This book is a philosopher's view into the chaotic postcolony of Zimbabwe, delving into Robert Mugabe's Will to Power. The Will to Power refers to a spirited desire for power and overwhelming fear of powerlessness that Mugabe artfully concealed behind performances of invincibility. Nietzsche's philosophical concept of the Will to Power is interpreted and expanded in this book to explain how a tyrant is produced and enabled, and how he performs his tyranny. Achille Mbembe's novel concept of the African postcolony is mobilised to locate Zimbabwe under Mugabe as a domain of the madness of power. The book describes Mugabe's development from a vulnerable youth who was intoxicated with delusions of divine commission to a monstrous tyrant of the postcolony who mistook himself for a political messiah. This account exposes how post-political euphoria about independence from colonialism and the heroism of one leader can easily lead to the degeneration of leadership. However, this book is as much about bad leadership as it is about bad followership. Away from Eurocentric stereotypes where tyranny is isolated to African despots, this book shows how Mugabe is part of an extended family of tyrants of the world. He fought settler colonialism but failed to avoid being infected by it, and eventually became a native coloniser to his own people. The book concludes that Zimbabwe faces not only a simple struggle for democracy and human rights, but a Himalayan struggle for liberation from genocidal native colonialism that endures even after Robert Mugabe's dethronement and death.

Holding men in wretched subservience, feudalism --- alongside religion --- was a powerful force in the eighteenth century. Self-serving monarchic social systems, which collectively reduced common people to servitude, were now attacked by Enlightenment philosophers, of whom Rousseau was a leading light. His masterpiece, The Social Contract, profoundly influenced the subsequent development of society and remains provocative in a modern age of continuing widespread vested interest.

Taking seriously Jacques Lacan's claim that 'the unconscious is politics', this volume proposes a new understanding of political power, interrogating the assumption that contemporary capitalism functions by tapping into forms of unconscious enjoyment, rather than providing transcendental conditions for the articulation of political meanings and desires. Whether we're aware of it or not, political communication today targets the audience's libidinal response through political and institutional language: in policies, speeches, tweets, social media appearances, gestures and images. Yet does this mean that current power structures no longer need symbolic or ideological frameworks? The authors in this volume think not. Far from demonstrating a shift to a post-ideological age, they argue instead that such methods inaugurate an altogether novel approach to political power. Written by leading scholars from around the world, including Roberto Esposito and Slavoj Zizek, each chapter reflects on contemporary power and inspires consideration of new political potentialities, which our focus on politics in transcendental rather than immanent terms has thus far obscured. In so doing, Capitalism and the New Political Unconscious provides an original and forceful exploration of the centrality of both psychoanalytic theory and the philosophy of immanence to an alternative understanding of the political.

This study proposes a revised interpretation of Foucault's views on literature. It has been argued that the philosopher's interest in literature was limited to the 1960s and of a mostly depoliticized nature. However, Foucault's previously unpublished later works suggest a different reality, showing a sustained interest in literature and its politics. In the light of this new material, the book repositions Foucault's ideas within recent debates on the politics of literature.

This book gathers several important texts to offer an overview of the institutionalist approach to money developed in France since the 1980s. This material highlights the specificities of the French monetary approaches and their main contributions to the understanding of monetary phenomena - not just in developed market economies but in other societies as well. By bringing these works to an English-speaking audience for the first time, this book will provide a much needed and valuable direct insight into this subject area and contribute to related post-Keynesian, neo-chartalist and sociological approaches to money. This book highlights the need for a global vision of money and for a clearer grasp of the link between money and the political sphere. It will appeal to students and researchers across various disciplines including but not limited to economics, anthropology, sociology, history and philosophy.

Plotinus' mysticism of henosis, unification with the One, is a highly controversial topic in Plotinian scholarship. This book presents a careful reading of the Enneads and suggests that Plotinus' mysticism be understood as mystical teaching that offers practical guidance concerning henosis. It is further argued that a rational interpretation thereof should be based on Plotinus' metaphysics, according to which the One transcends all beings but is immanent in them. The main thesis of this book is that Plotinus' mystical teaching does not help man attain henosis on his own, but serves to remind man that he fails to attain henosis because it already pertains to his original condition. Plotinus' mysticism seeks to change man's misconception about henosis, rather than his finite nature.

