Modernism, Ethics and the Political Imagination: Living Wrong Life Rightly

In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today's emancipatory struggles. Modernism in this assessment is characterized not only by a concern with language and aesthetic creativity, but also by a preoccupation with the question of how to live. Investigating ethical ideas in Wittgenstein, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Kant, Cavell, Marx, Henry James and Lacan, Ware demonstrates how these thinkers can bring us to a new understanding of a constellation of issues which contemporary radical thought must re-visit: utopia, repetition, perfectionism, subtraction, negativity, critique, absence, duty, revolution and political love. The result is a timely and provocative intervention, which re-draws the boundaries for future debates on the ethics and politics of modernism.

Author: Ben Ware
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 05/03/2019
Pages: 186
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.42d
ISBN: 9781349717101

About the Author
Ben Ware is author of Dialectic of the Ladder: Wittgenstein, the 'Tractatus' and Modernism (2015). He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London and at Kingston University, UK.