About the book
In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today’s emancipatory struggles.
Investigating ethical ideas in Wittgenstein, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Kant, Cavell, Marx, Henry James and Lacan, Ware demonstrates how these thinkers can bring us to a new understanding of a constellation of issues which contemporary radical thought must re-visit: utopia, repetition, perfectionism, subtraction, negativity, critique, absence, duty, revolution and political love.
The result is a timely and provocative intervention, which re-draws the boundaries for future debates on the ethics and politics of modernism.
Praise
The aim of this book is of extreme importance: nothing short of a new ethics, based on the modernist slogan, ‘See it new!’ Ben Ware applies his vast philosophical and literary culture to the task, and the resulting analyses are superb…It will be difficult to talk about contemporary ethics without taking [Ware’s] work into account.