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We don't understand the reactionary mind. As a result, argues Mark Lilla in this timely book, the ideas and passions that shape today's political dramas are unintelligible to us. The reactionary is anything but a conservative. He is as radical and modern a figure as the revolutionary, someone shipwrecked in the rapidly changing present, and suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear that history is rushing toward catastrophe. And like the revolutionary his political engagements are motivated by highly developed ideas. Lilla begins with three twentieth-century philosophers-Franz Rosenzweig, Eric Voegelin, and Leo Strauss-who attributed the problems of modern society to a break in the history of ideas and promoted a return to earlier modes of thought. He then examines the enduring power of grand historical narratives of betrayal to shape political outlooks since the French Revolution, and shows how these narratives are employed in the writings of Europe's right-wing cultural pessimists and Maoist neocommunists, American theoconservatives fantasizing about the harmony of medieval Catholic society and radical Islamists seeking to restore a vanished Muslim caliphate. The revolutionary spirit that inspired political movements across the world for two centuries may have died out. But the spirit of reaction that rose to meet it has survived and is proving just as formidable a historical force. We live in an age when the tragicomic nostalgia of Don Quixote for a lost golden age has been transformed into a potent and sometimes deadly weapon. Mark Lilla helps us to understand why.

The past fifteen years in France have seen a remarkable flourishing of new work in political philosophy. This anthology brings into English for the first time essays by some of the best young French political thinkers writing today, including Marcel Gauchet, Pierre Manent, Luc Ferry, and Alain Renaut. The central theme of these essays is liberal democracy: its nature, its development, its problems, its fundamental legitimacy. Although these themes are familiar to American and British readers, the French approach to them--which is profoundly historical and rooted in the tradition of continenta

Die neuen Bücher über den Apostel Paulus sind nach Ansicht des Autors vor allem politische Bücher und Ausdruck der in den letzten Jahrzehnten stattfindenden Veränderungen in der Weltpolitik, insbesondere aus der Perspektive vieler europäischer Intellektueller. Der erste Denker, der Paulus als "Nothelfer" der Linken anpries, war Jacob Taubes und mit dessen Paulus-Vorlesungen 1993 und dem Band "Vom Kult zur Kultur" im Jahr 1996 und seinen Essays zur Religion begann der unaufhaltsame Aufstieg der paulinischen Bewegung in der europäischen Linken. Seitdem erschienen immer wieder Bücher und Aufsätze über Paulus, z. B. von Giorgio Agamben "Die Zeit, die bleibt. Ein Kommentar zum Römerbrief" (2008) und von Alain Badiou "Paulus. Die Begründung des Universalismus" (2002). Badiou rief die Linke dazu auf, den radikalen Universalismus des Heiligen Paulus wiederzuentdecken und ihn für die revolutionäre Politik nutzbar zu machen. Der Autor beschäftigt sich in seinem Aufsatz eingehend mit der Frage, wie Badious Wende von Mao zu Paulus erklärt werden kann. (ICI2)

A unique theological-political crisis within Christianity opened up the path the West has taken. We have little reason to assume other civilizations will necessarily follow it.