Abstract

This volume presents itself as an exercise in political philosophy, where politics, broadly defined, is taken as having to do with the relationships between ruler and ruled, the issue of authority, problems of social conflict, and the very objectives of social action. What is unusual about its perspective is its attempt to articulate such a philosophy on the basis of a philosophical anthropology, one that is especially influenced by the work of Merleau-Ponty but that also acknowledges the influence of Paul Ricoeur and Gabriel Marcel. One immediate result of such an approach is that politics is seen to be better grounded in terms of hope than in terms of the metaphors of vision or will, neither of which are held be to able to avoid the threat of falling into tyranny or anarchism, both extremes tending to become forms of totalitarianism.