Critique of Liberal Reason : A Philosophy of Contemporary History

Our historical period is characterized by a vision of liberal heritage and a capitalist economic path. Secondly, the text aims to identify the basic logic that feeds liberal reason, a logic that nourishes capitalist processes but goes far beyond them.

Our historical period is characterized by a vision of liberal heritage and a capitalist economic path. But it is far from obvious what “liberal” really means here, and what connection it has with capitalism. The current volume thus first attempts to provide a clarification of the long-term genesis of “liberal reason” in the West, following its development in the seventeenth century down to the present day. Secondly, the text aims to identify the basic logic that feeds liberal reason, a logic that nourishes capitalist processes but goes far beyond them. This analysis provides a picture in which liberal reason no longer needs to be “represented” because it has tacitly occupied the entire conceptual space of the political. It now plays all the parts in the political comedy, both majorities and oppositions, right and left, concealing the systematic operation of distortion that has taken place. The ramifications of liberal reason have also taken root among intellectuals and movements that consider themselves to be “neutral”, or even “anti-capitalist”. Liberalism’s occupation, as pervasive as it is unnoticed, lies at the basis of the perceived impossibility of conceiving alternatives, and therefore of the continual deadlock in which contemporary consciousness struggles.