The Reasoning of Unreason: Universalism, Capitalism and Disenlightenment

Description

The twenty-first century so far has seen the global rise of authoritarian populism, systematic racism, and dogmatic metaphysics. Even though these events demonstrate the growth of an age of ‘unreason’, in this original and compelling book John Roberts resists the assumption that such thinking displays an unthinking irrationality or loss of reason; instead he asserts that an important feature of modern reactionary politics is that it offers a supposedly convincing integration of the particular and the universal. This move is defined by what Roberts calls the ‘reasoning of unreason’ and has deep roots in the history of Western thought and politics. Tracing the dark history of enlightenment-disenlightenment, John Roberts explores ‘the reasoning of unreason’ across centuries from Aquinas, William of Ockham, the most important treatise on witchcraft Malleus Maleficarum, Locke, Kant, and Count Arthur de Gobineau, to Social Darwinism, Nazism, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Friedrich von Hayek. Roberts provides a new set of philosophical-political tools to understand the formation and denigration of the rational subject and the current reinvestment in various forms of political unreason globally. The Reasoning of Unreason is the first book to draw on the philosophy of reason, political philosophy, political theory and political history, in order to produce a dialectical account of the ‘making of reason’ internal to the forces of unreason and the limits of reason Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Beyond the ‘eclipse of reason’ Pre-established universalism/unconditioned universalism Universalism and the critique of limits Three universalizations The reasoning of unreason, universalism and radical particularism Chapter 1: Hereticism, Faith and the Antinomies of Reason Reason, science and witchcraft Femininity and the formation of witchcraft discourse Aquinas and Ockham on particulars and universalism, faith and reason Chapter 2: Writing Enlightenment–Disenlightenment in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries The post-feudal transition The remaking of reason’s deficits Descartes’ disappointment Faith in reason Reason and the new consciousness Self as person Locke, slavery and rational self-possession The faith–reason dialectic and the early Enlightenment Chapter 3: Bourgeois Universalism in the Age of Enlightenment and Nationalism Enlightenment and the new continuitism An anti-historicist Enlightenment How Enlightenment faith–reason thinks Kant’s rational faith Kant’s racially restricted personhood Faith against religion How the post-Enlightenment thinks: Faith–reason, nationalism and the racialization of reason Conditional and unconditional universalism Chapter 4: The Reasoning of Unreason as Anti-philosophy: Post-war Capitalism, Emancipatory Universalism and Radical Particularism Workers’ ‘rational faith’ and the defeat of the defeat of fascism Rebuilding bourgeois universalism and the limits of reason Fascism, abstraction and reason The limits of evil and the limits of reason Theodicy, faith and reason Strauss’ anti-universalism Neoliberalism, the subject of reason, and the critique of abstract universalism The common and the universal: The struggle over universalisms Marx, universality and non-identity Universality-in-becoming Conditioned universality and the West New modalities/old problems Conclusion Desires-as-reasons The reason–unreason continuum Scientism and ‘enthusiasm’ Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Conclusion Bibliography Index