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As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical aspect of his thought, because it was largely expressed in speeches and interviews, remains virtually unknown to even his most loyal readers. This book brings together previously unpublished transcripts of oral presentations in which Foucault speaks at length about literature and its links to some of his principal themes: madness, language and criticism, and truth and desire. The associations between madness and language — and madness and silence — preoccupy Foucault in two 1963 radio broadcasts, presented here, in which he ranges among literary examples from Cervantes and Shakespeare to Diderot, before taking up questions about Artaud's literary correspondence, 'lettres de cachet', and the materiality of language. In his lectures on the relations among language, the literary work, and literature, he discusses Joyce, Proust, Chateaubriand, Racine, and Corneille, as well as the linguist Roman Jakobson. What we know as literature, Foucault contends, begins with the Marquis de Sade, to whose writing — particularly La Nouvelle Justine and Juliette — he devotes a full two-part lecture series focusing on notions of literary self-consciousness. This volume makes clear the importance of literature to Foucault's thought and it is an indispensable text for anyone interested in his work and intellectual development.

We have become superheroes. Nothing can resist us anymore: not persons, ideas, facts, realities, or beings. We owe our superhuman strength to a tool we have taken up that submits everything to the scrutiny of our judgment: critique. After its first formulation at the end of the sixteenth century, the project of critique spread from one sphere to another until it became almost universal: we have all of us been transformed by our equal capacity to judge, approve, and reject. If modernity is defined as the journey we have taken to move away from the myths and dogmas of the past, then critique, with its emphasis on reason and the autonomy of judgment, has been the lynchpin of modernity. Today, however, the critical project shows signs of exhaustion. We are beginning to realize that being right is useless, now that everyone can lay claim to the same power as we can. The democratization of reason, proceeding alongside the development of critique through modernity, has produced a stalemate: for every judgment that we pronounce, there is another opposing one – with grounds as solid as our own, and the same right to assert itself. Rather than elevating us above the world, critique has mired us in an impasse of claim and counter-claim. The age of critique is now over, argues Laurent de Sutter, and in its place we need to develop a postcritical form of thinking, one he calls “superweak,” a form of thinking based not on establishing grounds, pronouncing judgment, and determining duty, but on welcoming possibility, exploring what the world has to offer, and cultivating a vertiginous appreciation for moving within a world less grounded and less bounded by the terms of critical reason.

In 2022, left-wing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won an unprecedented third term in Brazil, defeating far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. While the return of the only working-class president in Brazilian history was celebrated by many, Bolsonaro supporters reacted by attacking the legislature, judiciary, and presidential palace. What explains this violent assault on Brazil's democratic institutions? Why did Lula, who first left office with an approval rating of almost 90 percent, provoke such vehement resistance from a supposedly patriotic mob? Through the intertwined stories of Lula and modern Brazil, historian Andre Pagliarini illuminates the country's journey over the last eighty years. He examines the processes that forged Lula, his Workers' Party and the contours of the country's current predicament to show that the fight for Brazil's future is far from an historical anomaly. It is rooted in a history of democratic advance and backlash familiar to many pluralistic, multiracial democracies worldwide. Given the intense feelings Lula arouses across the political spectrum, his undeniable historical importance, and his re-election at a critical juncture for Brazil and the world, Lula's life and legacy offers a provocative prism through which to analyze the recent past, present, and contested future of Latin America's largest nation.

An exploration of an essential but often overlooked figure in English literature In this innovative biography, Andrew Keanie explores one of the most enigmatic figures in English Romanticism. Known for his confessional prose and essays, De Quincey is more than the author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater —he is the hidden thread connecting the great minds of the Romantic movement, including William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Rather than a traditional cradle-to-grave account, The Life of the Author offers a thematic approach, focusing on key moments and works that defined De Quincey’s intellectual life. Through his personal struggles with addiction, loss, and identity, De Quincey forged a new style of life writing that intertwined personal experience with universal truths, influencing generations of writers to come. Throughout the book, Keanie invites readers to reconsider one of English literature’s most complex figures and the Romantic movement he helped define. Accessible to academic readers and literary enthusiasts alike, The Life of the Author: Thomas De Quincey is a must-read for anyone looking for a concise yet deeply insightful book that sheds new light on how De Quincey’s life shaped the enduring legacy of Romanticism.

This is a book about justice, but not as we know it. Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos argues that justice is always hydrojustice – that is, always defined in relation to water, the element that constitutes and unites all bodies, human and nonhuman. Hence justice is not an ideal state reached through merely human procedures (legal, political, economic, etc.) but also a planetary one, always conjoined with the element of water that both constitutes and transcends the boundaries of the human. In short, hydrojustice is the just confluence of all bodies, human and nonhuman. For the first time, this book brings questions of justice into line with the current literature on water. Up to now, justice has been understood as an anthropocentric affair, with most existing theories accepting and reinforcing the division between human and nonhuman. This book builds on feminism, ecology, posthumanism and the current Blue Turn in the humanities and social sciences, and puts questions of justice at their core. What the book proposes, however, is not simply an ecological concept of justice. Rather, through examples taken from current affairs, science and the art world, it attempts a radical recalibration of what justice is. The book argues that hydrojustice is already here, part of our planetary condition, but it requires unearthing, in the double sense of revealing what is hidden and allowing earth to cede priority to the aquatic.

A wide-ranging and up-to-date survey of the leading ideas and debates in political philosophy Political Philosophy: The Fundamentals introduces core topics within the field by engaging students in seminal works in both contemporary philosophy and the history of political thought. Requiring no previous background in the subject, this clear and comprehensible textbook equips readers with the necessary context for understanding different philosophical perspectives. Through eight succinct chapters, Thom Brooks highlights important contributions made from political philosophers from the past and present to connect the history of political thought with ongoing debates. Readers gain insights into various conceptions about the nature of freedom, different ways of understanding equality, longstanding debates over punishment, questions concerning the value of human rights, issues of global justice and severe poverty, approaches to handling climate change and much more. Helping readers develop informed opinions on central issues, Political Philosophy: The Fundamentals: Discusses divergent views about the different forms and limits of freedom that philosophers have defended over timeProvides a historical perspective of contemporary understandings of human rights and their origins in natural law and natural rightsIllustrates the multiple ways that freedom has been understood, including commonalities and differencesExamines various ways of implementing equality and assessing their meritsCovers influential work by John Rawls that envisions a well-ordered society governed by principles of justice Featuring carefully selected further readings in each chapter, Political Philosophy: The Fundamentals is essential reading for undergraduate students and general readers interested in the historical development and present-day debates over political ideas and institutions.

T. M. Scanlon is one of the world’s leading philosophers, widely known for his contractualist moral theory and his distinctive account of moral responsibility and blame. In these important essays, written between 2001 and 2021, Scanlon reflects on the lines of thinking that led him to these views, considers objections to them, and locates them in relation to the views of others, including Derek Parfit, Harry Frankfurt, Gary Watson, and Christine Korsgaard. The result will be essential reading for scholars and students in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law.