Politics of the Many draws inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley's celebrated call to arms: 'Ye are many - they are few!' This idea of the Many, as a general form of emancipatory subjectivity that cannot be erased for the sake of the One, is the philosophical and political assumption shared by contributors to this book. They raise questions of collective agency, and its crisis in contemporary capitalism, via new engagements with Marxist philosophy, psychoanalysis, theories of social reproduction and value-form, and post-colonial critiques, and drawing on activist thought and strategies. This book interrogates both established and emergent formations of the Many (the people, classes, publics, crowds, masses, multitudes), tracing their genealogies, their recent failures and victories, and their potentials to change the world. The book proposes and explores an intense and provoking series of new or reinvented concepts, figures, and theoretical constellations, including dividuality, the centaur, unintentional vanguard, insomnia at work, always-on capitalism, multitude (from its 'voiding' to a '(non)emergence'), crowds, necropolitics, and the link between political subjectivity and value-form. The contributors to Politics of the Many are both acclaimed and emergent thinkers including Carina Brand, Rebecca Carson, Luhuna Carvalho, Lorenzo Chiesa, Jodi Dean, Dario Gentili, Benjamin Halligan, Marc James Leger, Paul Mazzocchi, Alexei Penzin, Stefano Pippa, Gerald Raunig, and Stevphen Shukaitis.

What does it mean to see time in the visual arts and how does art reveal the nature of time? Paul Atkinson investigates these questions through the work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose theory of time as duration made him one of the most prominent thinkers of the fin de siecle. Although Bergson never enunciated an aesthetic theory and did not explicitly write on the visual arts, his philosophy gestures towards a play of sensual differences that is central to aesthetics. This book rethinks Bergson's philosophy in terms of aesthetics and provides a fascinating and original account of how Bergsonian ideas aid in understanding time and dynamism in the visual arts. From an examination of Bergson's influence on the visual arts to a reconsideration of the relationship between aesthetics and metaphysics, Henri Bergson and Visual Culture explores what it means to reconceptualise the visual arts in terms of duration. Atkinson revisits four key themes in Bergson's work - duration; time and the continuous gesture; the ramification of life and durational difference - and reveals Bergsonian aesthetics of duration through the application of these themes to a number of 19th and 20th-century artworks. This book introduces readers and art lovers to the work of Bergson and contributes to Bergsonian scholarship, as well as presenting a new of understanding the relationship between art and time.

No understanding of Chinese civilization is possible without a grasp of Taoism, the philosophy that has shaped not just Chinese spirituality but also art, science and politics. And it was in the Tao Te Ching, written around 300BC, that the fundamental beliefs of Taoism were first gathered. This short, wise but very humble book went on to influence on philosophy, religion and politics. In a compellingly simple rhetorical style the book addresses how to live a simple, peaceful and harmonious life, how to rid oneself of desires and free society of institutions that promote greed. This dual-language edition of Tao Te Ching presents the original Chinese characters with a new translation on the facing page. With a new introduction that discusses the questioned authorship of the text and editorial notes, all 81 brief chapters are included, ranging from advice for politicians to wise words for the everyday person. Of immense influence across millennia, Tao Te Ching is a classic text richly deserving this exquisite edition.

Timeless wisdom on generosity and gratitude from the great Stoic philosopher Seneca To give and receive well may be the most human thing you can do-but it is also the closest you can come to divinity. So argues the great Roman Stoic thinker Seneca (c. 4 BCE-65 CE) in his longest and most searching moral treatise, "On Benefits" (De Beneficiis). James Romm's splendid new translation of essential selections from this work conveys the heart of Seneca's argument that generosity and gratitude are among the most important of all virtues. For Seneca, the impulse to give to others lies at the very foundation of society; without it, we are helpless creatures, worse than wild beasts. But generosity did not arise randomly or by chance. Seneca sees it as part of our desire to emulate the gods, whose creation of the earth and heavens stands as the greatest gift of all. Seneca's soaring prose captures his wonder at that gift, and expresses a profound sense of gratitude that will inspire today's readers. Complete with an enlightening introduction and the original Latin on facing pages, How to Give is a timeless guide to the profound significance of true generosity.

In Singularities at the Threshold: The Ontology of Unrest, Bruno Gulli calls into question the concept of the independent and sovereign individual of the liberal (and neoliberal) tradition from the standpoint of the ontology of singularity, that is, the plural constitution of what appears to be an individual. Singularity is not the result of a process of individuation. It is rather this very process itself. He argues that the process of individuation (whereby at each stage everything appears to be individuated as such, to be an individual thing), is in reality always already plural, a process of transindividuation, or better, trans-dividuation. Gulli further examines why singularity is usually confused with individuality; what comes after the sovereign and independent individual, after the subject; and what the role of subversive and liberated singularities is in bringing about a new ethos.