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 | | The Augustinian Imperative: A Reflection on the Politics of Morality (Modernity and Political Thought) by William E. Connolly ISBN-10: 9780803936362 ISBN-10: 0-8039-3636-2 ISBN-13: 9780803936362 ISBN-13: 978-0-8039-3636-2 Hardcover 1993-09-20 Sage Publications, Inc Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description An entirely new interpretation of one of the most seminal and widely read figures in the history of political thought, The Augustinian Imperative is also an archeological investigation into the intellectual foundation of liberal societies. William E. Connolly skillfully positions Augustine at the very center of debates about modernity and, by doing so, confirms the status attributed to Augustine by political and social theorists as a central intellectual figure for our time. In addition to exploring the Augustinian Imperative--"an intrinsic moral order susceptible to authoritative representation"--the author explicates Augustine's work with a lucidity and rhetorical power that makes it readily accessible to undergraduates, graduate students, and professional academics in a range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. "This slim volume of less than 200 pages by one of the most stimulating and perceptive political theorists working within the geography and archaeology of modern Western modernity, demonstrates in an intellectually exciting fashion the working of the power of negativity.... Connolly presents us with a brilliant paradox, the paradox of an anti-modern or at best dubiously modern Augustinian model subverting modernity itself by claiming to sustain it.... This book is very rich in both theoretical and moral insights, and must be welcomed as one of the most significant contributions to the current debate over the fate of modernity, its past as well as future, now threatening the foundation of the modern Western civilisation." --The Indian Journal of Social Science "A new book by Bill Connolly is always an event. Connollly's is amongst the most interesting, articulate and suggestive voices in contemporary American political theory." --Political Studies "Connolly sets Nietzsche loose on Augustine, in the service of a political ethic adequate to the post-modern state and society. He explores Augustine not by repudiating him but by opening up his texts to multiple interpretations, and by locating him as representative of the practices and self-understandings lodged in the hegemonic western moral order. Connolly's articulation of an alternative political- ethical practice is attentive to debts it sustains to its opponents, as well as to the ambiguities necessarily resident in all contenders on this terrain. Connolly's inspired reading is particularly useful to feminist readers for its exploration of the many ways in which Augustine's moral world is gendered. The Augustinian Imperative is a brilliant exposition of the relations between discursive codes, the sites of authority lodged within them, and the forms of identity they produce/prohibit/reveal." --Kathy E. Ferguson, University of Hawaii at Manoa "The great interest of William E. Connolly's book is the masterly way in which he shows the emergence and consolidation of the moral sensibility that has had a lasting influence in our culture and which only begins to fade away in a post-Nietzschean era. This book is not simply the history of a doctrine and its lasting effects; it also illuminates the pre-suppositions that made that doctrine acceptable and that governed the various substitutions. It truly belongs to what can be legitimately called 'the history of being.'" –Ernesto Laclau, University of Essex "This is not an easy book to summarise or reduce to a capsule form. It is very rich in both theoretical and moral insights, and must be welcomed as one of the most significant contribution to the current debate over the fate of modernity, its past as well as future, now threatening the foundation of the modern Western civilisation. It is relevant obliquely to our own borrowed debate on modernity in a situation in which modernity is, at best, to use a Derridian expression, a present absence." --K. Raghavendra Rao in The Indian Journal of Social Science This product is now available from: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Phone: 800-462-6420 Fax: 800-338-4550 http:\\www.rowmanlittlefield.com | ||
Reviews | ||
Dreadful It would seem a good rule of thumb to approach with caution any work dedicated to a thinker in the Western canon, only to find that Nietzsche and Foucault are analyzed almost as much as the thinker that is supposedly the focus of examination. Let's put it bluntly: Connolly is less than a fan of St. Augustine. As he writes in the Preface, he wants to examine, not Augustine himself exactly, but rather "the Augustinian Imperative, the insistence that there is an intrinsic moral order to susceptible to authoritative representation." This is linked to "an obligatory pursuit: the quest to move closer to one's truest self by exploring its inner geography." This also involves looking at practices of "moralization of the self and demoralization of the other." Needless to say, this work is postmodernist. Effectively, Augustine becomes Connolly's whipping-boy for the postmodern critique of ideas like objective morality and the like. I am cautious of saying too much, as this work (like most PoMo pieces) is nuanced-to-death, and therefore hard to summarize. So, I'll put it this way: if you are deeply interested in St. Augustine's political thought (and need to know the secondary literature), or are a postmodernist, you should own this book. If you do not fall into one of these categories, spare yourself a great deal of pain and don't even pick it up. | ||