Thinkers for a Complex Age

Normative Political Theory After Foundationalism
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-38256-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 344 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Thinkers for a Complex Age offers a sustained engagement with key figures in modern and contemporary political and social thought in order to address one of the central problems of our time: how normative judgement remains possible after the collapse of philosophical foundations. Moving from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger through Foucault, Deleuze, Butler, and Latour, and on to contemporary debates in political theory, ecology, and governance, the book reconstructs a mode of critical inquiry that is at once genealogical, relational, and normatively oriented.

Organised into six thematic sections, the book traces a clear conceptual progression across traditions and debates, from genealogies of the modern subject through poststructural, materialist, ecological, and institutional approaches to contemporary questions of justice and freedom. Each chapter provides a focused engagement with a major thinker, identifying both their key contributions and their limits, while contributing to an overarching argument. The book’s modular structure and its substantial annotated bibliography also make it especially well suited for advanced teaching, offering readers a coherent orientation across complex intellectual terrain.

Against both foundational moral theory and post-foundational scepticism, it advances a distinctive account of “life continuance” as an immanent basis for ethical and political judgement—one grounded not in universal principles, but in the conditions that sustain agency, institutions, and collective life over time. Bringing together insights from continental philosophy, political theory, and contemporary social thought, this book offers a compelling framework for thinking ethics, freedom, and governance in an age marked by ecological crisis, technological transformation, and global interdependence. It will be of interest to scholars and students in political theory, philosophy, education, and the social sciences more broadly.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate, Undergraduate Advanced, and Undergraduate Core

Autoren/Hrsg.

Olssen, Mark

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Demokratie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface.  Introduction: Thinking in a Complex Age: Genealogy, Relationality, and the Reworking of Political Theory  Section I — Foundations and Genealogies of the Modern Subject  1. How to Read Kant?  2. Friedrich Nietzsche  3. Martin Heidegger  Section II — Immanence, Power, and the Poststructural Turn  4. Gilles Deleuze  5. Georges Canguilhem  6. Michel Foucault  7. Judith Butler  8. Georges Bataille  9. Louis Althusser  10. Hannah Arendt  11. Jürgen Habermas  Section III — Materialism, Ecology, Posthumanism  12. Bruno Latour  13. Jane Bennett  14. Karen Barad  15. Donna Haraway  16. Rosi Braidotti  17. Dipesh Chakrabarty  18. Achille Mbembe  19. Hans Jonas  Section IV — Governance, Democracy, Institutions  20. Montesquieu  21. T.H. Green  22. L.T. Hobhouse  23. Karl Polanyi  24. Pierre Bourdieu  25. Pierre Rosanvallon  26. John Dewey  27. Elinor Ostrom  28. William Connolly  Section V — Normativity, Justice, and Freedom  29. Martha Nussbaum  30. Amartya Sen  31. Philip Pettit  Section VI — Relational Ethics After Foundations  32. Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Mark Olssen is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Higher Education Policy at the University of Surrey, UK. His work focuses on political theory, social philosophy, and education policy, with particular interests in Foucault, neoliberalism, and contemporary debates on normativity and governance. He is the author of numerous books, including Constructing Foucault’s Ethics (2021) and The Return of the Good in the Age of AI (2026). His recent work develops a relational, post-foundational account of ethics centred on the concept of life continuance.