Sustaining Affirmation

by White, Stephen K.

• ISBN13: 9780691050324
• ISBN10: 0691050325
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

In light of many recent critiques of Western modernity and its conceptual foundations, the problem of adequately justifying our most basic moral and political values looms large. Without recourse to traditional ontological or metaphysical foundations, how can one affirm--or sustain--a commitment to fundamentals? The answer, according to Stephen White, lies in a turn to "weak" ontology, an approach that allows for ultimate commitments but at the same time acknowledges their historical, contestable character. This turn, White suggests, is already underway. His book traces its emergence in a variety of quarters in political thought today and offers a clear and compelling account of what this might mean for our late modern self-understanding.As he elaborates the idea of weak ontology and the broad criteria behind it, White shows how these are already at work in the thought of contemporary writers of seemingly very different perspectives: George Kateb, Judith Butler, Charles Taylor, and William Connolly. Among these thinkers, often thought to be at odds, he exposes the commonalities that emerge around the idea of weak ontology. In its identification of a critical turn in political theory, and its nuanced explanation of that turn, his book both demonstrates and underscores the strengths of weak ontology.

Author Biography

Stephen K. White teaches political theory at Virginia Tech

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: The Weak Ontological Turn	3	(15)
Fundamental and Contestable	6	(2)
A Stickier Subject	8	(2)
Cultivation	10	(1)
Circuits of Reflection, Affect, and Argumentation	11	(7)
Ontological Undercurrents within Liberalism: George Kateb's ``Democratic Individuality''	18	(24)
The Ontology of Democratic Individuality	20	(10)
From an Emersonian Ontology to Ethics and Politics	30	(12)
The ``Richer Ontology'' of Charles Taylor	42	(33)
Engaged Agency	44	(13)
Theism and the Aesthetic-Expressive Dimension	57	(12)
Prefiguring the Political	69	(6)
Judith Butler's Being-in-Trouble	75	(31)
Feminism and Foundations	77	(4)
``An Ontology of Present Participles''	81	(6)
``Indispensable'' Foundations	87	(11)
The Insistent Ambivalence of Loss	98	(8)
The Ontology and Politics of a ``Post-Nietzschean Sensibility''	106	(45)
William Connolly
Figuring and Cultivating Being as Rich and Fugitive	107	(10)
The Ethos of ``Agonistic Democracy''	117	(34)
Conclusion	151	(4)
Index	155