Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community

Roberto Esposito

Published by Stanford University Press 2009

Communitas

The Origin and Destiny of Community

Roberto Esposito

In the series Cultural Memory in the Present

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503620520

Overview
Contents

About this book

No theme has been more central to international philosophical debates than that of community: from American communitarianism to Habermas's ethic of communication to the French deconstruction of community in the work of Derrida and Nancy. Nevertheless, in none of these cases has the concept been examined from the perspective of community's original etymological meaning: cum munus. In Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community, Roberto Esposito does just that through an original counter-history of political philosophy that takes up not only readings of community by Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Heidegger and Bataille, but also by Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Canetti, Arendt, and Sartre. The result of his extraordinary conceptual and lexical analysis is a radical overturning of contemporary interpretations of community. Community isn't a property, nor is it a territory to be separated and defended against those who do not belong to it. Rather, it is a void, a debt, a gift to the other that also reminds us of our constitutive alterity with respect to ourselves.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Nothing in Common Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Fear Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
2 Guilt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
3 Law Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
4 Ecstasy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	86
5 Experience Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	112
Appendix: Nihilism and Community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 192
Keywords: Philosophy -- Ethics and Moral Philosophy; Philosophy -- Political Philosophy

eBook

Published: October 29, 2009
ISBN: 9781503620520