Description
Book SynopsisMax Weber argued that the development of capitalism would lead to the progressive rationalization and disenchantment of society: today this process is reaching its endpoint and capitalism is collapsing into a disturbing kind of irrationality. It engenders spiritual misery - a paralysis of the function of the human mind or spirit - where reason disappears as a motive of hope, a kingdom of ends' in Kant's sense. Absolute disenchantment afflicts all those who no longer have anything to expect from the development of hyper-industrial society. Those who are desperate become desperados', and they are becoming more and more numerous.
No longer having anything to expect means, at the same time, no longer having anything to fear. And the proliferating repressive mechanisms that are supposed to cope with the effects of this loss of authority turn out to be less and less effective. For such measures
Trade Review"Stiegler is, as usual, several steps ahead of everyone else. In this book he dives into the Dantesque zones of today’s hyper-industrial last man to propose the spaces where futures might be re-articulated. Where others recycle past masters or promote an unconvincing mantra of a 'new politics', Stiegler does battle in the twilight zones of a terrestrial civilization entering its afterlife. He is the discrete heir of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Derrida today - precisely by his distance from each."
Tom Cohen, State University of New York at AlbanyTable of ContentsIntroduction
I. Despair and the Impotence of the Rational
II. The Antigone Complex
III. Spiritual Misery and Reasons for Hope
IV. The Disaffected Individual in the Process of Psychic and Collective Disindividuation
V. Hope and Politics
