the Frankfurt School, Allen shows how deeply the tradition of critique is entangled with the grand narrative of enlightenment, the myth of the progressive unfolding of reason. Drawing on Adorno and Foucault, she shows the path contemporary critique has to take: the path to radical self-critique. -- Christoph Menke, Goethe-Universitat FrankfurtTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1. Critical Theory and the Idea of Progress 2. From Social Evolution to Multiple Modernities: History and Normativity in Habermas 3. The Ineliminability of Progress? Honneth's Hegelian Contextualism 4. From Hegelian Reconstructivism to Kantian Constructivism: Forst's Theory of Justification 5. From the Dialectic of Enlightenment to the History of Madness: Foucault as Adorno's Other Other Son 6. Conclusion: "Truth," Reason, and History Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAmy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future for achieving emancipatory social goals.Trade ReviewAmy Allen has performed the long-overdue task of pulling contemporary Frankfurt School theory into the light that postcolonial theory sheds upon its quietude about imperialism and colonialism, its insufficient appreciation of global inequality and differences, and its fetishism and purification of European modernity. While honoring the power of the School's theoretical foundations and insights, she stages a steady and profound encounter with its worldly Others-an encounter that cannot be dismissed. -- Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley In this courageous and path-breaking text, Allen challenges critical theory to live up to its own pretensions and begin to decolonize itself, starting with its still insufficiently interrogated foundational Euro-progressivist assumptions. -- Charles Mills, Northwestern University The End of Progress is a beautifully written and engaging critique of critical theory. It challenges basic assumptions of the Frankfurt School to expand our field of view and builds bridges with other genres of critical thinking. This book charts a bold direction that breathes new life into critical theory. -- Kevin Olson, University of California, Irvine In this engaging, perceptive, and illuminating book, Amy Allen seeks to decolonize Critical Theory. Exposing weaknesses in the normative claims of Habermas, Honneth, and Forst and with a fresh interpretation of Adorno and Foucault, this book is stimulating and provocative for anyone interested in both the limitations and prospects of Critical Theory. -- Richard J. Bernstein, New School for Social Research I highly recommend this outstanding internal critique of the idea of universal, developmental progress in the critical theory tradition and its role in legitimating Western imperialism by a leading critical theorist. Allen also initiates a promising dialogue with postcolonial theorists who have advanced external critiques, a dialogue oriented to decolonizing normative political theory together. -- James Tully, University of Victoria In her perspicacious and penetrating discussion of major figures of the Frankfurt School, Allen shows how deeply the tradition of critique is entangled with the grand narrative of enlightenment, the myth of the progressive unfolding of reason. Drawing on Adorno and Foucault, she shows the path contemporary critique has to take: the path to radical self-critique. -- Christoph Menke, Goethe-Universitat FrankfurtTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1. Critical Theory and the Idea of Progress 2. From Social Evolution to Multiple Modernities: History and Normativity in Habermas 3. The Ineliminability of Progress? Honneth's Hegelian Contextualism 4. From Hegelian Reconstructivism to Kantian Constructivism: Forst's Theory of Justification 5. From the Dialectic of Enlightenment to the History of Madness: Foucault as Adorno's Other Other Son 6. Conclusion: "Truth," Reason, and History Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTenders a new political economy anchored in a theory of valueTrade ReviewCarl Raschke both acutely examines key thinkers and thoroughly, deeply develops the historical and theoretical contexts for their respective theories. Force of God, with its depth of engagement, will change the ongoing conversation around the relationship of political theology and subjectivity to past, present, and future articulations of 'democracy.' -- Victor E. Taylor, York College of Pennsylvania Force of God is a manifesto of searing personal vision with the rhetoric to match. -- Mike Grimshaw, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Carl Raschke's contribution to political theology offers a sustained and profound genealogy of the conceptual forces that constitute our era. Based on extensive scholarship that discloses obscured insights from the tradition of radical Continental philosophy, he illuminates and challenges the forces of religion, economy, and politics in our time. This is a deep theoretical treatise on our present and future troubles. -- Philip Goodchild, University of Nottingham Highly recommended. ChoiceTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Part 1. Historical and Theoretical Considerations 1. Liberal Democracy and the Crisis of Representation 2. Force of Thought 3. Force of Art 4. Force of the Political Part 2. The Genealogy of Crisis 5. Force and Economy 6. Force of Exception Part 3. Toward a Political Theology in the Twilight of the Political 7. Force of God 8. The End of the Political 9. God, the State, and Revolution Notes Index