Examining the lives and works of three iconic personalities -Germaine de Stael, Stendhal, and Georges Cuvier-Kathleen Kete creates a groundbreaking cultural history of ambition in post-Revolutionary France. While in the old regime the traditionalist view of ambition prevailed-that is, ambition as morally wrong unless subsumed into a corporate whole-the new regime was marked by a rising tide of competitive individualism. Greater opportunities for personal advancement, however, were shadowed by lingering doubts about the moral value of ambition. Kete identifies three strategies used to overcome the ethical "burden" of ambition: romantic genius (Stael), secular vocation (Stendhal), and post-mythic destiny (Cuvier). In each case, success would seem to be driven by forces outside one's control. She concludes by examining the still relevant (and still unresolved) conundrum of the relationship of individual desires to community needs, which she identifies as a defining characteristic of the modern world.

This book analyzes Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels from a political philosophy perspective. When authors have focused on politics in Swift's writings, this has usually meant a study of how Swift located himself on issues of his day such as church and state, and Ireland. Robertson claims by contrast that Gulliver's Travels is fundamentally a book about the "ancients" (e.g. Plato, Aristotle), and the "moderns" (science and technology), and their contrasting views about the human condition. The claim that the Travels is "a kind of prolegomena" to political philosophy leaves open the possibility that it does not achieve, or seek to achieve, a fusion of various teachings but rather uses the device of alien societies to point us to uncomfortable aspects of political philosophy's "larger questions" we are prone to ignore. Swift, Robertson argues, draws our attention to some version of the classical republic, as idealized in Aristotle's political writings and in Plato's Republic, as opposed to a modern regime which, at its best or most intellectual, emphasizes modern science and technology in combination as a way to improve the human condition.

This book applies a multiparadigmatic philosophical frame of analysis to the topic of social revolution. Crossing two disciplines and lines of literature-social philosophy and social revolution-this book considers different aspects of social revolution and discusses each aspect from four diverse paradigmatic viewpoints: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The four paradigms are founded upon different assumptions about the nature of social science and the nature of society. Each paradigm generates theories, concepts, and analytical tools that are different from those of other paradigms. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a more balanced understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the subject matter. In this book, the first chapter reviews the four paradigms. Using the Iranian Revolution as exemplar, the next few chapters provide paradigmatic explanations for a particular aspect of revolution: culture, religion, ideology. With this background, the book introduces a comprehensive approach to the understanding of revolution. The final chapter concludes by recommending further paradigmatic diversity. This book will be of particular interest to students and researchers interested in social revolution, political sociology, and political theory.

Tracing emotions across work, leisure, social media, and politics, Practical Feelings counters old myths and shows how emotions are practical resources for tackling individual and collective challenges. We do not usually think of our emotions as practical - often they are nuisances to overcome, momentary mysteries to solve, or fleeting sensations to savor before getting back to the business of living. But emotions interlace the practical elements of daily life. In Practical Feelings, Marci D. Cottingham develops a theory of emotion as practical resources. By integrating the sociology of emotion with practice theory, Cottingham covers diverse areas of social life to show the range of an emotion practice approach and trace how emotions are put to use in divergent domains. Spanning work, leisure, digital interactions, and the political sphere, Cottingham portrays nurses, sports fans, social media users, and political actors in more complex, holistic ways. Practical Feelings provides the conceptual tools needed to examine emotions as effort, energy, and embodied resources that calibrate us to the social world.

Within literature, history, politics, philosophy and theology, the interpretation of utopian ideals has evolved constantly. Juxtaposing historical views on utopian diagnoses, prescriptions and on the character and value of utopian thought with more modern interpretations, this volume explores how our ideal utopia has transformed over time. Challenging long-held interpretations, the contributors turn a fresh eye to canonical texts, and open them up to a twenty-first century audience. From Moore's Utopia to Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Utopian Moments puts forward a lively and accessible debate on the nature and significance of utopian thought and tradition. Each essay focuses on a key passage from the selected work using it to encourage both the specialist and the reader new to the field to read afresh. Written by an international team of leading scholars, the essays range from the sixteenth century to the present day and are designed to be both stimulating and accessible.

This book studies the tension between arts and politics in four contemporary artists from different countries, working with different media. The film directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne film parts of their natal city to refer to specific political problems in interpersonal relations. The novelist Arundhati Roy uses her poetic language to make room for people's desires; her fiction is utterly political and her political essays make place for the role of narratives and poetic language. Ai Weiwei uses references to Chinese history to give consistency to its 'economic miracle'. Finally, Burial's electronic music is firmly rooted in a living, breathing London; built to create a sound that is entirely new, and yet hauntingly familiar. These artists create in their own way a space for politics in their works and their oeuvre but their singularity comes together as a desire to reconstruct the political space within art from its ruins. These ruins were brought by the disenchantment of 1970s: the end of art, postmodernism, and the rise of design, marketing and communication. Each artwork bears the mark of the resistance against the depoliticisation of society and the arts, at once rejecting cynicism and idealism, referring to themes and political concepts that are larger than their own domain. This book focuses on these productive tensions.

