Trouble with Strangers

TROUBLE WITH STRANGERS Written in Eagleton s very readable, clear and witty style, this book may achieve the unthinkable: bridging the gap between academic High Thought and popular philosophy manuals. Slavoj i ek This is a fine book. It is hugely ambitious in its scope, develops an original thesis to illuminating effect and is written with a compelling passion and commitment. Peter R. Sedgwick, Cardiff University Written with Eagleton s usual wit, panache and uncanny ability to summarise and criticize otherwise complex philosophical positions ... this is an important book by a hugely important voice. Simon Critchley, The New School for Social Research In this ambitious new book, Terry Eagleton, one of the world s greatest cultural theorists, turns his attention to the now much-discussed question of ethics. In a work full of rare insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, Eagleton investigates ethical theories from Aristotle to Alain Badiou and Slavoj i ek, weighing the merits and deficiencies of each theory, and measuring them all against the richer ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In a remarkably original move, he assigns each of the theories he examines to one or other of Jacques Lacan s three psychoanalytical categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, and shows how this can illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of an ethics of personal sympathy, an impersonal morality of obligation, and a morality based on death and transformation.

TROUBLE WITH STRANGERS'Written in Eagleton's very readable, clear and witty style, this book may achieve the unthinkable: bridging the gap between academic High Thought and popular philosophy manuals.'Slavoj Zizek'This is a fine book. It is hugely ambitious in its scope, develops an original thesis to illuminating effect and is written with a compelling passion and commitment.'Peter R. Sedgwick, Cardiff University'Written with Eagleton's usual wit, panache and uncanny ability to summarise and criticize otherwise complex philosophical positions ... this is an important book by a hugely important voice.'Simon Critchley, The New School for Social ResearchIn this ambitious new book, Terry Eagleton, one of the world's greatest cultural theorists, turns his attention to the now much-discussed question of ethics. In a work full of rare insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, Eagleton investigates ethical theories from Aristotle to Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, weighing the merits and deficiencies of each theory, and measuring them all against the 'richer' ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In a remarkably original move, he assigns each of the theories he examines to one or other of Jacques Lacan's three psychoanalytical categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, and shows how this can illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of an ethics of personal sympathy, an impersonal morality of obligation, and a morality based on death and transformation.

Preface viPART I THE INSISTENCE OF THE IMAGINARY 1Introduction: The Mirror Stage 11 Sentiment and Sensibility 122 Francis Hutcheson and David Hume 293 Edmund Burke and Adam Smith 62PART II THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SYMBOLIC 83Introduction: The Symbolic Order 834 Spinoza and the Death of Desire 915 Kant and the Moral Law 1016 Law and Desire in Measure for Measure 130PART III THE REIGN OF THE REAL 139Introduction: Pure Desire 1397 Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche 1548 Fictions of the Real 1809 Levinas, Derrida and Badiou 22310 The Banality of Goodness 273Conclusion 317Index 327