Between Politics and Antipolitics

This book traces a dialectic relationship between “politics” and “antipolitics,” the first, as used here, being akin to philosophy as an activity of open inquiry, plural democracy, and truth-finding, and the latter in the realm of ideology, technocracy, and presupposed certainties. It returns back to the emergence of a New Left movement in the 1960s in order to follow the history of this relationship since then. It addresses contemporary debates by looking to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Bloc, and asking in the wake of that: what is a revolution? Finally, it draws on these analyses to examine the age of terrorism after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and resounds with a call to pursue democracy and real politics in the face of new forms of antipolitics.

Dick Howard is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stony Brook University, USA, and the author of 14 books in English and French. He has commented regularly on politics in journals and newspapers French, English, and German for the past 50 years, from the civil rights movement in the US through May ’68 in France, to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and beyond. From 2011-2012, he also provided 15 months of weekly commentary on US elections for Radio Canada.

“Dick Howard has long been an important contributor to debates on the left about the meaning of democracy. This book brings together many of his most important essays published in the wake of 9/11. The essays range widely, and they combine intellectual history and political theory with probing commentary on current events. I highly recommend this book.”

—Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

“Mixing personal memoir with history, Dick Howard gives us a look at the development of the New Left, its dissolution, and some proposals for its regeneration. From out of the diverse theories that fought and dispersed, he attempts to derive an updated version of the historical dialectic that originally animated the New Left.”

—Terry Pinkard, University Professor, Georgetown University, USA and the author of Hegel:  A Biography, and German Philosophy 1760-1860 (2001)

“Dick Howard has been a consistent and powerful voice on the left for a radically democratic, anti-totalitarian political philosophy.  In this book he traces the foundations of that perspective and addresses the hopes for an activist, responsive, and responsible democracy raised by the democratic revolutions that ended totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and the demise of the repressive antinomies of Cold War mentalities both on the right and the left.”

— Michael H. Bernhard, Raymond and Miriam Ehrlich Eminent Scholar Chair in Political Science, University of Florida, USA

"Historical depth, philosophical clarity, political acumen and rhetorical sobriety make reading Dick Howard both pleasurable and profitable."

—Norman Birnbaum, University Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University Law Center, USA