Author Description

The idea of community has been a consistent feature of recent academic and public discourse. Just what this term might mean, however, is the subject ongoing dispute amongst social and political thinkers. This book offers a wide-ranging exploration of the prolematique of community as it has featured in both ancient and modern thought. Through discussion of the philosophies of Aristotle, Aquinas, Rousseau, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas and others, the contours of modernity's attempts to imagine community are excavated. Drawing upon the recent revival of interest in Hegel's 'theory of recognition', it offers an original theorisation of community, one that seeks to reconcile the seemingly conflicting demands of freedom and belonging. Such a theory, it is argued, is capable of simultaneously attending to the demands of solidarity, difference and critique, and as such is attuned to the complex, pluralistic and reflexive character of late modern societies.