Requiem For Modern Politics: The Tragedy Of The Enlightenment And The Challenge Of The New Millennium [Paperback]

William Ophuls (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813335167 | ISBN-13: 978-0813335162 | Publication Date: February 13, 1998

This long-promised sequel to Ophuls’ influential and controversial classic Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity is an equally provocative critique of the liberal philosophy of government. Ophuls contends that the modern political paradigm—that is, the body of political concepts and beliefs bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment—is no longer intellectually tenable or practically viable. Our attempt to live individualistically, hedonistically, and rationally has failed utterly, causing a comprehensive crisis that is at once political, military, economic, ecological, ethical, psychological, and spiritual. Liberal politics has abandoned virtue, rejected community, and flouted nature, thereby becoming the author of its own demise.By exposing the intrinsically contradictory and self-destructive character of Hobbesian political systems, Ophuls subverts our conventional wisdom at every turn. Indeed, his impassioned text reads more like a Greek tragedy than like a conventional political argument. He critiques feminism, multiculturalism, the welfare state, and a host of other “liberal” shibboleths—but Ophuls is not another reactionary neoconservative. The aim of his thesis is far more radical and progressive, offering a political vision that entirely transcends the categories of liberal thought. His is a Thoreauvian vision of a “politics of consciousness” rooted in ecology as the moral and intellectual basis for governance in the twenty-first century. Ophuls holds that a polity based on a renewed erotic connection with nature offers a genuine solution to this crisis of contemporary civilization and only within such a polity will it be possible to fulfill the worthy liberal goal of individual self-development.Ophuls’ work will interest and challenge a wide spectrum of readers, though it will not necessarily be well liked or easily accepted. No one will put down this book with his or her settled convictions about Western culture intact, nor will readers ever again take modern civilization and its survival for granted.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

William Ophuls is a former member of the U.S. Foreign Service and has taught political science at Northwestern University. He is the author of Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, which won the International Studies Association’s Sprout Prize and the American Political Science Association’s Kammerer Award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (February 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813335167
• ISBN-13: 978-0813335162
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,528,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book of the 20th Century - Makes sense of modern life., August 26, 1997

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Requiem for Modern Politics : The Tragedy of the Enlightenment and the Challenge of the New Millennium (Hardcover)

Finally, I understand much of the confusing stuff at the end of the 20th century. This is a foundational book - it should be required as a text for MBA students and venture capitalists, as well as for political and social leaders. It is a must read for anyone who wants to make sense of modern life and make a positive future in the 21st century. It is not just about the bankruptcy of politics or environmental peril. To me it explains the disintegrating Modern Age culture, science, business, and education as well. When you look at the basics of the Modern Age, as Ophuls does, it looks really GOOFY and we will not miss it when it is gone. It amazes me that we could have been hoodwinked for the 500 years since the Italian Renaissance humanism, the Protestant Reformation spiritual privatization and the lonely crowd of mass marketed individualism of materialistic-capitalism. Requiem for Modern Politics can be a real cause for hope - when combined with insights from books on internet community-making, on the new science of self-organizing systems, on the wide spread spiritual search for meaning and on intellectual capital (ideas as the decentralized human source of power in the 21st century). Ophuls book is the missing link that pulls it all together - the time, technology and spirituality are now ready for us all to make a Grand Jailbreak from the crumbling Modern Age prison. A new spiritualized, community-caring, environmentally sustainable and intellectual-capital capitalism is the realistic answer implied in between the lines of Requiem for Modern Politics. A companion book to plan your jailbreak is The Resurgence of the Real by Charlene Spretnak

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An overlooked gem, May 15, 2000

By 

Jay Kinney (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Requiem For Modern Politics: The Tragedy Of The Enlightenment And The Challenge Of The New Millennium (Paperback)

It is all too symptomatic of the present state of intellectual discussion (and publishing) that Ophuls' Requiem for Modern Politics appeared in 1998 and still remains largely unknown in 2000. I can think of few books in recent years that are more provocative in challenging the operative assumptions of our culture. Ophuls take the reader on a quite readable journey through the present crisis of liberalism, uttering unpopular truths as he sees them, without falling into reflexive conservatism or stereotyped radicalism. This is most likely the key to why the book has received so little notice: it undercuts the worldview from which most critics deliver their opinions and refuses to salute the reigning myths of our time. It is probably a minor miracle that the book has even seen print in the first place, albeit with an unduly tame cover design and no apparent promotional budget.

If you are disturbed by the direction that our culture is going, whether you locate yourself on the left or right (or neither), I urge you to check this book out and prepare yourself for a stimulating shock.