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Book SynopsisClayton Chin presents a critical reconstruction of the work of Richard Rorty that argues that that Rorty provides us with unrecognized tools for resolving key foundational issues. The Practice of Political Theory is an important response to the vexed questions of justification and pluralism.Trade ReviewRichard Rorty, says Clayton Chin, was first deployed as a foil by critical theory, then rejected, and finally ignored. It is time now to reinvent Rorty, paying special attention to his later work in relation to other traditions. This is a thoughtful, timely, and closely articulated study. It commands close attention from those who will embrace it and those who may contest some of its claims. -- William E. Connolly, author of Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy Under TrumpismRichard Rorty stirred his theoretical milieu by combining postfoundational philosophy with a commitment to traditional liberalism. His provocation remains poignant in our current moment, when continental-inflected postfoundational thought finds itself tarrying again with materialism and ontology to save its political radicalism. Clayton Chin’s compelling and important book shows how Rorty’s thought offers an inclusive ethos for pluralistic democracies, and without pretending that unifying philosophical theory can do for us what only political activity can accomplish. -- Colin Koopman, author of Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and RortyThe Practice of Political Theory seeks to think critically about the political-philosophical contribution of Richard Rorty. Chin rightly attends to the limitations and untapped possibilities of Rorty’s work, understood as a contribution to 'cultural politics,' and therefore aims to undercut those criticisms of Rorty’s work that downplay his substantive contributions to political-philosophical thinking. In doing so, the book reads Rorty as helping us side-step debates around foundationalism and justification in political theorizing in favor of a situated mode of thinking that does not dispense with normative assessment. -- Melvin Rogers, author of The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of DemocracyThe Practice of Political Theory is both an excellent reconstruction of Rorty’s pragmatist philosophy of sociopolitical criticism and an insightful and illuminating critical comparison of it with other leading approaches in contemporary political theory. It also makes an important contribution to debates over agonistics and pluralism. -- James Tully, author of Public Philosophy in a New KeyClearly written and impressive for its scholarship.... Highly recommended. * Choice *A rich and insightful study into the relationship between Richard Rorty and various strands of contemporary political thought...a welcome contribution. -- David Rondel, University of Nevada * Political Theory *Chin has provided an indispensable contribution to thinking about Rorty, pragmatism, and new paths for political theory. -- Matthew Festenstein University of York * Contemporary Political Theory Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsPart I: Rorty and Political ThinkingIntroduction. Theory and Method: Reconstructing Rorty1. The Authority of the Social: A Pragmatic Ethos of InquiryPart II: Rorty and Continental Political Thought: Ontology, Naturalism, and History2. Theorizing After Foundations: Ontology, Language, and Heidegger3. Reconstructing Naturalism: Pragmatic or Ontological?4. History and Modernity: Self-Assertion and Critical ReflexivityPart III: Rorty and Contemporary Political Theory: Pragmatic Sociopolitical Criticism5. Pragmatic Political Thinking and Contemporary Critical Social Theory6. How Pragmatism Constrains and Enables Political ThinkingNotesReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisA call for new forms of solidarity and spiritual practice.Trade ReviewEach gospel-like contribution to The Insurrectionist Manifesto can be read separately, but when they are read in tandem, a particular disturbing power is occasioned. I found myself stimulated and conceptually shaken in equal fashion. The call of these gospels has the potential to disturb the ground of our being. Those who hear it will be positively afflicted by a series of challenges that are exciting and demanding in equal measure. -- Mike Grimshaw, University of Canterbury Attempts to break the