Democracy and the Limits of Community

Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-009-65216-2
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 303 Seiten

At a historical moment when democracy experiences a legitimation crisis, demands for 'community' and for a 'democracy of the common' have become central themes in political theory and philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic. Such appeals entail a critique, even a rejection, of liberal constitutional democracy as alienating and inauthentic, as not representing the interests of citizens. This book fundamentally questions the democratic potential of appeals to 'community' and 'the common.' The language of 'community' can be observed especially among conservative and neofascist public intellectuals of the New Right, but it also features surprisingly prominently among post-Marxist philosophers and political theorists of the New Left. Tracing 'community' and 'the common' in contemporary political thought and philosophy, this book argues that they represent a dangerous political romanticism and authoritarian drift incompatible with the normative demands and the emancipatory dimension of liberal constitutional democracy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Emden, Christian J.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. The urgency of community? Neoliberalism and the legitimation crisis of democracy; 2. The dangerous return of community: communitarian philosophy, authoritarian drift, and neofascism; 3. The depoliticized community: the normative emptiness of post-Marxist philosophy; 4. The political romanticism of the common: insurgent democracy and revolutionary nostalgia; 5. States of exception: from constituent power to dictatorship; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Emden, Christian J.
Christian J. Emden is the Frances Moody Newman Professor and Professor of German Intellectual History and Political Thought at Rice University. He is the author of Walter Benjamins Archäologie der Moderne (2005), Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body (2005), Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History (Cambridge, 2008), and Nietzsche's Naturalism: Philosophy and the Life Sciences in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2014).