Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 258
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-78348-160-6 • Hardback • June 2019 • $147.00 • (£113.00)
978-1-78348-161-3 • Paperback • May 2019 • $48.00 • (£37.00)
978-1-78348-162-0 • eBook • June 2019 • $45.50 • (£35.00)
Oliver Feltham is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Paris.. His publications include Anatomy of Failure (2013) and Alain Badiou: Live Theory (2008). He is the translator of Alain Badiou's Being and Event (2006) and co-translator (with Justin Clemens) of Infinite Thought (2003).
I. PASSIONS
Chapter 1: From Torrents to Patterns
Chapter 2: Passion Locates the Self
Chapter 3: From Patterns to Configurations of Appearance
Chapter 4: What Does the Other Want?
II. ACTION
Chapter 5: Locating Action
Chapter 6: Conflict as Process and Models of Political Action
III. GOVERNMENT
Chapter 7: The Problem of Faction and Three Partial Solutions
Chapter 8: Schema of Justice, Political Economy
Chapter 9: Theory of Government
IV. BEYOND GOVERNMENT
Chapter 10: Critique of Government
Chapter 11: Theory of Democratic Enthusiasm
This is a brilliant and provocative book. Oliver Feltham has again demonstrated the potential of a historicisation of the foundational concepts of political philosophy for rethinking politics beyond neoliberalism. Following on from his analysis of joint action in Anatomy of Failure, in this new book Feltham opposes David Hume’s commercial model of action to the democratic enthusiasm of radical collectives in the English Revolution. The critique involves retrieval as well as demystification, however, for rather than rejecting Hume’s analysis of the political passions, Feltham advocates a topology of the passions as the key to grasping democratic political commitments. The resulting concepts of faction, envelope and vortex map the topology of the passions developed through a critical reading of Hume onto the social imaginary, breaking thereby the automatic connection between enthusiasm and sectarianism that Hume deplored. Feltham shows that the English Revolution remains a fertile reservoir of political concepts that go beyond possessive individualism and negative liberty, and that the modern era therefore harbours radical potentials that require retrieval and reactivation.
— Geoff Boucher, Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Deakin University, Australia