First published in France In 1947, Merleau-Ponty's essay was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's novel, Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two armed camps. For Merleau-Ponty, the basic question was: given the violence in Communism, is Communism still equal to its humanist intentions? Starting with the assumption that a society is not a "temple of value-idols that figure on the front of its monuments or in its constitutional scrolls; the value of a society is the value It places upon man's relation to man," Merleau-ponty examines not only the Moscow trials of the late thirties but also Koestler's re-creation of them. And Merleau-Ponty makes it clear that the Moscow trials—and violence in general in the Communist world—can be understood only In the context of revolutionary violence. He demonstrates that it is pointless to begin an examination of Communist violence by asking whether Communism respects the rules of liberal thought; it is evident that Communism does not. The question that should be asked is whether the violence Communism exercises is revolutionary violence, capable of building humane relations among men. At a time when many are addressing similar questions to societies both in the East and in the West, Merleau-Ponty's investigations and speculations are of prime importance; they stand as a major and provocative contribution to the argument surrounding the use of violence.

Raymond Aron called Merleau-Ponty "the most influential French philosopher of his generation." First published in France in 1947, Humanism and Terror was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two ideological armed camps. For Merleau-Ponty, the central question was: could Communism transcend its violence and intentions? The value of a society is the value it places upon man's relation to man, Merleau-Ponty examines not only the Moscow trials of the late thirties but also Koestler's re-creation of them. He argues that violence in general in the Communist world can be understood only in the context of revolutionary activism. He demonstrates that it is pointless to ask whether Communism respects the rules of liberal society; it is evident that Communism does not. In post-Communist Europe, when many are addressing similar questions throughout the world, Merleau-Ponty's discourse is of prime importance; it stands as a major and provocative contribution to limits on the use of violence. The argument is placed in its current context in a brilliant new introduction by John O'Neill. His remarks extend the line of argument originally developed by the great French political philosopher. This is a major contribution to political theory and philosophy. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, until his death in 1961, held the Chair of Philosophy at the Collge de France. He was recognized as both an authentic and profoundly original disciple of Husserlian phenomenology, and a major figure in the development of existential thought. John O'Neill, who has prepared this accurate and well-written translation, is professor of sociology at York University, Ontario, Canada. Educated at the London School of Economics, Notre Dame, and Stanford, he is translator of Jean Hyppolite's Studies on Marx and Hegel and author of Perception, Expression and History.

First published in France in 1947, Humanism and Terror is a vital work of political philosophy by one of the leading French philosophers of the twentieth century. Attempting to understand what he called the "dislocated world" that followed immediately after the Second World War—including his own, divided France—Merleau-Ponty asks a fundamental question: how did Marxism and humanism come apart? Through a fascinating reading of Arthur Koestler's famous novel, Darkness at Noon, an allegory of the Stalinist show trials and purges of the 1930s, Merleau-Ponty weighs up the costs of a regime of permanent revolution and false confessions. His profound and controversial point, however, is that the purges were the inevitable outcome of abandoning crucial subjective elements of Marx’s theory of history, with the result that "humanism is suspended and government is terror." As we again confront the reality of authoritarianism, political polarisation and curtailing of human freedom, the dislocated world brilliantly depicted by Merleau-Ponty in Humanism and Terror sends a powerful and articulate message that continues to resonate today. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by William McBride.

In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.

Influenced by Kojève's interpretation of Hegel as well as his direct political experience of the second world war, Maurice Merleau-Ponty abandoned the religious and philosophical position he had assumed in the 1930s and turned to Marxism. This is the first critical study of the French philosopher's political ideas and the context in which they evolved. In its origin and its development, Merleau-Ponty's political thought expressed a subtle dialectic between ongoing political events and the apparent truths of Marx's analysis. With the onset of the cold war, the discovery of the Soviet concentration camps, the repression of Eastern Europe, the Algerian crisis, and the founding of the Fifth Republic, Merleau-Ponty began to take a critical look at Marx's ideas of the genesis of humanism in the light of these disturbing political realities. His reconsideration of the basis of Marxism and his conclusion that it had lost contact with history led to a fundamental reorientation of his attitudes. No longer sympathetic to the use of violence to end violence, he criticized Sartre's external justification of communist violence as 'magical' and advocated instead a new liberalism combining parliamentary democracy with an awareness of the social problems of industrial capitalism. Barry Cooper's study of this important contemporary thinker gives context for an understanding of Merleau- Ponty's politics and, in so doing, brings together the complex issues and ideas that have shaped modern European political and philosophical thought.

