NEW BOOK:
LIBERALISM: A COUNTER-HISTORY
BY: DOMENICO LOSURDO
PUBLISHED: 9 MAY 2011
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EVENT:
May 05, 2011, 7.30pm
At King¹s College London, Edmund J. Safra Lecture Theatre, Strand
Campus,
London WC2R 2LS
ŒLiberalism: Slavery, imperialism and exploitation¹
A panel discussion and book launch for LIBERALISM: A COUNTER-HISTORY with
Domenico Losurdo, Robin Blackburn, and chair Stathis Kouvelakis.
Hosted by the KCL European Studies Department in association with Verso
Books
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ŒDevastatingly exact in his dismantling of a Whiggish optimism, Losurdo
thankfully avoids the historical dead-endism of postmodern critiques.¹
Greg Grandin, author of FORDLANDIA
ŒAnyone who thinks they know the history of liberalism will be surprised
and riveted by this book. Every page is an experience.¹ Corey Robin,
author of FEAR: THE HISTORY OF A POLITICAL IDEA
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In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and
philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a
philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most
illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery.
Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to
the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent
liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham and
Sieyes, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position
that has exercised a formative influence on today¹s politics. Among the
dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more
radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order.
In distinct contrast to the work of historians who seek to recast both
liberal ideology and the British Empire in a benign light and defenders of
liberal philosophy, LIBERALISM: A COUNTER HISTORY is an authoritative and
provocative intervention into the current literature which will demand
serious consideration and debate. The book is also a major philosophical
contribution probing the inner contradictions of liberalism, including
minority currents that moved to more radical positions.
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DOMENICO LOSURDO is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Urbino,
Italy. He is the author of many books in Italian, German, French, Spanish,
Portuguese and Mandarin. In English he has published HEGEL AND THE FREEDOM
OF MODERNS and HEIDEGGER AND THE IDEOLOGY OF WAR.
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ISBN: 978 1 84467 639 4 / $34.95 / £22.00 / Hardcover / 384 pages
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For more information or to buy the book visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/960-liberalism
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