Malcolm Bull

Perhaps the single most revolutionary aspect of the Renaissance was the re-emergence of the gods and goddesses of antiquity. In the midst of Christian Europe, artists began to decorate luxury goods with scandalous stories from classical mythology, and rulers to identify themselves with the deities of ancient religion. The resulting fusion of erotic fantasy and political power changed the course of Western art and produced many of its most magical and subversive works. The first book ever to survey this extraordinary phenomenon in its entirety, The Mirror of the Gods takes the story from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Each chapter focuses on a particular god (Diana, Apollo, Hercules, Venus, Bacchus, Jupiter) and recounts the tales about that deity, not as they appear in classical literature but as they were re-created by artists such as Botticelli, Titian, Bernini and Rembrandt. And yet this is not a book simply about painting and sculpture. It is an attempt to re-imagine the entire designed world of the Renaissance, where the gods also appeared in carnival floats and in banquet displays, and entertained the public in the form of snow men and fireworks. This rich and original new portrait of the Renaissance will ensure that readers never see the period in quite the same way again.

Classical Mythology in Renaissance Art

The Mirror of the Gods

The multiplicity of the self and the inaccessibility of truth are commonplaces of contemporary thought. But in Seeing Things Hidden they become key features of a philosophy of history that reunites emancipatory political theory with the apocalyptic tradition. Exploiting affinities between the work of Lukacs and recent American philosophers like Rorty and Cavell, Bull argues that the central dynamic of late modernity is the coming into hiding of the contradictory identities generated through political and social emancipation. Drawing on analytic and Continental philosophy he articulates the most ambitious philosophy of history since Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, presenting fresh interpretations of such icons of modernity as Hegel's master-slave dialectic, Benjamin's angel of history, Du Bois's concept of double consciousness, and Rawls's veil of ignorance.

Apocalypse, Vision and Totality

Seeing Things Hidden

What does political agency mean for those who don’t know what to do or can’t be bothered to do it? This book develops a novel account of collective emancipation in which freedom is achieved not through knowledge and action but via doubt and inertia. In essays that range from ancient Greece to the end of the Anthropocene, Bull addresses questions central to contemporary political theory in novel readings of texts by Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, and Arendt, and shows how classic philosophical problems have a bearing on issues like political protest and climate change. The result is an entirely original account of political agency for the twenty-first century in which uncertainty and idleness are limned with utopian promise.

Scepticism, Idleness and Utopia

The Concept of the Social

Basic

The Pick Programming Language

Anthony J. Cascardi

Timothy J. Clark

Malcolm Bull offers a detailed analysis of nihilism in Nietzsche's works. Along with accompanying commentaries by Cascardi and Clark, he explores the significance of Nietzscheís views given the fact that a wide range of readers have come to embrace his ideas as new orthodoxy. There seem to be no anti-Nietzscheans today, but Bull demonstrates that this wide embrace of Nietzsche runs counter to the very meaning of nihilism as Nietzsche understood it.

Nietzsche's Negative Ecologies

A provocative intellectual assault on the iconic philosopher.

Anti-Nietzsche

The multiplicity of the self and the inaccessibility of truth are commonplaces of contemporary thought. But in Seeing Things Hidden they become key features of a philosophy of history that reunites emancipatory political theory with the apocalyptic tradition. Apocalyptic is the revelation of things hidden. But what does it mean to be hidden? And why are things hidden in the first place? By gently teasing out the meanings of hiddenness, this book develops a new theory of apocalyptic and explores its relation to the writings of Kant, Hegel, Benjamin and Derrida. Exploiting affinities between the work of Lukács and recent American philosophers like Rorty and Cavell, Bull argues that the central dynamic of late modernity is the coming into hiding of the contradictory identities generated through political and social emancipation. Drawing on analytic and Continental philosophy he articulates the most ambitious philosophy of history since Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, presenting fresh interpretations of such icons of modernity as Hegel's master-slave dialectic, Benjamin's angel of history, Du Bois's concept of double consciousness, and Rawls's veil of ignorance.

Apocalypse, Vision, and Totality

In this volume, leading historians, critics and theorists review 3,000 years of apocalyptic theory. Tracing the history of millenarianism, they investigate the modern and postmodern debates. (Philosophy)

Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World

From here to utopia, new directions in political theory What does political agency mean for those who don't know what to do or can't be bothered to do it? This book develops a novel account of collective emancipation in which freedom is achieved not through knowledge and action but via doubt and inertia. In essays that range from ancient Greece to the end of the Anthropocene, Bull addresses questions central to contemporary political theory in novel readings of texts by Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, and Arendt, and shows how classic philosophical problems have a bearing on issues like political protest and climate change. The result is an entirely original account of political agency for the twenty-first century in which uncertainty and idleness are limned with utopian promise.

Keith Lockhart

The completely revised second edition further explores one of the most successful of America's indigenous religious groups. Despite this, the Adventist church has remained largely invisible. Seeking a Sanctuary casts light on this marginal religion through its socio-historical context and discusses several Adventist figures that shaped the perception of this Christian sect.

Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream

Seeking a Sanctuary

Nietzsche, the philosopher seemingly opposed to everyone, has met with remarkably little opposition himself. Anti-Nietzsche is a subtle and subversive engagement with Nietzsche and his twentieth-century interpreters-Heidegger, Vattimo, Nancy, and Agamben. Written with economy and clarity, it shows how a politics of failure might change what it means to be human.

Is mercy more important than justice? Since antiquity, mercy has been regarded as a virtue. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, mercy had been exiled from political life. In this book, Malcolm Bull analyses and challenges the Enlightenment’s rejection of mercy. Political realism, Bull argues, demands recognition of the foundational role of mercy in society. If we are vulnerable to harm from others, we are in need of their mercy. By restoring the primacy of mercy over justice, we may constrain the powerful and release the agency of the powerless. An important contribution to political philosophy from an inventive thinker, On Mercy makes a persuasive case for returning this neglected virtue to the heart of political thought.

Malcolm Bull

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