In this book, Munyaradzi Felix Murove explores African traditional ethical resources for African politics. Arguing that African ethics is integral to African post-colonial political contentious discourse, Murove invites the reader to reflect on various problematic political issues in post-colonial Africa and how African ethics has been applied in these situations. Starting with a succinct discussion of the scope of African ethics, he discusses how African ethical values have been applied by post-colonial politicians in the reconstruction of their societies. Further, Murove looks critically at the issue of African poverty and how the ethic of regional integration and economic cooperation among post-colonial African nation-states has been instrumental to efforts aimed at overcoming the scourge of poverty. The main question this book seeks to answer is: Are African traditional ethical values a panacea to modern African political problems?

Considering the history of workers' and socialist movements in Europe, Frontier Socialism focuses on unconventional forms of anti-capitalist thought, particularly by examining several militant-intellectuals whose legacy is of particular interest for those aiming for a radical critique of capitalism. Following on the work of Michael Loewy, Quirico & Ragona identify relationships of "elective affinity" between figures who might appear different and dissimilar, at least at first glance: the German Anarchist Gustav Landauer, the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, the German communist Paul Mattick, the Italian Socialist Raniero Panzieri, the Greek-born French euro-communist Nikos Poulantzas, the German-born Swedish Social Democrat Rudolf Meidner, and the French social scientist Alain Bihr as well as two historical struggle experiences, the Spanish Republic and the Italian revolutionary group "Lotta continua". Frontier Socialism then analyzes these thinkers' and experiences' respective paths to socialism based on and achieved through self-organization and self-government, not to build a new tradition but to suggest a path forward for both research and political activism.

Alain Badiou has claimed that Quentin Meillassoux's book After Finitude (Bloomsbury, 2008) "opened up a new path in the history of philosophy." And so, whether you agree or disagree with the speculative realism movement, it has to be addressed. Lacanian Realism does just that. This book reconstructs Lacanian dogma from the ground up: first, by unearthing a new reading of the Lacanian category of the real; second, by demonstrating the political and cultural ingenuity of Lacan's concept of the real, and by positioning this against the more reductive analyses of the concept by Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Saul Newman, Todd May, Joan Copjec, Jacques Ranciere, and others, and; third, by arguing that the subject exists intimately within the real. Lacanian Realism is an imaginative and timely exploration of the relationship between Lacanian psychoanalysis and contemporary continental philosophy.

This carefully selected compilation of the significant writings of the great political philosophers, scientists, and thinkers has long been an invaluable guide to the general reader as well as to the serious student of history, political science, and government. Such essential forces as Revolution, Idealism, and Nationalism are examined in detail and expounded by their leading exponents. Professor Curtis has written running commentary that places the extracts and their authors in the sequence of modern history.

This book offers a re-evaluation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the prominent Italian Renaissance philosopher and prince of Concord. It argues that Pico is part of a history of attempted concordance between philosophy and theology, reason and faith. His contribution is a syncretist theological philosophy based on Christianity, Platonism, Aristotelianism and Jewish Kabbalism. After an introduction, Chapter 2 discusses Pico's career, his power-relations and his work, Chapters 3 and 4 place his three pillars of Platonism, Aristotelianism and Kabbalism in their historical context, examines shared histories, and introduces the scholars around Pico who contributed so much in each of these traditions (introducing, for example, Christian Kabbalism), including exploring Pico's complex relationship with Marsilio Ficino. Chapter 5 examines the problems of concordance within Pico's cosmology and metaphysics, including the question of God and the role of the Intellect. Chapter 6 describes Pico's 'exceptionalist' version of the mystical ascent as an individualized ascetic experience. Pico eschews the contemporary desire to use a renewed christian thinking or christian-classical metaphysics to change the world (towards a Golden Age or a 'second coming') to present a personal path to God, with no return to the world.

