Political Theory and Modernity

Modernity is marked by acrimonious debate over the form of the good society and the proper shape of politics. But these struggles are set within a frame that supports some arguments and rules other possibilities out of contention. If late-modernity is a time of danger as well as significant achievement, it is necessary to ask: how can we become more reflective about the economies of thought which have governed modern political discourse?

William Connolly clarifies the affinities binding together disparate theorists who have sought to comprehend the shape and prospects of modernity. He reveals how thinkers adamantly opposed to one another at one level implicitly share assumptions and demands at a more basic level; and invites Nietzsche - the thinker who disturbs modern theories by assessing them from the hypothetical perspective of a non-modern future - to expose patterns of insistence inside the theories of his predecessors.

Preface vii

1 The Order of Modernity 1

The modern frame 1

A madman speaks 7

Modernity and nihilism 12

2 Hobbes: The Politics of Divine Containment 16

The ontological context 16

The light of reason 21

Nature, madness and artifice 26

Rhetorics of nature and sovereignty 30

Strategies of sovereignty 33

Reason, faith and power 35

3 Rousseau: Docility Through Citizenship 41

The eloquence of nature 41

The simplicity of nature 47

The paradox of politics 53

The politics of virtue 57

Faith, generality and will 61

Interlude 1 Hobbes, Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade 68

The holy alliance 68

The blindness of nature 72

The politics of pornography 79

4 Hegel: The politics of Inclusivity 86

Madness and knowledge 86

Community and subjectivity 93

Faith and Enlightenment 100

The perfection of Enlightenment 111

Interlude 2 Hegel, Marx and the State 116

The unity of the state 116

The state without Spirit 121

Pauperism and politics 125

The state of modernity 128

5 Nietzsche: Politics and Homesickness 137

Truth and homesickness 137

A genealogy of the subject 147

A Nietzschean ethic 160

The fate of modernity 168

Notes 176

Bibliography 183

Index 190

William E. Connolly is editor of Political Theory and Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. His books include The Terms of Political Discourse (1974, second edition 1983), Appearance and Reality in Politics (1981) and Politics and Ambiguity (1987), and he co-edits with Steven Lukes the series Readings in Social and Political Theory (published by Basil Blackwell and New York University Press). Modernity is marked by acrimonious debate over the form of the good society and the proper shape of politics. But these struggles are set within a frame that supports some arguments and rules other possibilities out of contention. If late-modernity is a time of danger as well as significant achievement, it is necessary to ask: how can we become more reflective about the economies of thought which have governed modern political discourse?

William Connolly clarifies the affinities binding together disparate theorists who have sought to comprehend the shape and prospects of modernity. He reveals how thinkers adamantly opposed to one another at one level implicitly share assumptions and demands at a more basic level; and invites Nietzsche - the thinker who disturbs modern theories by assessing them from the hypothetical perspective of a non-modern future - to expose patterns of insistence inside the theories of his predecessors.