The political crises and upheavals of our age often originate from
the periphery rather than the center of power. Figures like Edward
Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning acted in ways that
disrupted power, revealing truths that those in power wanted to
keep hidden. They are thorns in the side of power, troublemakers in
the eyes of the powerful, though their actions may be valuable and
lead to positive changes. In this important new book, Dieter Thoma
examines the crucial but often overlooked function of these figures
on the margins of society, developing a philosophy of troublemakers
from the seventeenth century to the present day. Thoma takes as his
starting point Hobbes's idea of the puer robustus (literally "stout
boy"), meaning a figure who rebels against order and authority.
While Hobbes saw the puer robustus as a threat, he also recognized
the potential, in the right conditions, for figures to rise up and
become agents of positive change. Building on this notion, Thoma
provides a rich survey of intellectuals who have been inspired by
this idea over the past 300 years, from Rousseau, Diderot,
Schiller, Victor Hugo, Marx, and Freud to Carl Schmitt, Leo
Strauss, and Horkheimer, right up to the recent work of Badiou and
Agamben. In doing so, he develops a typology of the puer robustus
and a means by which we can evaluate and assess the troublemakers
of our own times. Thoma shows that troublemakers are an inescapable
part of modernity, for as soon as social and political boundaries
are defined, there will always be figures challenging them from the
margins. This book will be of great interest not only to students
and scholars in the humanities and social sciences but to anyone
seeking to understand the crucial impact of these liminal figures
on our world today.
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