Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWhat is a distinctly political ethic, one responsive to the unique properties of action and power in setting the terms of collective life? What is a radical democratic ethic, one contoured to substantive equality and power sharing? In this original study, Antonio Y. Vazquez-Arroyo probes every dimension of these timely questions. By turns exquisitely subtle and ardently polemical, Political Responsibility restores political theory's promise of worldly illumination. -- Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley Remarkably erudite and conceptually lucid, Political Responsibility scrutinizes the complex relationship that, from Machiavelli to Adorno, binds ethics with politics. Antonio Y. Vazquez-Arroyo unveils the upshots of the 'ethical turn' that has shaped the humanities in the last decades: a depoliticized fetishism of human rights combined with the actual accommodation to the individualistic ethos of neoliberalism. His plea for a political responsibility rooted on commonality and oriented towards collective action is as convincing as it is refreshing. -- Enzo Traverso, Cornell University A sweeping work of integrative intellectual history, Political Responsibility is a major book in every sense-in the topic it takes on, in its range of reference, and above all in its ambition. It is certain to be a reference point for those debating the future of the field. -- James Ingram, McMaster University
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Historicizing the Ethical Turn 2. Responsibility in History 3. Autonomy, Ethics, Intrasubjectivity 4. Ethical Reductions 5. Adorno and the Dialectic of Responsibility 6. Political Ethic, Violence, and Defeat Notes Index
