Overview

Nowadays, politics is only one voice among many in the concert of social self-organization. Its function is to articulate the differentiated systems of our societies: it encourages their self-restraint, while at the same time restraining itself. Such a conception obviously threatens the primacy of the nation-state. While it is not necessarily disappearing, it must nevertheless cease to be thought of as a dominant principle of organization, and must assume its place in a system of regulation that proceeds on several levels. Distant from the anarchist or Marxist theories that herald the end of the state as it is from libertarian theories of the minimal state, the book illustrates that it is possible in the contemporary period to go beyond the alternatives of dirigisme and neoliberal spontaneity. However, such a transformation can only prove effective through two conditions: we must first reject the enduring opposition between Right and Left, and second, we must invent an anti-state social democracy that is able in its own right to glean the most it can out of the liberal legacy. This book combines philosophical technicality, clarity and elegance of writing in an attempt to provide politics with meaning again, particularly in an era where discourse about its powerlessness abounds.

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Daniel Innerarity is Professor of Philosophy and «Ikerbasque» Research Professor (Universidad del País Vasco). He is the Director of the Instituto de Gobernanza Democrática. In Spain, this book was awarded the National Literature Prize. It has been translated into various languages. Daniel Innerarity is the author of other books: Ética de la hospitalidad, La sociedad invisible, El nuevo espacio público, El futuro y sus enemigos. The French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur included him in a list of the 25 great thinkers of the world.

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