Value of Convenience

Thomas F. Tierney is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Concord College.

"This is a major contribution to the political theory of technology. It treats the most prosaic of concerns in the modern era, convenience, as a lens through which to explore what many would claim is the most important problem generated by the modern age—the domination of instrumental rationality and its identity with a particular kind of modern subject."Tierney pulls in material from a series of heterogeneous traditions in political theory and history. His treatment of the American frontier, for instance, is very clever and provocative, connecting back to the Heideggerian concern with death! Such surprises are often in this book." — Thomas L. Dumm, Amherst College

• 1. Introduction 2. Arendt, the Household, and Convenience 3. Marxist Perspectives on Consumption 4. Settling American Space Marx's InsightSetting America's Space in OrderAgriculture as a Limit of the Body 5. Setting Bodies in Motion 6. Weber, Protestantism, and Consumption The Value of Weber's ArgumentLuther and Calvin's Attitudes Toward Earthly LifeWorldly Asceticism and the Emergence of the Cage 7. Nietzsche and Modern Asceticism 8. Traces of Modern Asceticism Hobbes and MortalityLocke and ConvenienceMarx and Necessity 9. The End of Death Notes Index