Humans may be the only creatures conscious of having a future, but all too often we would rather not think about it. Likewise, our societies, unable to deal with radical uncertainty, do not make policies with a view to the long term. Instead, we suffer from a sense of powerlessness, collective irrationality, and perennial political discontent. In The Future and Its Enemies, Spanish philosopher Daniel Innerarity makes a plea for a new social contract that would commit us to moral and political responsibility with respect to future generations. He urges us to become advocates for the future in the face of enemies who, oblivious to the costs of modernization, press for endless and unproductive acceleration. His accessible book proposes a new way of confronting the unknown—one grounded in the calculation of risk. Declaring the classical right-left divide to be redundant, Innerarity presents his hopes for a renewed democracy and a politics that would find convincing ways to mediate between the priorities of the present, the heritage of the past, and the challenges that lie ahead.
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An impassioned plea for democratic societies to take the future seriously at a time when all our energies seem focused on the present.
"[Innerarity] ably surveys a rich literature on the role of time in governance and planning in an erudite, pleasant-to-read style of grand social theorizing not unlike that of recent books by Zygmunt Bauman."—Peter Vanhuysse, Political Studies Review
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780804775571
Publisert
2012-07-25
Utgiver
Vendor
Stanford University Press
Vekt
227 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter
Oversetter

Biographical note

Daniel Innerarity holds the "Ikerbasque" Chair in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, where he directs the Institute for Democratic Governance. His recent books include the prizewinningTransformation of Politics (2010) and La Sociedad invisible (2004). In 2005,Le Nouvel Observateur profiled him in its special issue dedicated to "25 Intellectual Leaders of the Contemporary World."