1st Edition
Thinkers for a Complex Age Normative Political Theory After Foundationalism
Preface. Introduction: Thinking in a Complex Age: Genealogy, Relationality, and the Reworking of Political Theory Section I — Foundations and Genealogies of the Modern Subject 1. How to Read Kant? 2. Friedrich Nietzsche 3. Martin Heidegger Section II — Immanence, Power, and the Poststructural Turn 4. Gilles Deleuze 5. Georges Canguilhem 6. Michel Foucault 7. Judith Butler 8. Georges Bataille 9. Louis Althusser 10. Hannah Arendt 11. Jürgen Habermas Section III — Materialism, Ecology, Posthumanism 12. Bruno Latour 13. Jane Bennett 14. Karen Barad 15. Donna Haraway 16. Rosi Braidotti 17. Dipesh Chakrabarty 18. Achille Mbembe 19. Hans Jonas Section IV — Governance, Democracy, Institutions 20. Montesquieu 21. T.H. Green 22. L.T. Hobhouse 23. Karl Polanyi 24. Pierre Bourdieu 25. Pierre Rosanvallon 26. John Dewey 27. Elinor Ostrom 28. William Connolly Section V — Normativity, Justice, and Freedom 29. Martha Nussbaum 30. Amartya Sen 31. Philip Pettit Section VI — Relational Ethics After Foundations 32. Conclusion
Biography
Mark Olssen is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Higher Education Policy at the University of Surrey, UK. His work focuses on political theory, social philosophy, and education policy, with particular interests in Foucault, neoliberalism, and contemporary debates on normativity and governance. He is the author of numerous books, including Constructing Foucault’s Ethics (2021) and The Return of the Good in the Age of AI (2026). His recent work develops a relational, post-foundational account of ethics centred on the concept of life continuance.
Ambitious, uncommonly wide-ranging, and intellectually serious, Thinkers for a Complex Age offers a valuable map of contemporary debates on normativity, critique and political judgement.
Enzo Rossi, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam
