Tom Frost

This first book-length study into the influence of Emmanuel Levinas on the thought and philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, Law, Relationality and the Ethical Life, demonstrates how Agamben’s immanent thought can be read as presenting a compelling, albeit flawed, alternative to Levinas’s ethics of the Other. The publication of the English translation of The Use of Bodies in 2016 ended Giorgio Agamben’s 20-year multi-volume Homo Sacer study. Over this time, Agamben’s thought has greatly influenced scholarship in law, the wider humanities and social sciences. This book places Agamben’s figure of form-of-life in relation to Levinasian understandings of alterity, relationality and the law. Considering how Agamben and Levinas craft their respective forms of embodied existence – that is, a fully-formed human that can live an ethical life – the book considers Agamben’s attempt to move beyond Levinasian ethics through the liminal figures of the foetus and the patient in a persistent vegetative state. These figures, which Agamben uses as examples of bare life, call into question the limits of Agamben’s non-relational use and form of existence. As such, it is argued, they reveal the limitations of Agamben’s own ethics, whilst suggesting that his ‘abandoned’ project can and must be taken further. This book will be of interest to scholars, researchers, graduate students and anyone with an interest in the thought of Giorgio Agamben and Emmanuel Levinas in the fields of law, philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences.

Agamben and Levinas

Law, Relationality and the Ethical Life

This book collects new contributions from an international group of leading scholars – including many who have worked closely with Agamben – to consider the impact of Agamben’s thought on research in the humanities and social sciences. Giorgio Agamben: Legal, Political and Philosophical Perspectives addresses the potential of Agamben’s thought by re-focusing attention away from his critiques of Western politics and towards his scheme for a political future. Part I of the book draws upon a wide range of issues such as legal oaths, legal reasoning and Christian conceptions of love in order to examine the potential for Agamben’s work to impact upon future legal scholarship. Part II focuses on political perspectives that include references to Marx, Rousseau and Agamben’s conception of the ‘messianic’. Theology, biology, and the thought of Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin and Antonin Artaud are all drawn upon in Part III to explore philosophical perspectives in Agamben’s thought. This book demonstrates the importance and originality of Giorgio Agamben, who has articulated a vision of politics that must be recognised as an influential contribution to modern philosophical and political thinking. It is a book that will be of considerable interest to many working across the humanities and social sciences.

Legal, Political and Philosophical Perspectives

Giorgio Agamben

Jacqueline Martin

Rebecca Huxley-Binns

Unlocking the English Legal System will help you grasp the main concepts of the legal system in England and Wales with ease. Containing accessible explanations in clear and precise terms that are easy to understand, it provides an excellent foundation for learning and revising. This edition considers recent case law and legislation as well as the outcome of the UK’s referendum on membership of the EU; the decision of Willers v Joyce and its impact on the role of the Privy Council in the system of precedent; the new Combined Family Court; the Legal Education and Training review and changes to the profession; and funding cuts to legal services and legal aid. The Unlocking the Law series is designed specifically to make the law accessible. Each chapter opens with a list of aims and objectives, and contains diagrams to aid learning. Cases and judgments are prominently displayed, as are primary source quotations. Summaries help check your understanding of each chapter, and there is a glossary of legal terminology. New features include problem-based questions with guidance on answering, as well as essay questions and answer plans, plus cases and materials exercises. All titles in the series follow the same formula and include the same features so students can move easily from one subject to another. The series covers all the core subjects required by the Bar Council and the Law Society for entry onto professional qualifications as well as popular option units.

Tom Frost

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