age-old grip of the transcendent on theological thought have multiplied in recent years. In this indispensable provocation to thought, these wonderfully intrepid and scholarly philosophers of religion have pushed the accompanying turn toward immanence in the direction of the political in all its hugely varied insurrectionist forms. -- Kenneth Surin, Duke University In these unapologetic, interlocking essays, we find a radical theology that finally lives up to its name. Here theology tumbles kenotically, inexorably, into political economy, literature, climate science, postcoloniality, critical race theory, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics, forcing us to face the earth, sky, mortals, and gods as they are-and in all that they're not-and only then as they might yet be. -- Mary-Jane Rubenstein, author of Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse New concepts are very rare, but when philosophers manage to create them, everything changes. This manifesto thrust us into an 'insurrectionist' theology where Nietzsche's death of God, Zizek's ontology of the Real, and Malabou's plastic materiality come together to overcome those metaphysical frames that still condition our lives. Anyone interested in radical theology, philosophy, and politics in the 21st century must read this book carefully since he might find himself also to be an insurrectionist. -- Santiago Zabala, ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at Pompeu Fabra UniversityTable of ContentsForeword, by Peter Rollins Preface, by Creston Davis Introduction: What Is Insurrectionist Theology?, by Ward Blanton, Clayton Crockett, Jeffrey W. Robbins, and Noelle Vahanian 1. Earth: What Can a Planet Do?, by Clayton Crockett 2. Satellite Skies; or, The Gospel and Acts of the Vampirisms of Transcendence, by Ward Blanton 3. A Theory of Insurrection: Beyond the Way of the Mortals, by Jeffrey W. Robbins 4. The Gospel of the Word Made Flesh: Insurrection from Within the Heart of Divinity, by Noelle Vahanian Afterword, by Catherine Keller Notes Index

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Book SynopsisContributes theoretically and practically to the growing field of transitional justiceTrade ReviewNegative Emotions and Transitional Justice connects the threads between previously unrelated clusters of theory on justice, emotions, judgment, and democracy, bringing a new theoretical sophistication to the field of transitional justice studies. -- Thomas Brudholm, University of Copenhagen Mihaela Mhiai skillfully maps the contours of the debate about the role domestic and international courts-and particularly judges-should or should not play in the development of democratic institutions in post-conflict societies. She argues convincingly that, if done correctly, courts can help balance the twin imperative of recognizing past harms and promoting a culture of respect for the rights of others. This is an important, thought-provoking book on an inordinately complex subject. -- Eric Stover, University of California, Berkeley Mihai constructs an extraordinarily clear map of the boundaries of legitimate resentment and indignation against prior injustice and then shows how judicial decisions can be exemplary in demonstrating the right roles for these fitting but volatile emotions within a democratic order. -- Margaret Urban Walker, Marquette University In the best tradition of political philosophy, Mihai stands on the shoulders of such giants as Hannah Arendt, Ronald Dworkin, and Judith Shklar to think through pressing contemporary normative and institutional questions about the nature, conditions, and practices of judgment as one of the pillars of democratic consolidation. Then, intelligently drawing on both new scholarship on the emotions and contemporary cases of transitional justice, she reaches beyond those thinkers to consider how democratizing societies can respond to and draw on the ethical judgments that such negative emotions carry, at the same time as performing and consolidating the principles of a society that treats all as equals. Tempering her vision of what might be possible with the realism of institutional, political, and cultural constraints, Mihai has achieved an original and important contribution to both theories and practices of transitional justice. -- Danielle Celermajer, University of Sydney Mihai's meticulous argumentation style sets this book apart among accounts of emotional responses to past abuses. Perspectives on PoliticsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Problem 1. Transitional Justice: Optional or Imperative? 