The Passage West
Philosophy After the Age of the Nation State
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In this ambitious work, Giacomo Marramao proposes a radical reconceptualization of the world system in our era of declining state sovereignty. He argues that globalization cannot be reduced to mere economics or summarized by phrases such as ‘the end of history’ or the ‘westernization of the world’. Instead, we find ourselves embarking on a passage to a new, post-nation state age destined to transform all civilizations – and to disrupt Western geopolitical dominance. To confront the challenges of this interregnum one must think in terms of a new and radical universalism, a universalism of difference able to revitalize politics and to demythologize identity.
Building on the great interwar discussion between Spengler, Junger, Schmitt and Heidegger, Marramao’s new work engages with Habermas, Derrida and post-colonialism. Arguing against the classic Western pretension to universal norms of democracy and reason, he develops instead the idea of a ‘universal politics of difference’.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Acclaimed Italian philosopher and professor Marramao offers a penetrating and incisive study of the economic, political, and ideological frameworks of our current global political landscape in this English translation and revised edition of his latest book. His examination hinges on a discussion of globalization, state sovereignty, and westernization, and also touches on the contributions of diverse theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Max Weber, Karl Polanyi, and J rgen Habermas. Marramao complicates binary tensions between the East and West, the global and the national, and the universal and the different in order to reframe these concepts within an intricate plurality of mutually contingent theoretical concepts. The central thesis of his argument contests that globalization is characterized by a simultaneously homogenizing and differentiating ideological, cultural, political, and economic passage to the West, which transforms both the West and its cultural Other. The unique structure of the book and the scholarly density of Marramao's ideas can at times seem impenetrable, but for an academic readership, this intelligent investigation is a worthy inheritance to the ideological terrain it discusses and is a significant contribution to the field of contemporary political philosophy.
