Political Theory and Modernity [Paperback]

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