2. Theorizing Resentment and Indignation 3. Enabling Emotional Responsibility I: Judicial Review of Transitional Justice Legislation 4. Enabling Emotional Responsibility II: Criminal Trials in Democratic Transitions Conclusions Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales, Sean Meighoo raises a provocative challenge not merely to the conceits of continental philosophy's recent deconstruction of the ethnocentrism of Western metaphysics, but also to the assumptions of the postcolonial theory that has eagerly appropriated that counterdiscourse. In doing so, he urges us to recognize the ways in which the critique of the idea of a singular West has often been misconceived. This is a timely intervention with deep-reaching implications for rethinking the project of contemporary criticism. -- David Scott, author of Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, JusticeThis groundbreaking book makes an important and crucial intervention into the literatures and debates on postcolonial theory, politics, and cultural studies. Meighoo skillfully and thoughtfully brings together Western and Eastern philosophies, pointing not only to their various differences and similarities but also, importantly, to their influences. The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales moves across a wide philosophical terrain to provide readers with a profound sense of what might be at stake in terms of how Western philosophy and postcolonial theory speak to each other. -- Rinaldo Walcott, author of Black Like Who? Writing Black CanadaTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: The End of the West1. The Black Athena DebatePart II: From Teleology to Negative Teleology2. The Phenomenological Turn3. The Ethical TurnPart III: From Continental Philosophy to Postcolonial Theory4. The Critique of Representation5. The Defense of DifferencePart IV: The Limits of Antiethnocentrism6. The Beatles in IndiaConclusionNotesBibliography

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Book SynopsisData Love considers the changes big data has brought to the human condition from a philosophical standpoint. Roberto Simanowski explores our entanglements with algorithmic analysis and data mining, as we contribute to the amassing of ever more data about our lives, leading to the statistical evaluation and individual profiling of our selves.Trade ReviewDigital interactive space is not only a technical condition: it mobilizes larger ecologies of meaning that cannot be captured by an exclusive focus on those technical features. Roberto Simanowski gives us a brilliant exploration of one such ecology, an ironic and critical take on contemporary society's ambivalent relationship with data. -- Saskia Sassen, author of ExpulsionsWith the advent of the Web, digital technologies seem to contain alternatives to the consumerist models implemented by the culture industry as described by Adorno and Hockheimer. Simanowski shows how data economy turns this dream into a nightmare of hyperconsumption founded on hypercontrol. -- Bernard Stiegler, author of States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st CenturyWith this book, Simanowski joins Evgeny Morozov as an indispensable critic of our obsession with big data. What sets Data Love apart from other accounts is its determined shift of attention away from the sinister machinations of government agencies to the impact of seemingly harmless commercial data-service providers, as well as its informed historical focus, which ties modern data mining to the venerable project of enlightenment. Seek and you will find, a famous text promised two millennia ago. Search engines such as Google have renewed the pledge, but Simanowski leaves no doubt that the digital platform supporting this promise is turning it into a threat: Seek and you will be found. -- Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, author of Kittler and the MediaSimanowski proffers a much more profound history and theoretical basis to the debate, a contribution unparalleled in its findings and with conclusions that are neither too radical nor too conservative. Without question, Data Love is the most comprehensive and philosophically rich contribution on this subject that I have read. -- Creston Davis, Global Center for Advanced StudiesCompelling. . . . Simanowski makes an excellent case that the most essential struggle is not with the NSA or Facebook but with ourselves. -- Jennifer Howard * Times Literary Supplement *Recommended. * Choice *Data Love dares us to reflect on the progression of our relationship with data, to think where zealous data mining might be leading, and then to solemnly answer the question: does data love us back? -- David R. Gruber * Information, Communication & Society *A splendid and beautiful book about our society, our relationship with technologies, but most important, governments' relationship with them. . . . Highly recommended to everyone. * Articles and more *Table of ContentsPrefacePart I. Beyond the NSA Debate1. Intelligence Agency Logic2. Double Indifference3. Self-Tracking and Smart Things4. Ecological Data Disaster5. Cold Civil WarPart II. Paradigm Change6. Data-Mining Business7. Social Engineers Without a Cause8. Silent Revolution9. Algorithms10. Absence of TheoryPart III. The Joy of Numbers11. Compulsive Measuring12. The Phenomenology of the Numerable13. Digital Humanities14. Lessing's