The Fool and the Scoundrels : Notes on a Transmodern Republicanism

The Fool and the Scoundrels offers a sharp and original intervention in contemporary debates on decolonial thought, neoliberalism, and the future of political philosophy. Through the conceptual figures of the "fool" and the "scoundrel," it diagnoses two complementary forms of political failure: the naive belief in an external position beyond modernity and the cynical acceptance of its most destructive logics. Against both these failures, author Santiago Castro-Gómez advances the idea of transmodern republicanism, a philosophical and political alternative grounded in a shared condition of human vulnerability. Rather than abandoning universality or reaffirming Eurocentric narratives, this book proposes a reconfiguration of the common as a historically entangled and transcultural field shaped by colonial encounters, conflict, and interdependence. Castro-Gómez combines genealogy, political theory, and critical dialogue with contemporary feminist philosophy to challenge dominant accounts of modernity and republicanism, recovering neglected archives and proposes a new way of conceptualizing politics as the collective responsibility of sustaining life under conditions of fragility and exposure. Reframing modernity and republicanism, The Fool and the Scoundrels grounds politics in shared vulnerability, offering a transmodern vision of the common with major implications for decolonial, neoliberal, and global justice debates.