The Bad Faith in the Free Market

Description

Innovatively combining existentialist philosophy with cutting edge post-structuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives, this book boldly reconsiders market freedom. Bloom argues that present day capitalism has robbed us of our individual and collective ability to imagine and implement alternative and more progressive economic and social systems; it has deprived us of our radical freedom to choose how we live and what we can become. Since the Great Recession, capitalism has been increasingly blamed for rising inequality and feelings of mass social and political alienation. In place of a deeper liberty, the free market offers subjects the opportunity to continually reinvest their personal and shared hopes within its dogmatic ideology and policies. This embrace helps to temporarily alleviate growing feelings of anxiety and insecurity at the expense of our fundamental human agency. What has become abundantly clear is that the free market is anything but free. Here, Bloom exposes our present day bad faith in the free market and how we can break free from it. Front Matter ....Pages i-viii The Bad Faith in the Free Market: The Need for Existential Freedom (Peter Bloom)....Pages 1-17 Breaking Free from the Free Market: The Existential Gap of Freedom (Peter Bloom)....Pages 19-40 Capitalism’s Existential Crisis: Producing Existential Freedom (Peter Bloom)....Pages 41-64 The Facticities of Neoliberalism: Demanding Existential Freedom (Peter Bloom)....Pages 65-89 Capitalist Being and Nothingness: Enjoying Existential Freedom (Peter Bloom)....Pages 91-115 Subjected to the Free Market: The Subject of Existential Freedom (Peter Bloom)....Pages 117-143 Deconstructing the Free Market: The Spectre of Existential Freedom (Peter Bloom)....Pages 145-170 Reinvesting in Good Faith: The Radical Promise of Existential Freedom (Peter Bloom)....Pages 171-186 Back Matter ....Pages 187-191