RejoinderPart IV. Resistances15. God's Eye16. Data Hacks17. On the Right Life in the Wrong OneEpiloguePostfaceNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThese fragments outline a rudimentary theory of political order modeled on the natural world that recognizes the role of human self-interest in maintaining stable rule. Casting the natural world as an independent, amoral system, Shen Dao situates the source of moral judgment firmly within the human sphere.Trade ReviewWith imagination and philosophical acumen, Eirik Lang Harris has shown Shen Dao to be an ancient political philosopher worth contending with. He shows Shen Dao to have a balanced and realistic philosophy, occupying a position between Confucianism and Mohism. His translation, accompanied by the Chinese text, will serve philosophers for decades to come. -- Al Martinich, Roy Allison Vaughan Centennial Professor in Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin Harris's new translation and commentary on the surviving fragments of Shen Dao's writings is a significant contribution to Sinology. He skillfully explains Shen Dao's political philosophy in terms that are readily comprehensible to contemporary thinkers. This is an excellent overview of ancient Chinese philosophy for both specialists and nonspecialists. -- Bryan Van Norden, author of Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy Harris provides an excellent translation and study of the Shenzi Fragments and does a beautiful job of demonstrating the significance of the fragments for our understanding of early Chinese political philosophy. This work will play a crucial role in bringing scholarly attention back to these important yet often neglected materials. -- Michael Puett, coauthor of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good LifeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Conventions and Abbreviations Introduction Part I: A Philosophical Study of the Shenzi Fragments Shen Dao's Political Philosophy Shen Dao in the Early Chinese Intellectual Milieu Part II: A Translation of the Shenzi Fragments Appendix: Conversion and Finding Chart Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWilliam Desmond sees religion, art, philosophy, and politics as essential and distinctive modes of human practice, manifestations of an intimate universality that illuminates individual and social being. By observing their permeable relations, Desmond captures notes of a clandestine conversation that transforms ontology.Trade ReviewA marvelously articulated work with a consummately refined language of its own for conceiving the perennial issues of philosophy in fresh and compelling terms. -- William Franke, Vanderbilt University and University of Macao Desmond combines the virtues of scope, systematic rigor, and highly individual manner of perception and expression. -- Cyril O'Regan, University of Notre Dame In this excellent and interesting work, Desmond is expanding and refining his already considerable contribution to contemporary continental philosophy in a metaphysical register. -- Christopher Ben Simpson, Lincoln Christian University How can something singular, in all the depths of its singularity, communicate with the universal, with the result that the singular is not contracted to itself and the universal is not a free floating abstraction? William Desmond explores this basic question in all its dimensions in the steady, systematic and meticulous manner we have come to expect from him in this not to be missed new volume. -- John D. Caputo, Emeritus Professor, Syracuse University and Villanova University There is today no more important philosophical project being undertaken than that of William Desmond's poetic, unshirkingly apposite and yet unpretentious attempt to rethink a metaphysics of analogy and mediation. This book represents another chapter in its unfolding. -- John Milbank, University of NottinghamTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: For and Against the Universal-Doing Justice Part I: The Intimate Universal-Exoteric Reflections: Religion 1. Religion and the Intimate Universal: Neither Cosmopolis nor Ghetto 2. Art and the Intimate Universal: Neither Imitation nor Self-Creation 3. Philosophy and the Intimate Universal: Neither Theory nor Practice 4. Politics and the Intimate Universal: Neither Servility nor Sovereignty Part II: The Intimate Universal-Systematic Thoughts: From the Idiotic to the Agapeic 5. The Idiotics of the Intimate Universal 6. The Aesthetics of the Intimate Universal 7. The Erotics of the Intimate Universal 8. The Agapeics of the Intimate Universal Glossary Notes Index

