Description
Book SynopsisPushing back against the contemporary myth that freedom from oppression is freedom of choice, Frank Ruda resuscitates a fundamental lesson from the history of philosophical rationalism: a proper conceptof freedom can arise only from a defense of absolute necessity, utter determinism, and predestination.
Trade Review“
Abolishing Freedom is both philosophically and stylistically daring.”—Michael Principe,
Marx and Philosophy“
Abolishing Freedom is not only the very acme of today’s philosophy, but much more—it is a book for everyone who is tired of all the ideological babble about freedom of choice.”—Slavoj Žižek, author of
Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism “Appropriating it as a natural right, a possession that can be taken away, the sign of the subject’s sovereignty, liberalism has given freedom a bad name. Yet how to think without acknowledging the fact of freedom? In his delightful book, Ruda shows us the way. Reducing the liberal edifice to rubble, he rescues a freedom that is in no way
ad libitum.”—Joan Copjec, author of
Imagine There’s No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation “This is an utterly captivating, smart, provocative book—compelling in its argument, fascinating in its detail, sobering in its implications. Absolutely exhilarating.”—Rebecca Comay, author of
Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French RevolutionTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsProvocationsIntroduction: Fatalism in Times of Universalized Assthetization1. Protestant Fatalism: Predestination as Emancipation2. René the Fatalist: Abolishing (Aristotelian) Freedom3. From Kant to Schmid (and Back): The End of All Things4. Ending with the Worst: Hegel and Absolute Fatalism5. After the End: Freud against the Illusion of Psychical FreedomLast WordsNotes
