At a historical moment when democracy experiences a legitimation crisis, demands for 'community' and for a 'democracy of the common' have become central themes in political theory and philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic. Such appeals entail a critique, even a rejection, of liberal constitutional democracy as alienating and inauthentic, as not representing the interests of citizens. This book fundamentally questions the democratic potential of appeals to 'community' and 'the common.' The language of 'community' can be observed especially among conservative and neofascist public intellectuals of the New Right, but it also features surprisingly prominently among post-Marxist philosophers and political theorists of the New Left. Tracing 'community' and 'the common' in contemporary political thought and philosophy, this book argues that they represent a dangerous political romanticism and authoritarian drift incompatible with the normative demands and the emancipatory dimension of liberal constitutional democracy.
Arvustused
'In his thorough and comprehensive Streitschrift, Christian Emden attacks the regressive implications of political romanticism in various traditions of political thought. A pointed and timely defense of egalitarian democratic pluralism against the longing for communal authenticity in politics.' Rainer Forst, Goethe University Frankfurt
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This book examines appeals to community and the common in political thought and philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Introduction;
1. The urgency of community? Neoliberalism and the
legitimation crisis of democracy;
2. The dangerous return of community:
communitarian philosophy, authoritarian drift, and neofascism;
3. The
depoliticized community: the normative emptiness of post-Marxist philosophy;
4. The political romanticism of the common: insurgent democracy and
revolutionary nostalgia;
5. States of exception: from constituent power to
dictatorship; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
Christian J. Emden is the Frances Moody Newman Professor and Professor of German Intellectual History and Political Thought at Rice University. He is the author of Walter Benjamins Archäologie der Moderne (2005), Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body (2005), Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History (Cambridge, 2008), and Nietzsche's Naturalism: Philosophy and the Life Sciences in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2014).
