Overview

In this unusual book Robert Fine reviews three great studies of modern political life: Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Marx's Capital and Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism. The strength of this book lies not only in its radical reinterpretation of these individual texts, but especially in what is revealed when these texts are freed from their intellectual isolation and read together as a living unity. In Fine's account all three emerge as critical texts which contrast the great promise of modern politics - freedom, equality, solidarity, etc. - with the grubbier reality of domination and violence. They are all revealed as empirical works which analyse the actual forms of political modernity, as scientific works which are not content merely with describing external appearances, as dynamic works concerned with the movement and trajectory of modern politics, and finally as unmasking texts which not only address the illusions of modern politics but also the illusion of unmasking itself.

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9780415239073

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Author Information

Robert Fine is Convenor of the MA in Social and Political Thought and Director of the Centre for Social Theory at the University of Warwick. He is author of Democracy and the Rule of Law: Liberal Ideals and Marxist Critiques (Pluto) and Beyond Apartheid: Labour and Liberation in South Africa (Pluto). He is co-editor of Social Theory after the Holocaust (Liverpool University Press).

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