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Joshua Foa Dienstag - Dancing in Chains - 9780804728188 - V9780804728188
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Dancing in Chains

€ 147.30
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Description for Dancing in Chains Hardback. Rejecting traditional distinctions between philosophy, history, and literature, this book traces a broad connection between political identity and narrative in the field of political theory. Num Pages: 284 pages. BIC Classification: DSA; HB; JPA. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 5182 x 3226 x 25. Weight in Grams: 590.

Philosophy is often depicted as generically distinct from literature, myth, and history, as a discipline that eschews narration and relies exclusively on abstract reason. This book takes issue with that assumption, arguing instead that political philosophers have commonly presented their readers with a narrative, rather than a logic, of politics.

The book maintains that philosophical texts frequently persuade through the creation of a role that they invite their audience to inhabit. Political theory is most powerful not when it erects timeless principles, but when it alters readers' understanding of their own past and future. By this the author means that ... Read more

This book investigates the place of narrative in politics in two ways. It offers a hypothesis of a broad connection between political identity and narrative, and it analyzes three major figures in the history of political thought—Locke, Hegel, and Nietzsche—to demonstrate that their work is best understood through the hypothesis. The author argues that each of these philosophers rewrites the past in an attempt to direct the future.

For Locke, this involves replacing the patriarchal history of kingly authority with a more naturalistic past grounded in episodes of consent—an act that he believes will replace a tyrannical future with a free one. In contrast, Hegel's approach to the past is aesthetic, and each epoch of history is understood as a work of art. Despite the romantic overtones of this view, the frozenness of these images results, for Hegel, in a weakly imagined future. Nietzsche's narrative is at once the most open and the most gruesome, emphasizing the centrality of violence in human history but also holding out hope for a redemption of that history in a particular future. This redemptive approach to the past, the author argues, is superior to the alternatives in that it supports the strongest account of human freedom.

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Product Details

Format
Hardback
Publication date
1997
Publisher
Stanford University Press United States
Number of pages
284
Condition
New
Number of Pages
284
Place of Publication
Palo Alto, United States
ISBN
9780804728188
SKU
V9780804728188
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-15

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