Political Theory and the Enlarged Mentality

<p>In this book Stephen Acreman follows the development and reception of a hitherto under-analyzed concept central to modern and postmodern political theory: the Kantian <i>ein erweiterte Denkungsart</i> or enlarged mentality.</p><p>While the enlarged mentality plays a major role in a number of key texts underpinning contemporary democratic theory including works by Arendt Gadamer Habermas and Lyotard this is the first in-depth study of the concept encompassing and bringing together its full range of expressions. A number of attempts to place the enlarged mentality at the service of particular ideals–the politics of empathy of consensus of agonistic contest or of moral righteousness–are challenged and redirected. In its exploration of the enlarged mentality the book asks what it means to assume a properly political stance and in giving as the answer ‘facing reality together’ it uncovers a political theory attentive to the facts and events that concern us and uniquely well suited to the ecological politics of our time.</p>