Love and Politics

Persistent Human Desires as a Foundation for Liberation

Jeffery L. Nicholas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367897666
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000391923
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In, Love and Politics Jeffery L. Nicholas argues that Eros is the final rejection of an alienated life, in which humans are prevented from developing their human powers; Eros, in contrast, is an overflowing of acting into new realities and new beauties, a world in which human beings extend their powers and senses.

Nicholas uniquely interprets Alasdair MacIntyre's Revolutionary Aristotelianism as a response to alienation defined as the divorce of fact from value. However, this account cannot address alienation in the form of the oppression of women or people of color. Importantly, it fails to acknowledge the domination of nature that blackens the heart of alienated life. Alienation must be seen as a separation of the human from nature. Nicholas turns to Aristotle, first, to uncover the way his philosophy embodies a divorce of human from nature, then to reconstruct the essential elements of Aristotle's metaphysics to defend a philosophical anthropology based on Eros.

Love and Politics: Persistent Human Desires as a Foundation for Liberation presents a critical theory that synthesizes MacIntyre's Revolutionary Aristotelianism, Frankfurt School Critical Theory, and Social Reproduction Theory. It will be of great interest to political theorists and philosophers.

Index

A Critique of German Ideology 112–114

acting (practice) 221

acting (metaphysical) 171–175, 196, 199–202, 207–209, 212, 215, 231, 235, 237; see also energeia

activity 14, 19–21, 28, 30, 38, 66, 68, 80, 87, 95–96, 113–116, 143, 152, 157, 159–161, 163, 166–167, 186, 222–223, 229, 232, 234, 246, 250; and energeia 168–174, and eros 200–201, 215; love as 206–207; see also energeia; sensuous activity 43

actuality and potency 168, 171

Adorno, Theodor 47–48, 88; see also critical theory

Adrià of Spain, Ferran 67

adverse possession 29

After Virtue 40, 58, 73

agape 15, 199, 209, 212–215

agency 19, 108, 181, 191, 194, 230

Alcibiades 155, 156

alienation 20, 25, 88–89, 109, 203, 219, 242; in Aristotle 161–163, 174; and birth 132–133; as fact-value divorce 47–48, 141–142; and MacIntyre 42–44, 47–48, 58–59; and Marx 41–43, 46–47; and narrative unity of life 79–80; from nature 7, 12, 28, 31, 48, 105, 119, 131, 137, 152, 164–165, 178, 193–196, 205, 208–209, 237, 251; in Plato 155–157; and practices 73–76; as saleability 21, 24, 141–142; and tradition 82–83

altruism 101, 209–211

American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) 131, 134, 143

American Indian 122–123, 18...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Notes on the Text
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• SECTION I: Alienation and Revolutionary Aristotelianism
• SECTION II: Lacunae
• SECTION III: Eros and Human Nature
• SECTION IV: Epilogue
• Index