In 1468, on the final night of Carnival in Rome, Pope Paul II sat enthroned above the boisterous crowd, when a scuffle caught his eye. His guards had intercepted a mysterious stranger trying urgently to convey a warning—conspirators were lying in wait to slay the pontiff. Twenty humanist intellectuals were quickly arrested, tortured on the rack, and imprisoned in separate cells in the damp dungeon of Castel Sant’Angelo. Anthony D’Elia offers a compelling, surprising story that reveals a Renaissance world that witnessed the rebirth of interest in the classics, a thriving homoerotic culture, the clash of Christian and pagan values, the contest between republicanism and a papal monarchy, and tensions separating Christian Europeans and Muslim Turks. Using newly discovered sources, he shows why the pope targeted the humanists, who were seen as dangerously pagan in their Epicurean morals and their Platonic beliefs about the soul and insurrectionist in their support of a more democratic Church. Their fascination with Sultan Mehmed II connected them to the Ottoman Turks, enemies of Christendom, and the love of the classical world tied them to recent rebellious attempts to replace papal rule with a republic harking back to the glorious days of Roman antiquity. From the cosmetic-wearing, parrot-loving pontiff to the Turkish sultan, savage in war but obsessed with Italian culture, D’Elia brings to life a Renaissance world full of pageantry, mayhem, and conspiracy and offers a fresh interpretation of humanism as a dynamic communal movement.

First published in France In 1947, Merleau-Ponty's essay was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's novel, Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two armed camps. For Merleau-Ponty, the basic question was: given the violence in Communism, is Communism still equal to its humanist intentions? Starting with the assumption that a society is not a "temple of value-idols that figure on the front of its monuments or in its constitutional scrolls; the value of a society is the value It places upon man's relation to man," Merleau-ponty examines not only the Moscow trials of the late thirties but also Koestler's re-creation of them. And Merleau-Ponty makes it clear that the Moscow trials—and violence in general in the Communist world—can be understood only In the context of revolutionary violence. He demonstrates that it is pointless to begin an examination of Communist violence by asking whether Communism respects the rules of liberal thought; it is evident that Communism does not. The question that should be asked is whether the violence Communism exercises is revolutionary violence, capable of building humane relations among men. At a time when many are addressing similar questions to societies both in the East and in the West, Merleau-Ponty's investigations and speculations are of prime importance; they stand as a major and provocative contribution to the argument surrounding the use of violence.

This book examines the manifestations of terror in the arts. From classical tragedy to post-9/11 responses, terror – as an emotion, violent act, and state of the world – has been a preoccupation of artists in all genres. Using philosophy, art history, film studies, interdisciplinary arts, theatre studies, and musicology, the authors included here delve into this perennially contemporary theme to produce insights articulated in a variety of idioms: from traditional philosophical humanism to phenomenology to feminism. Their approaches may vary, but together they reinforce the notion that terror is a thread in the fabric of artistic expression as much as it has always been and, alas, remains a thread in the fabric of life.

Security is meant to make the world safer. Yet despite living in the most secure of times, we see endangerment everywhere. Whether it is the threat of another devastating terrorist attacks, a natural disaster or unexpected catastrophe, anxieties and fears define the global political age. While liberal governments and security agencies have responded by advocating a new catastrophic topography of interconnected planetary endangerment, our desire to securitize everything has rendered all things potentially terrifying. This is the fateful paradox of contemporary liberal rule. The more we seek to secure, the more our imaginaries of threat proliferate. Nothing can therefore be left to chance. For everything has the potential to be truly catastrophic. Such is the emerging state of terror normality we find ourselves in today. This illuminating book by Brad Evans provides a critical evaluation of the wide ranging terrors which are deemed threatening to advanced liberal societies. Moving beyond the assumption that liberalism is integral to the realisation of perpetual peace, human progress, and political emancipation on a planetary scale, it exposes how liberal security regimes are shaped by a complex life-centric rationality which directly undermines any claims to universal justice and co-habitation. Through an incisive and philosophically enriched critique of the contemporary liberal practices of making life more secure, Evans forces us to confront the question of what it means to live politically as we navigate through the dangerous uncertainty of the 21st Century.