Not available to order
Publication date:
13 May 2008Length of book:
668 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781461632993
Between Eternities reflects on the possibility of political philosophy as an ongoing, architectonic activity that is necessarily linked to both the past and future. Almost all contemporary work in political philosophy either studies the subject with an eye to past tradition—choosing a winner from that tradition and then deducing what follows from the posited premises in a thoroughly modern, constructivist fashion—or else limits itself to drawing out what follows from already accepted premises and principles. There is almost no effort to reflect upon the prerequisites for the tradition being an ongoing undertaking that can have a unique future. Between Eternities attempts to set loose that thinking toward the future.
Gregory Smith's long engagement with postmodern thought has borne fruit in this monumental study of our philosophical and political present. In Between Eternities, Smith covers a myriad of topics, from Socratic dialectics to theoretical physics and international relations. His thesis, convincingly argued, is that political philosophy remains the architectonic science—for us no less than for Aristotle—because it alone can fashion a whole of ethics, politics, psychology, ontology, and epistemology. Smith's style is graceful and his point of view sharp-edged and confident.