The Political

The Political is a collection of readings by the most important political philosophers representing the six major schools of Continental philosophy: Phenomenology, Existentialism, Critical Theory, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, and Postcolonialism.

List of Contributors. Preface. Introduction (David Ingram). PART I. PHENOMENOLOGY: POLITICAL ACTION AND THE DIALECTIC OF POWER AND VIOLENCE. 1. Selections from The Human Condition. On Violence (Hannah Arendt). 2. Power, Violence, and Legitimacy: A Reading of Hannah Arendt in an Age of Police Brutality and Humanitarian Intervention (Iris Marion Young). PART II. EXISTENTIALISM: REVOLUTIONARY PRAXIS AND THE DIALECTIC OF GROUPS AND INSTITUTIONS. 3. Selections from Critique of Dialectical Reason (Jean-Paul Sartre). 4. Sartre’s Critique (William L. McBride). PART III. CRITICAL THEORY: LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND THE DIALECTIC OF INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY. 5. Three Normative Models of Democracy. On the Internal Relation Between the Rule of Law and Democracy (Jürgen Habermas). 6. Can Procedural Democracy Be Radical (Simone Chambers). PART IV. POSTSTRUCTURALISM: MODERN POLITICAL VIRTUE AND THE DIALECTIC OF GOVERNANCE AND RESISTANCE. 7. What is Critique (Michel Foucault). 8. What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue (Judith Butler). PART V. POSTMODERNISM: TOTALITARIANISM AND THE DIALECTIC OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE. 9. Memorandum on Legitimation (Jean-François Lyotard). 10. Democracy in the Era of Identity Politics: Lyotard on Postmodern Legitimation (David Ingram). PART VI. POSTCOLONIALISM: PLANETARY POLITICS AND THE DIALECTIC OF LIFE AND LIBERATION. 11. Six Theses Towards a Critique of Political Reason: The Citizen as Political Agent (Enrique Dussel). 12. Politics in an Age of Planetarization: Enrique Dussel’s Critique of Political Reason (Eduardo Mendieta). Index.