Modernity is marked by acrimonious debate over the form of the good society and the proper shape of politics. But these struggles are set within a frame that supports some arguments and rules other possibilities out of contention. If late-modernity is a time of danger as well as significant achievement, it is necessary to ask: how can we become more reflective about the economies of thought which have governed modern political discourse? William Connolly clarifies the affinities binding together disparate theorists who have sought to comprehend the shape and prospects of modernity. He reveals how thinkers adamantly opposed to one another at one level implicitly share assumptions and demands at a more basic level; and invites Nietzsche - the thinker who disturbs modern theories by assessing them from the hypothetical perspective of a non-modern future - to expose patterns of insistence inside the theories of his predecessors.
Preface vii 1 The Order of Modernity 1
The modern frame 1
A madman speaks 7
Modernity and nihilism 12
2 Hobbes: The Politics of Divine Containment 16
The ontological context 16
The light of reason 21
Nature, madness and artifice 26
Rhetorics of nature and sovereignty 30
Strategies of sovereignty 33
Reason, faith and power 35
3 Rousseau: Docility Through Citizenship 41
The eloquence of nature 41
The simplicity of nature 47
The paradox of politics 53
The politics of virtue 57
Faith, generality and will 61
Interlude 1 Hobbes, Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade 68
The holy alliance 68
The blindness of nature 72
The politics of pornography 79
4 Hegel: The politics of Inclusivity 86
Madness and knowledge 86
Community and subjectivity 93
Faith and Enlightenment 100
The perfection of Enlightenment 111
Interlude 2 Hegel, Marx and the State 116
The unity of the state 116
The state without Spirit 121
Pauperism and politics 125
The state of modernity 128
5 Nietzsche: Politics and Homesickness 137
Truth and homesickness 137
A genealogy of the subject 147
A Nietzschean ethic 160
The fate of modernity 168
Notes 176
Bibliography 183
Index 190
