Politics and the Search for the Common Good

Providing an original analysis and assessment of the political thought of Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault, this book rethinks politics in a new vocabulary. It is of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of political philosophy, political theory, history of ideas, and political science.

Rethinking politics in a new vocabulary, Hans Sluga challenges the firmly held assumption that there exists a single common good which politics is meant to realize. He argues that politics is not a natural but a historical phenomenon, and not a single thing but a multiplicity of political forms and values only loosely related. He contrasts two traditions in political philosophy: a ''normative theorizing'' that extends from Plato to John Rawls and a newer ''diagnostic practice'' that emerged with Marx and Nietzsche and has found its three most prominent twentieth-century practitioners in Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault. He then examines the sources of diagnostic political thinking, analyzes its achievements, and offers a critical assessment of its limitations. His important book will be of interest to a wide range of upper-level students and scholars in political philosophy, political theory, and the history of ideas.