Augustinian Imperative A Reflection on the Politics of Morality

An entirely new interpretation of one of the most seminal and widely read figures in the history of political thought, The Augustinian Imperative is also an archeological investigation into the intellectual foundation of liberal societies. William E. Connolly skillfully positions Augustine at the very center of debates about modernity and, by doing so, confirms the status attributed to Augustine by political and social theorists as a central intellectual figure for our time. In addition to exploring the Augustinian Imperative--"an intrinsic moral order susceptible to authoritative representation"--the author explicates Augustine's work with a lucidity and rhetorical power that makes it readily accessible to undergraduates, graduate students, and professional academics in a range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. "This slim volume of less than 200 pages by one of the most stimulating and perceptive political theorists working within the geography and archaeology of modern Western modernity, demonstrates in an intellectually exciting fashion the working of the power of negativity.... Connolly presents us with a brilliant paradox, the paradox of an anti-modern or at best dubiously modern Augustinian model subverting modernity itself by claiming to sustain it.... This book is very rich in both theoretical and moral insights, and must be welcomed as one of the most significant contributions to the current debate over the fate of modernity, its past as well as future, now threatening the foundation of the modern Western civilisation." --The Indian Journal of Social Science "A new book by Bill Connolly is always an event. Connollly's is amongst the most interesting, articulate and suggestive voices in contemporary American political theory." --Political Studies "Connolly sets Nietzsche loose on Augustine, in the service of a political ethic adequate to the post-modern state and society. He explores Augustine not by repudiating him but by opening up his texts to multiple interpretations, and by locating him as representative of the practices and self-understandings lodged in the hegemonic western moral order. Connolly's articulation of an alternative political- ethical practice is attentive to debts it sustains to its opponents, as well as to the ambiguities necessarily resident in all contenders on this terrain. Connolly's inspired reading is particularly useful to feminist readers for its exploration of the many ways in which Augustine's moral world is gendered. The Augustinian Imperative is a brilliant exposition of the relations between discursive codes, the sites of authority lodged within them, and the forms of identity they produce/prohibit/reveal." --Kathy E. Ferguson, University of Hawaii at Manoa "The great interest of William E. Connolly's book is the masterly way in which he shows the emergence and consolidation of the moral sensibility that has had a lasting influence in our culture and which only begins to fade away in a post-Nietzschean era. This book is not simply the history of a doctrine and its lasting effects; it also illuminates the pre-suppositions that made that doctrine acceptable and that governed the various substitutions. It truly belongs to what can be legitimately called 'the history of being.'" –Ernesto Laclau, University of Essex "This is not an easy book to summarise or reduce to a capsule form. It is very rich in both theoretical and moral insights, and must be welcomed as one of the most significant contribution to the current debate over the fate of modernity, its past as well as future, now threatening the foundation of the modern Western civilisation. It is relevant obliquely to our own borrowed debate on modernity in a situation in which modernity is, at best, to use a Derridian expression, a present absence." --K. Raghavendra Rao in The Indian Journal of Social Science This product is now available from: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Phone: 800-462-6420 FaxConnolly, William E. is the author of 'Augustinian Imperative A Reflection on the Politics of Morality' with ISBN 9780803936362 and ISBN 0803936362.