A Hedonist Manifesto
The Power to Exist
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- $36.99
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- $36.99
Publisher Description
Michael Onfray passionately defends the potential of hedonism to resolve the dislocations and disconnections of our melancholy age. In a sweeping survey of history's engagement with and rejection of the body, he exposes the sterile conventions that prevent us from realizing a more immediate, ethical, and embodied life. He then lays the groundwork for both a radical and constructive politics of the body that adds to debates over morality, equality, sexual relations, and social engagement, demonstrating how philosophy, and not just modern scientism, can contribute to a humanistic ethics.
Onfray attacks Platonic idealism and its manifestation in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic belief. He warns of the lure of attachment to the purportedly eternal, immutable truths of idealism, which detracts from the immediacy of the world and our bodily existence. Insisting that philosophy is a practice that operates in a real, material space, Onfray enlists Epicurus and Democritus to undermine idealist and theological metaphysics; Nietzsche, Bentham, and Mill to dismantle idealist ethics; and Palante and Bourdieu to collapse crypto-fascist neoliberalism. In their place, he constructs a positive, hedonistic ethics that enlarges on the work of the New Atheists to promote a joyful approach to our lives in this, our only, world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
French philosopher Onfray attempts to disassemble the long heritages of Plato and Christianity, specifically their denigration of the body, pleasure, and immanence. To counter this age-old tradition, Onfray argues for a utilitarian, materialist, and epicurean hedonism. He acknowledges the goal is to produce more pleasure, but rejects crude understandings of hedonism. The playful, open encounters with others and the world he describes do not reduce responsibility. He argues that hedonism, with its deep reliance on individual will, demands much from a practitioner, as obligations are not imposed externally, but generated solely from the self. Readers without patience for dense philosophical writing will be frustrated by the work. Some of Onfray's complaints and depictions of modern life seem far removed from American norms and more a product of modern French culture. Getting through Onfray's prose, however, provides interesting foundations for ethics, aesthetics, erotics, and politics arising from outside the main Western tradition. Whether Onfray's vision of a new hedonism-driven world is workable remains an open question, but he makes it seem like a desirable goal.
