Agonistic Condition

Dimitris Vardoulakis is Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. He is the author of The Doppelgänger: Literature’s Philosophy (2010), Sovereignty and its Other: Toward the Dejustification of Violence (2013), Freedom from the Free Will: On Kafka’s Laughter (SUNY, 2016) and Stasis Before the State: Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy (2018). He has edited or co-edited numerous books, including Spinoza Now (2011) and Spinoza’s Authority (two volumes, 2018). He is co-series editor of Incitements and founding editor of the journal Philosophy, Politics and Critique, both at Edinburgh University Press.

In The Agonistic Condition Dimitris Vardoulakis offers a deep and powerful critique of what he calls “ineffectualism,” the idea, promoted by many left leaning philosophers, of the value of non-instrumentality. For Vardoulakis, this allows for a return of metaphysics, a disengagement with the actual world as such that leads to various forms of domination and control. By fundamentally accepting the Nietzschean concept of the death of God, Vardoulakis calls for a radical affirmation of instrumentality, not in terms (once again) of domination, but precisely for the opposite reason. Vardoulakis claims—very convincingly—that we must embrace instrumentality as being the basis for a human centered form of judgment that has no truck with the transcendental. This is the basis for the agonistic--i.e. human--condition itself. This book should be on the shelf of every scholar who is interested in having a radical rethinking of the entire basis of leftist anti metaphysics and the politics that result from it.

• PrefacePreamble, The Agonistic ConditionIntroduction: Agonism and Democracy[1] Agonistic Democracy[2] What is Agon?[3] The Repression of Instrumentality[4] Agonism and the Phronetic Tradition1. The Political as Irreducible to the Institutional[5] The Problematic of the Confinement of the Political to Institutions[6] The Expansion of Power (Nietzsche)[7] Pluralism, or the Materialism of Differentiation (Connolly)[8] The Agonistic Interplay of Law and Culture (Tully)[9] Natality and Agonism (Arendt)[10] (Re)founding (Honig)[11] The Ontologization of the Political (Schmitt)[12] The Ever Present Possibility of Antagonism (Mouffe)[13] The Political Difference (Marchart)[14] Monism and Instrumentality (the first sense of agonism)2. Consensus as Incommensurate with the Political[15] The Problematic of the Politics of Consensus[16] Power or Consensus? (Nietzsche)[17] Genealogy and Resentment (Connolly)[18] Consensus or Recognition? (Tully)[19] The Rise of the Social (Arendt)[20] Agonism as Disruption (Honig)[21] The Double Sense of Agonism (Schmitt)[22] Pluralism or Consensus? (Mouffe)[23] The Rise of the Political (Marchart)[24] Stasis (the second sense of agonism)3. Instrumentality and Agonism[25] The Problematic of the Repression of Instrumentality[26] The Calculating Animal (Nietzsche)[27] Becoming and the Ineffectual (Connolly)[28] Use Without Ends (Tully)[29] The Slavery of Modernity (Arendt)[30] Paradoxes of Excess (Honig)[31] Total Peace (Schmitt)[32] Liberalism, the Frenemy, and the Instrumentality Without Ends (Mouffe)[33] The Two Negations (Marchart)[34] The Conflation of Causality and Instrumentality (repression)5. The Ruse of Power[35] The Problematic of the Ruse of Power[36] The Magic Trick of the Ascetic Ideal (Nietzsche)[37] Agonistic Respect and Existential Faith (Connolly)[38] Not European Enough (Tully)[39] The Inverse Relation of Power and Violence (Arendt)[40] The ruse of power and neoliberalism (Honig)[41] Where does War End? (Schmitt)[42] The Logic of the Whatever (Mouffe)[43] The Persistence of Political Judgment (Marchart)[44] Violence and Political Change (the Epicurean “Social Contract”)Afterword[45] Afterword: In Defense of Instrumentality, or, the Persistence of the GoodBibliographyIndex