Brian Milstein – författare

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the idea of a ‘postnational’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ politics. But while there are many normative theories of cosmopolitanism, as well as some cosmopolitan theories of globalization, there has been little attempt to grapple systematically with fundamental questions of structure and action from a ‘cosmopolitan point of view.’ Drawing on Kant‘s cosmopolitan writings and Habermas‘s critical theory of society, Brian Milstein argues that, before we are members of nations or states, we are participants in a ‘commercium’ of global interaction who are able to negotiate for ourselves the terms on which we share the earth in common with one another. He marshals a broad range of literature from philosophy, sociology, and political science to show how the modern system of sovereign nation-states destructively constrains and distorts these relations of global interaction, leading to pathologies and crises in present-day world society.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the idea of a ‘postnational’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ politics. But while there are many normative theories of cosmopolitanism, as well as some cosmopolitan theories of globalization, there has been little attempt to grapple systematically with fundamental questions of structure and action from a ‘cosmopolitan point of view.’ Drawing on Kant‘s cosmopolitan writings and Habermas‘s critical theory of society, Brian Milstein argues that, before we are members of nations or states, we are participants in a ‘commercium’ of global interaction who are able to negotiate for ourselves the terms on which we share the earth in common with one another. He marshals a broad range of literature from philosophy, sociology, and political science to show how the modern system of sovereign nation-states destructively constrains and distorts these relations of global interaction, leading to pathologies and crises in present-day world society.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the idea of a ‘postnational’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ politics. But while there are many normative theories of cosmopolitanism, as well as some cosmopolitan theories of globalization, there has been little attempt to grapple systematically with fundamental questions of structure and action from a ‘cosmopolitan point of view.’ Drawing on Kant‘s cosmopolitan writings and Habermas‘s critical theory of society, Brian Milstein argues that, before we are members of nations or states, we are participants in a ‘commercium’ of global interaction who are able to negotiate for ourselves the terms on which we share the earth in common with one another. He marshals a broad range of literature from philosophy, sociology, and political science to show how the modern system of sovereign nation-states destructively constrains and distorts these relations of global interaction, leading to pathologies and crises in present-day world society.

Capitalism, by the twenty-first century, has brought us an era of escalating, overlapping crisis - ecological, political, social - which we may not survive. In this brilliant, wide-ranging conversation, political philosophers Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi identify capitalism as the source of the devastation and examine its in-built tendency to crisis. In an exchange that ranges across history, critical theory, ecology, feminism and political theory, Fraser and Jaeggi find that capitalism's tendency to separate what is connected - human from non-human nature, commodity production and social reproduction - is at the heart of its crisis tendency. These "boundary struggles," Fraser and Jaeggi conclude, constitute capitalism's most destructive power but are also the sites where a fighting left movement might be able to halt the destruction and build the non-capitalist future we so desperately need.A crucial text for students of political theory, economic theory, and social change, Capitalism offers an invigorated critique of twenty-first century capitalism and an incisive study of our current conjuncture.