In this collection of fourteen essays, first published in 1943, Herbert Read extends and amplifies the points of view expressed in his successful pamphlet To Hell with Culture, which has been reprinted here. The ‘politics of the unpolitical’ are the politics of those who strive for human values and not for national or sectional interests. Herbert Read defines these values and demands their recognition as a solvent of social and cultural crises’, and looks forward to the future with constructive vision. This book will be of interest to students of politics, history, and philosophy.
In a book written during the First World War, Thomas Mann wrote that political activity was alien to the German spirit and that "in fact the political element was absent from the German concept of education." The Politics of the Unpolitical demonstrates the essential unreliability of this generalization by focusing on the political activity of ten of Germany's most widely respected writers in the period from the French Revolution to the founding of the Bismarck Reich in 1871. Gordon A. Craig's book shows how Goethe, Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Holderlin, and Heine were fascinated by the political issues of their day and reacted either by entering public service or threw themselves into efforts to change society for the better. In his study of ten of Germany's most important intellectuals Craig, focuses on their political views and activities and argues that they were not, in fact, representatives of the genre of the "unpolitical German."
In this collection of fourteen essays, first published in 1943, Herbert Read extends and amplifies the points of view expressed in his successful pamphlet To Hell with Culture, which has been reprinted here. The 'politics of the unpolitical' are the politics of those who strive for human values and not for national or sectional interests. Herbert Read defines these values and demands their recognition as a solvent of social and cultural crises', and looks forward to the future with constructive vision. This book will be of interest to students of politics, history, and philosophy.
Massimo Cacciari is one of the leading public intellectuals in today's Italy, both as an outstanding philosopher and political thinker and as now three times (and currently) the mayor of Venice. This collection of essays on political topics provides the best introduction in English to his thought to date. The political focus does not, however, prevent these essays from being an introduction to the full range of Cacciari's thought. The present collection includes chapters on Hofmannstahl, Lukács, Benjamin, Nietzsche, Weber, Derrida, Schmitt, Canetti, and Aeschylus. Written between 1978 and 2006, these essays engagingly address the most hidden tradition in European political thought: the Unpolitical. Far from being a refusal of politics, the Unpolitical represents a merciless critique of political reason and a way out of the now impracticable consolations of utopia and harmonious community. Drawing freely from philosophy and literature, The Unpolitical represents a powerful contribution to contemporary political theory. A lucid and engaging Introduction by Alessandro Carrera sets these essays in the context of Cacciari's work generally and in the broadest context of its historical and geographical backdrop.
In Democracy Disfigured, Nadia Urbinati diagnoses the ills that beset the body politic in an age of hyper-partisanship and media monopolies and offers a spirited defense of the messy compromises and contentious outcomes that define democracy. Urbinati identifies three types of democratic disfiguration: the unpolitical, the populist, and the plebiscitarian. Each undermines a crucial division that a well-functioning democracy must preserve: the wall separating the free forum of public opinion from governmental institutions that enact the will of the people. Unpolitical democracy delegitimizes political opinion in favor of expertise. Populist democracy radically polarizes the public forum in which opinion is debated. And plebiscitary democracy overvalues the aesthetic and nonrational aspects of opinion. For Urbinati, democracy entails a permanent struggle to make visible the issues that citizens deem central to their lives. Opinion is thus a form of action as important as the mechanisms that organize votes and mobilize decisions. Urbinati focuses less on the overt enemies of democracy than on those who pose as its friends: technocrats wedded to procedure, demagogues who make glib appeals to "the people," and media operatives who, given their preference, would turn governance into a spectator sport and citizens into fans of opposing teams.
The question of the limits of the political permeates the history of western political thought and has been at the forefront of debates in contemporary political philosophy, especially in French and Italian contexts. This book argues that the question of radical political exteriority fell into neglect despite post-War critiques of totalitarian political ontology. The notion of ‘the political’ developed into a new form of totality, one which admits the impossibility of closure and yet refuses to let go of its totalizing ambition. Viriasova addresses this problem by offering a critical introduction to the debate on the concept of the political in contemporary continental philosophy, and develops an innovative perspective that allows us to rethink the limits of the political in affirmative and realist terms. The book explores such recent developments as Roberto Esposito’s notion of the impolitical, Giorgio Agamben’s concept of bare life, Michel Henry’s radical phenomenology of life, the speculative realist philosophy of Quentin Meillassoux, as well as Buddhist political thought. The book makes a vital contribution to an emerging body of literature in contemporary philosophy that renews the fundamental questions of political ontology in response to the multiplying crises of inclusion that challenge democratic communities today.
Politics was once regarded as an activity which could give human societies control over their fate. However, there is now a deep pessimism about the ability of human beings to control anything very much, least of all through politics. This new fatalism about the human condition claims that we are living in the iron cages erected by vast impersonal forces arising from globalization and technology: a society that is both anti-political and unpolitical, a society without hope or the means either to imagine or promote an alternative future. It reflects the disillusion of political hopes in liberal and socialist utopias in the twentieth century and a widespread disenchantment with the grand narratives of the Enlightenment about reason and progress, and with modernity itself. The most characteristic expression of this disenchantment is the endless discourses on endism - the end of history, the end of ideology, the end of the nation-state, the end of authority, the end of government, the end of the public realm, the end of politics itself - all have been proclaimed in recent years. Andrew Gamble's new book argues against the fatalism implicit in so many of these discourses, as well as against the fatalism that has always been present in many of the central discourses of modernity. It sets out a defence of politics and the political, explains why we cannot do without politics, and probes the complex relationship between politics and fate, and the continuing and necessary tension between them. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of politics, public affairs and political thought.
This book examines the political perspective of French thinker and historian Jacques Ranci&ère. Ranci&ère argues that a democratic politics emerges out of people&’s acting under the presupposition of their own equality with those better situated in the social hierarchy. Todd May examines and extends this presupposition, offering a normative framework for understanding it, placing it in the current political context, and showing how it challenges traditional political philosophy and opens up neglected political paths. He demonstrates that the presupposition of equality orients political action around those who act on their own behalf&—and those who act in solidarity with them&—rather than, as with the political theories of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Amartya Sen, those who distribute the social goods. As May argues, Ranci&ère&’s view offers both hope and perspective for those who seek to think about and engage in progressive political action.
We live today in an interconnected world in which ordinary people can became instant online celebrities to fans thousands of miles away, in which religious leaders can influence millions globally, in which humans are altering the climate and environment, and in which complex social forces intersect across continents. This is globalization. In the fifth edition of his bestselling Very Short Introduction Manfred B. Steger considers the major dimensions of globalization: economic, political, cultural, ideological, and ecological. He looks at its causes and effects, and engages with the hotly contested question of whether globalization is, ultimately, a good or a bad thing. From climate change to the Ebola virus, Donald Trump to Twitter, trade wars to China's growing global profile, Steger explores today's unprecedented levels of planetary integration as well as the recent challenges posed by resurgent national populism. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
