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The Individual without Passions: Modern Individualism and the Loss of the Social Bond
Author(s): Elena Pulcini (Author)
- Publisher: Lexington Books (UK)
- Publication Date: 9 Aug. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 0739166573
- ISBN-13: 9780739166574
Book Description
Elena Pulcini argues that passions are crucial not only when they are strong (homo oeconomicus), but also when absent or weak (homo democraticus), in both cases producing pathological effects on the Self and the social bond. Finally, this book underlines that the image of the modern individual does not end with the egoistical passions and that it is possible to reactivate empathetic and solidaristic passions; furthermore, it proposes the hypothesis that the solidaristic passions go to fight the egoistical passions. This hypothesis seems confirmed and is most evident in the phenomenon of the gift (as interpreted by Marcel Mauss and his contemporary heirs), the “hidden” testimony of a desire for belonging which enables us to propose a new figure of the individual—homo reciprocus.
Editorial Reviews
Review
While complying scrupulously to the ordinary demands of criticism and exegesis of philosophical texts, Elena Pulcini has always taken care, in her studies relevant to the history of ideas, to focus on the particular historicity of the discursive sets examined–that is to say, on the fact of their intelligibility is conditioned on a certain type of correlation between the concepts developed by the philosophers and the way the world works–that they express in their manner while influencing the course.
The project brought by Elena Pulcini strikes immediately with its ambition. The work of Elena Pulcini has finally donned a remarkable breadth and an undeniable originality that resembles, that of Martha Nussbaum, or that of Axel Honneth and Daniel Innerarity, with whom she also engages in explicit conversation
