A hedonist manifesto : the power to exist / Michel Onfray ; translated with an introduction by Joseph McClellan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Onfray, Michel, 1959- author.

Contributor:

McClellan, Joseph, translator, writer of introduction.

Series:

Insurrections.

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hedonism.

Ontology.

Philosophy, Modern--21st century.

Philosophy, Modern.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (233 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Michael Onfray passionately defends the potential of hedonism to resolve the dislocations and disconnections of our melancholy age. In a sweeping survey of history's engagement with and rejection of the body, he exposes the sterile conventions that prevent us from realizing a more immediate, ethical, and embodied life. He then lays the groundwork for both a radical and constructive politics of the body that adds to debates over morality, equality, sexual relations, and social engagement, demonstrating how philosophy, and not just modern scientism, can contribute to a humanistic ethics. Onfray attacks Platonic idealism and its manifestation in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic belief. He warns of the lure of attachment to the purportedly eternal, immutable truths of idealism, which detracts from the immediacy of the world and our bodily existence. Insisting that philosophy is a practice that operates in a real, material space, Onfray enlists Epicurus and Democritus to undermine idealist and theological metaphysics; Nietzsche, Bentham, and Mill to dismantle idealist ethics; and Palante and Bourdieu to collapse crypto-fascist neoliberalism. In their place, he constructs a positive, hedonistic ethics that enlarges on the work of the New Atheists to promote a joyful approach to our lives in this, our only, world.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

Translator's Introduction

Preface

PART I. An Alternative Method

1. A Philosophical Side Path

2. Bodily Reason

3. A Philosophical Life

PART II. An Elective Ethics

4. An Atheological Morality

5. A Rule of Immanent Play

6. A Hedonist Intersubjectivity

PART III. Solar Erotics

7. The Ascetic Ideal

8. A Libertarian Libido

9. Carnal Hospitality

PART IV. A Cynical Aesthetic

10. An Archipelagic Logic

11. A Psychopathology of Art

12. A Playful Art

PART V. A Promethean Bioethics

13. De-Christianized Flesh

14. An Art of Artifice

15. The Faustian Body

PART VI. Libertarian Politics

16. Mapping Poverty

17. Hedonist Politics

18. A Practice of Resistance

Notes

Index

Backmatter

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780231538367

0231538367

OCLC:

926721812