Between Politics and Antipolitics

This book traces a dialectic relationship between politics and antipolitics, the first, as used here, being akin to philosophy as an activity of open inquiry, plural democracy, and truth-finding, and the latter in the realm of ideology, technocracy, and presupposed certainties. It returns back to the emergence of a New Left movement in the 1960s in order to follow the history of this relationship since then. It addresses contemporary debates by looking to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Bloc, and asking in the wake of that: what is a revolution? Finally, it draws on these analyses to examine the age of terrorism after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and resounds with a call to pursue democracy and real politics in the face of new forms of antipolitics.

Provides unique theoretical insights from philosophy, contemporary social theory, and historical illustrations towards understanding politics after 9/11 Brings together a career's worth of thought from an influential thinker, with a strong emphasis on the contemporary political climate and the future of democracy Offers a breadth of perspective through interdisciplinary analyses of what the author calls politics and antipolitics

Autorentext

Dick Howard is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stony Brook University, USA, and the author of 14 books in English and French. He has commented regularly on politics in journals and newspapers French, English, and German for the past 50 years, from the civil rights movement in the US through May '68 in France, to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and beyond. From 2011-2012, he also provided 15 months of weekly commentary on US elections for Radio Canada.

Inhalt

1. Make these Petrified Relations Dance.- 2. The New Left and the Search for the Political.- 3. The Anti-Totalitarian Left between Morality and Politics.- 4. Toward a Democratic Manifesto.- 5. Philosophy by Other Means. The Philosophical Origins of Sociology.- 6. André Gorz and the Philosophical Foundation of the Political.- 7. Citizen Habermas.- 8. Rereading Arendt After the Fall of the Wall.- 9. The Actuality of the History of Political Thought.- 10. The Paradoxical Political Success of an Antipolitical Philosophy.- 11. Claude Lefort, A Political Biography.- 12. The Necessity of Politics.- 13. What is a Revolution? Reflections on the Significance of 1989/1991.- 14. The Great War & the Origins of Contemporary Ideology.- 15. From Anti-Communism to Anti-Totalitarianism: The Radical Potential of Democracy.- 16. What's New After September 11, 2001?.