John Lechte is Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He has published widely on French thought, particularly the work of Julia Kristeva. His most recent books are: Genealogy and Ontology of the Western Image and its Digital Future (2012) and he co-authored Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights: Statelessness, Images, Violence (2013). He has also published key essays on the thought of Georges Bataille, Julia Kristeva, Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt, as well as on Derrida.

How can it be possible – as we so often see – for human life to be excluded, exploited, oppressed and, ultimately, destroyed in the very name of humanity? This is the crucial question that Lechte tackles in this philosophical tour de force. The domains of politics, ethics, economics, law and rights are all founded on the idea of the human and are meant to serve this end. Yet, this idea of humanity conceals a distinction, which has been with us since the Greeks, between human life as mere biological necessity, and human life as a ‘way of life’ – a division that allows certain ways of living to be denigrated. Lechte’s bold and penetrating analysis forces us to question this assumption and, in doing so, disrupts the familiar categories of the Western political and philosophical tradition. Taking up from where Agamben left off, Lechte proposes a radical new understanding of the human as transcendent, as that which cannot be reduced to bare life. In doing so, he presents a fundamental challenge to the economic and political rationalities that today aim to objectify and control us.

• Introduction1. The Condition of Being Human 2. The Theory of the Polis and the Political in Western Philosophy: Implications for the Human3. How the Ordinary is Extraordinary: Arendt and Heidegger on the Polis 4. Approaching the Human and Freedom 5. The Human and the Animal: Bare Life and Transcendence 6. The Human and the Sacred in Bataille’s Writing 7. The Human and/at the Moment of Death: Index and Image 8. The Human as Technics, Technicity, Technology and ‘Way of Life’ 9. Levinas on the Absolute Other as the Human 10. Life as Way of Life – As Acting BibliographyIndex

John Lechte is Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He has published widely on French thought, particularly the work of Julia Kristeva. His most recent books are: Genealogy and Ontology of the Western Image and its Digital Future (2012) and he co-authored Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights: Statelessness, Images, Violence (2013). He has also published key essays on the thought of Georges Bataille, Julia Kristeva, Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt, as well as on Derrida.

How can it be possible – as we so often see – for human life to be excluded, exploited, oppressed and, ultimately, destroyed in the very name of humanity? This is the crucial question that Lechte tackles in this philosophical tour de force. The domains of politics, ethics, economics, law and rights are all founded on the idea of the human and are meant to serve this end. Yet, this idea of humanity conceals a distinction, which has been with us since the Greeks, between human life as mere biological necessity, and human life as a ‘way of life’ – a division that allows certain ways of living to be denigrated. Lechte’s bold and penetrating analysis forces us to question this assumption and, in doing so, disrupts the familiar categories of the Western political and philosophical tradition. Taking up from where Agamben left off, Lechte proposes a radical new understanding of the human as transcendent, as that which cannot be reduced to bare life. In doing so, he presents a fundamental challenge to the economic and political rationalities that today aim to objectify and control us.

• Introduction1. The Condition of Being Human 2. The Theory of the Polis and the Political in Western Philosophy: Implications for the Human3. How the Ordinary is Extraordinary: Arendt and Heidegger on the Polis 4. Approaching the Human and Freedom 5. The Human and the Animal: Bare Life and Transcendence 6. The Human and the Sacred in Bataille’s Writing 7. The Human and/at the Moment of Death: Index and Image 8. The Human as Technics, Technicity, Technology and ‘Way of Life’ 9. Levinas on the Absolute Other as the Human 10. Life as Way of Life – As Acting BibliographyIndex

John Lechte is Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He has published widely on French thought, particularly the work of Julia Kristeva. His most recent books are: Genealogy and Ontology of the Western Image and its Digital Future (2012) and he co-authored Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights: Statelessness, Images, Violence (2013). He has also published key essays on the thought of Georges Bataille, Julia Kristeva, Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt, as well as on Derrida.

How can it be possible – as we so often see – for human life to be excluded, exploited, oppressed and, ultimately, destroyed in the very name of humanity? This is the crucial question that Lechte tackles in this philosophical tour de force. The domains of politics, ethics, economics, law and rights are all founded on the idea of the human and are meant to serve this end. Yet, this idea of humanity conceals a distinction, which has been with us since the Greeks, between human life as mere biological necessity, and human life as a ‘way of life’ – a division that allows certain ways of living to be denigrated. Lechte’s bold and penetrating analysis forces us to question this assumption and, in doing so, disrupts the familiar categories of the Western political and philosophical tradition. Taking up from where Agamben left off, Lechte proposes a radical new understanding of the human as transcendent, as that which cannot be reduced to bare life. In doing so, he presents a fundamental challenge to the economic and political rationalities that today aim to objectify and control us.

• Introduction1. The Condition of Being Human 2. The Theory of the Polis and the Political in Western Philosophy: Implications for the Human3. How the Ordinary is Extraordinary: Arendt and Heidegger on the Polis 4. Approaching the Human and Freedom 5. The Human and the Animal: Bare Life and Transcendence 6. The Human and the Sacred in Bataille’s Writing 7. The Human and/at the Moment of Death: Index and Image 8. The Human as Technics, Technicity, Technology and ‘Way of Life’ 9. Levinas on the Absolute Other as the Human 10. Life as Way of Life – As Acting BibliographyIndex