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Book SynopsisUncovering the melancholic tradition of the global left.Trade ReviewLeft-Wing Melancholia is well-written, timely and original. -- Eli Zaretsky, The New School for Social Research Left-Wing Melancholia is a path breaking work that combines history and political theory with a concise, richly analytical, exciting narrative. Enzo Traverso redefines our understanding of the current regimes of temporality-a sorrowful transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century-and challenges historians and critical theorists alike to think beyond the standard binaries between history and memory, revolution and defeat, and melancholy and politics. In other words, this book is a gem. -- Federico Finchelstein, The New School for Social Research Marvelously learned and gorgeously poetic, Left-Wing Melancholia is a transcendent masterpiece of the Marxist imagination. Each engrossing chapter provides a tour-de-force of trenchant observations and lucid argumentation about the melancholic landscape of socialist memory. Intricately constructed with acrobatic prose, electric compressions, and magisterial assuredness, Traverso's scholarly milestone synthesizes an ambitious spectrum of interventions into the revolutionary aspirations and defeats of the twentieth century that is historically engaging, eminently readable, and pressingly pertinent. -- Alan Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor of English Literature and American Culture, University of Michigan According to Freud, mourning is differentiated from melancholia in its working through grief by acknowledging the irreparable loss of a love object. If so, should the contemporary Left finally concede the failure of its dreams of revolutionary redemption? Or, and this is the gamble of Enzo Traverso's provocative new book, is it better to remain defiantly melancholic in the hope that those dreams may still be realized? Drawing on a lifetime of immersion in the history of modern European culture and politics, he provides future progressive movements a glimmer of hope that the dialectic of defeat may not yet be history's final word. -- Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley With Left-Wing Melancholia, Enzo Traverso provides us with a timely and learned meditation on the politics of grief, mourning, and historical loss. Yet, in the tradition of Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, Traverso also instructs us on how the experience of loss can simultaneously generate heretofore untapped repositories of social hope. Left-Wing Melancholia is both an exhilarating work of intellectual synthesis as well as a pathbreaking study in cultural history. -- Richard Wolin, author of Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption In this wide-ranging, conceptually rich, nuanced and thoughtful meditation, Enzo Traverso takes stock of the current historical moment as marking a fundamental historical and cultural crisis for the Left. The overarching trajectory of struggles oriented toward an emancipatory future that characterized and motivated movements in the past two centuries has been fundamentally broken, resulting in a profound melancholia. Taking inspiration from heterodox critical responses to the darkness enveloping Europe in 1940, Traverso seeks to uncover trace elements of a new utopian imaginary, as a leap without guarantees, a melancholy wager. -- Moishe Postone, University of ChicagoTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Haunting Pasts Without Utopias 1. The Culture of Defeat 2. Marxism and Memory 3. Melancholy Images 4. Bohemia: Between Melancholy and Revolution 5. Marxism and the West 6. Adorno and Benjamin: Letters at Midnight in the Century 7. Synchronic Times: Walter Benjamin and Daniel Bensaid Notes Index

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Book SynopsisContemporary political theorists from Europe and North America open an overdue debate on the ties between politics and utopianism.Trade ReviewUtopian students and scholars will recognize that they must own this book and digest, confront, and come to terms with the various arguments and interpretations of utopia. -- Peter G. Stillman, Vassar College In an era suffering from stale political choices, utopian thinking is showing signs of life. Political Uses of Utopia offers up a rich smorgasbord of recent efforts to make relevant the utopian project. With a generous selection of newly translated pieces by French, German, and Spanish scholars, this collection joins the debate on the future of utopian thought. S. D. Chrostowska and James D. Ingram should be saluted for editing this exemplary volume. -- Russell Jacoby, author of The End of Utopia, University of California, Los Angeles This is a remarkable collection of essays on the critical import and significance of utopia and utopianism for politics. The range and depth of the contributions in this carefully curated collection is simply peerless. -- Antonio Y. Vazquez-Arroyo, Rutgers University-Newark This is a fine addition to the burgeoning literature on utopias and utopianism; wide-ranging in its scope, and with an international range of distinguished contributors. An excellent introduction sets up the agenda. -- Vincent Geoghegan, emeritus professor of political theory, Queen's