Richard Rorty is both the most prominent and the most provocative recent exponent of pragmatism. This book offers a sympathetic reconstruction of Rorty's account of pragmatism, in which the aspiration to underwrite inquiry by reference to standards outside of any particular community is given up in favor of a view of inquiry as answerable exclusively to the norms implicit within contingent human practices. Rorty hopes that pragmatism so conceived can help effect a transition towards what he calls an "anti-authoritarian" society, a society in which responsibility is owed solely to one's fellow citizens. The book examines the relationship between pragmatism and political liberalism, a form of liberalism which sets aside discussion of truth and value and seeks instead to derive a constitutional settlement in which citizens can freely pursue their individual projects and purposes. It presents a critical assessment of Rorty's ideal of a liberal utopia, inhabited by strong poets and liberal ironists. By focusing on the relationship between the philosophical and political, the book argues that Rorty provides a compelling statement of pragmatism, containing insights that command the attention of contemporary liberal philosophers. Through textual analysis and reconstruction, it argues that while Rorty's account needs to be amended at several points, it remains a powerful and attractive one, and not the incoherent and pernicious folly that critics often take it to be. Well researched, lively, and succinct, Richard Rorty: Pragmatism and Political Liberalism is ideally suited to specialists and graduate students in philosophy and political theory.

The fifth edition of Michael L. Morgan's Classics of Moral and Political Theory broadens the scope and increases the versatility of this landmark anthology by offering new selections from Aristotle's Politics , Aquinas' Disputed Questions on Virtue and Treatise on Law , as well as the entirety of Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration , Kant's To Perpetual Peace , and Nietzsche's On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life .

This collection explores the arguments related to veg(etari)anism as they play out in the public sphere and across media, historical eras, and geographical areas. As vegan and vegetarian practices have gradually become part of mainstream culture, stemming from multiple shifts in the socio-political, cultural, and economic landscape, discursive attempts to both legitimize and delegitimize them have amplified. With 12 original chapters, this collection analyses a diverse array of these legitimating strategies, addressing the practice of veg(etari)anism through analytical methods used in rhetorical criticism and adjacent fields. Part I focuses on specific geo-cultural contexts, from early 20th century Italy, Serbia and Israel, to Islam and foundational Yoga Sutras. In Part II, the authors explore embodied experiences and legitimation strategies, in particular the political identities and ontological consequences coming from consumption of, or abstention from, meat. Part III looks at the motives, purposes and implication of veg(etari)anism as a transformative practice, from ego to eco, that should revolutionise our value hierarchies, and by extension, our futures. Offering a unique focus on the arguments at the core of the veg(etari)an debate, this collection provides an invaluable resource to scholars across a multitude of disciplines.

BUILDING A SOLIDARITY SOCIETY Is it the impossible dream: a caring and sustainable society that fosters the flourishing of people and planet? Many are deeply skeptical about whether such a transformative change is a goal worth pursuing. But pursuit of this goal may be our only realistic choice; the misuse of power then is the obstacle to be overcome. This book leads the skeptical reader - whether college student or underpaid worker - on an exploration of the priorities of the powerful, the economic theories that justify their decisions, and the alternative world views that are firing the imagination and efforts of activists across the globe. Economist Marianne Hill speaks to those who worry that switching from a capitalist to a democratic economy would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship, she explores why people accept a status quo in which the few have the right to control the labor of the many, and the right to distribute the wealth collectively created. Research findings, data and stories drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic and other recent crises are used to explain why plutocrats show little concern for the economic distress and insecurity suffered by so many. Steps can be taken to move us towards a more humane and sustainable way of living. Exciting possibilities are presented, based on recent manifestos, party platforms, books and documents. Advocates for a caring solidarity society are many and, once united, can be the force that redistributes power in firms, families and society. This book aims to foster the clarity, cohesion and courage that can ensure their success.

Gillian Brock develops a viable cosmopolitan model of global justice that takes seriously the equal moral worth of persons, yet leaves scope for defensible forms of nationalism and for other legitimate identifications and affiliations people have. Brock addresses two prominent kinds of skeptic about global justice: those who doubt its feasibility and those who believe that cosmopolitanism interferes illegitimately with the defensible scope of nationalism by undermining goods of national importance, such as authentic democracy or national self-determination. The model addresses concerns about implementation in the world, showing how we can move from theory to public policy that makes progress toward global justice. It also makes clear how legitimate forms of nationalism are compatible with commitments to global justice.
Global Justice is divided into three central parts. In the first, Brock defends a cosmopolitan model of global justice. In the second, which is largely concerned with public policy issues, she argues that there is much we can and should do toward achieving global justice. She addresses several pressing problems, discussing both theoretical and public policy issues involved with each. These include tackling global poverty, taxation reform, protection of basic liberties, humanitarian intervention, immigration, and problems associated with global economic arrangements. In the third part, she shows how the discussion of public policy issues can usefully inform our theorizing; in particular, it assists our thinking about the place of nationalism and equality in an account of global justice.