Abstract

Not a day goes by that we don't hear of a crisis, declared or looming: the ecological crisis, the public health crisis, the housing crisis, the race crisis, the constitutional crisis, the economic crisis. In an age where everything seems to be a crisis, or in a permanent state of crisis, it can be difficult to distinguish between what is urgent and what isn't, what to act on now and what to act on later. In A Philosophy of Crisis, Miguel de Beistegui offers a typology of crisis that will help us make sense of these issues. While some social scientists and philosophers have become skeptical of the notion of crisis, de Beistegui holds that crisis can be a useful concept so long as we make it a polysemic one that can evolve and operate alongside other concepts. He outlines four regimes of crisis: crises of deviation, exception, contradiction, and extinction. Each involves a certain relation to the norm and requires a certain response. Drawing on the tools of philosophy and disciplines including political economy, law, sociology, and the sciences, A Philosophy of Crisis equips us to understand our current state of crisis and deal with it.