University, Belfast This timely book, a sensitively coordinated collocation of some of the most important voices in contemporary political theory, is a fascinating and at times thrilling intervention in the ongoing but currently pressing debate about the concept of utopia and its uses and abuses. In addition to reimparting a vital sense of intellectual excitement to the term utopia, this collection discovers in it a political and philosophical richness for which today it is all too rarely credited. -- Matthew Beaumont, University College London This is an important book which bridges the "disjuncture between utopia and politics," a gap which has grown as the expanding study of Utopia in North America is increasingly considered "not as a kind of political theory, but, as an artistic and cultural phenomena." This collection of essays from different political currents takes as its organizing principle "that utopianism must have something more, and something more specific, to offer politics and political reflection." A needed contribution, it will prove indispensable for all those who are trying to ground the desire for another world in political theory. -- Peter Fitting, University of TorontoTable of ContentsIntroduction: Utopia and Politics, by James D. Ingram Part I. Reviving Utopia 1. The History of Utopia and the Destiny of Its Critique, by Miguel Abensour 2. Is the Classic Concept of Utopia Ready for the Future?, by Richard Saage 3. Utopia and Natural Illusions, by Francisco Fernandez Buey Part II. Questioning Utopia 4. Marx and Utopia, by Franck Fischbach 5. General Wish or General Will? Political Possibility and Collective Capacity from Rousseau Through Marx, by Peter Hallward 6. After Utopia, Imagination?, by Etienne Balibar 7. A Strange Fate for Politics: Jameson's Dialectic of Utopian Thought, by John Grant Part III. Utopia and Radical Politics 8. The Reality of Utopia, by Michele Riot-Sarcey 9. Negativity and Utopia in the Global Justice Movement, by Michael Lowy 10. Utopianism and Prefiguration, by Ruth Kinna Part IV. Permanence of Utopia 11. The Senses and Uses of Utopia, by Jacques Ranciere 12. Realism, Wishful Thinking, Utopia, by Raymond Geuss 13. Desire and Shipwreck: Powers of the Vis Utopica, by Etienne Tassin Coda 14. Utopia, Alibi, by S. D. Chrostowska List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisAdrian Parr identifies the emancipatory potential of environmental politics both inside and outside existing structures and within opposing paradigms. Ultimately, environmental politics is the refusal to surrender life to the violence of global capitalism and militarism. This defiance can serve as the source for the birth of a new earth.Trade ReviewBirth of a New Earth is one of those rare and brilliant books that critiques the ongoing destruction of the environment in a writing style that is lyrical, compassionate, and as accessible as it is informative. Parr masterfully weaves together a language of critique and possibility and in doing so makes a convincing case for environmental and economic justice on a global scale and offers a powerful argument for rethinking the meaning and practice of politics. -- Henry Giroux, author of America at War with Itself This is a prescient book, one that not only provides a rigorous and critical analysis of emergent environmentalisms but also charts how imaginations of a "new earth" can be forged at the limits of liberal democracy. In this sense, the book is as much about the political as it is about the environmental. It is a must-read for our times. -- Ananya Roy, author of Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of DevelopmentTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Varying Shades of Green 2. Green Governmentality 3. Green Scare 4. Fascist Earth 5. Commonism 6. Welcome to the Dark Side of Dignity and Development 7. Urban Clear-Cutting 8. Protest Without People 9. So to Speak Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Defense of Charisma develops an account of moral charisma that weaves insights from politics, ethics, and religion together with reflections on contemporary culture. Vincent W. Lloyd distinguishes between authoritarian charisma, which furthers the interests of the powerful, and democratic charisma, which prompts us to discover new possibilities.Trade ReviewIn this wonderfully provocative book, Vincent Lloyd explores the theory and practice of charisma in their kaleidoscopically varied forms. Ranging through literary and philosophical and theological texts, through movies and TV and Twitter, through proclamations and arguments and performances, he shows us a big world of ideas. After reading this book I find myself seeing the effects of charisma everywhere. A truly remarkable work of humanistic scholarship, In Defense of Charisma is also a great deal of fun. -- Alan Jacobs, author of The Book of Common Prayer: A BiographyWhat is charisma and can it be used well? In this book, Vincent Lloyd offers creative and important reflections for our networked age. -- Cathleen Kaveny, Libby Professor of Law and Theology, Boston CollegeIn In Defense of Charisma, Vincent Lloyd elucidates a compelling and unique definition of democratic charisma as something overlooked and valuable. It is overlooked partly because it is fleeting, partly because it is overshadowed by the more widely understood and unappealing concept of authoritarian charisma. Democratic charisma gives us an innovative angle on a central concept and could enter the mainstream of discussion in multiple disciplines, perhaps even broader consciousness. -- Mark Roche, University of Notre Dame[A] scholarly but truly readable new book... offer[ing] a new, normative research program for those interested in understanding how political leadership, charisma, and their many layers of mediation interact, not just to uncover the mechanics of that charismatic matrix, but to investigate it and evaluate it for the sake of the common good. * Contemporary Political Review *Pulling together insights from history, philosophy, theology, social media, and television, [Lloyd's] examples are real, current, powerful. This compelling and timely work will richly reward readers who wish to understand the allure of charismatic individuals and what makes people want to follow them. Highly recommended. * Choice *For political theory, this book offers a new, normative research program for those interested in understanding how political leadership, charisma, and their many layers of mediation interact, not just to uncover the mechanics of that charismatic matrix, but to investigate it and evaluate it for the sake of the common good. * Contemporary Political Theory *Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. The Uncircumcised Lips of Moses2. The Virtue of Charisma3. Charisma and Goodness4. Charisma and Truth5. Charisma and BeautyConclusion: The Justice of CharismaAfterword: Studying CharismaNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn Defense of Charisma develops an account of moral charisma that weaves insights from politics, ethics, and religion together with reflections on contemporary culture. Vincent W. Lloyd distinguishes between authoritarian charisma, which furthers the interests of the powerful, and democratic charisma, which prompts us to discover new possibilities.Trade ReviewIn this wonderfully provocative book, Vincent Lloyd explores the theory and practice of charisma in their kaleidoscopically varied forms. Ranging through literary and philosophical and theological texts, through movies and TV and Twitter, through proclamations and arguments and performances, he shows us a big world of ideas. After reading this book I find myself seeing the effects of charisma everywhere. A truly remarkable work of humanistic scholarship, In Defense of Charisma is also a great deal of fun. -- Alan Jacobs, author of The Book of Common Prayer: A BiographyWhat is charisma and can it be used well? In this book, Vincent Lloyd offers creative and important reflections for our networked age. -- Cathleen Kaveny, Libby Professor of Law and Theology, Boston CollegeIn In Defense of Charisma, Vincent Lloyd elucidates a compelling and unique definition of democratic charisma as something overlooked and valuable. It is overlooked partly because it is fleeting, partly because it is overshadowed by the more widely understood and unappealing concept of authoritarian charisma. Democratic charisma gives us an innovative angle on a central concept and could enter the mainstream of discussion in multiple disciplines, perhaps even broader consciousness. -- Mark Roche, University of Notre Dame[A] scholarly but truly readable new book... offer[ing] a new, normative research program for those interested in understanding how political leadership, charisma, and their many layers of mediation interact, not just to uncover the mechanics of that charismatic matrix, but to investigate it and evaluate it for the sake of the common good. * Contemporary Political Review *Pulling together insights from history, philosophy, theology, social media, and television, [Lloyd's] examples are real, current, powerful. This compelling and timely work will richly reward readers who wish to understand the allure of charismatic individuals and what makes people want to follow them. Highly recommended. * Choice *For political theory, this book offers a new, normative research program for those interested in understanding how political leadership, charisma, and their many layers of mediation interact, not just to uncover the mechanics of that charismatic matrix, but to investigate it and evaluate it for the sake of the common good. * Contemporary Political Theory *Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. The Uncircumcised Lips of Moses2. The Virtue of Charisma3. Charisma and Goodness4. Charisma and Truth5. Charisma and BeautyConclusion: The Justice of CharismaAfterword: Studying CharismaNotesIndex

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