Indifference and Repetition; Or, Modern Freedom and Its Discontents - by Frank Ruda (Paperback)

About the Book

This book problematizes predominant and intuitive understandings of freedom as natural capacity. It demonstrates how these conceptions emerge with a specific form of modernity, notably capitalist modernity and thereby demonstrates how philosophy from its modern inception was always also a critique of capitalism and its notion of freedom.

Book Synopsis

In capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history of modern philosophy. Indifference and Repetition examines how modern philosophy, largely coextensive with a particular boost in capitalism's development, registers the reductive and regressive tendencies produced by capitalism's effect on individuals and society.

Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern, especially rationalist philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead the subjects of these interpretations to no longer act and think freely. They are often unwillingly led into unfreedom. It is thus possible that even "freedom" enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk.

From the Back Cover

"The free offer of freedom, of a capacity one is permitted to use at will, is a gift horse Ruda looks in the mouth. What he finds stowed away there is indifference and the arbitrariness of choice. The alternative he argues for is remarkable for being off-menu: a freedom won only from the negation of the given. A strongly argued, important book."--Joan Copjec, Brown University

"Indifference and Repetition is a timely and interesting challenge to the modern liberal ideology that freedom is our inalienable natural right. It offers a weapon against the illusory freedom of algorithmically determined choice in increasingly virtual social interactions."--S. D. Chrostowska, York University

"Ruda writes with authority, masterfully guiding readers through material that ranges from the familiar to the intriguingly obscure, while demonstrating how the latter still matters."--Vincent Lloyd, author of Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination

In capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history of modern philosophy. Indifference and Repetition examines how modern philosophy, largely coextensive with a particular boost in capitalism's development, registers the reductive and regressive tendencies produced by capitalism's effect on individuals and society.

Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead their subjects to no longer act and think freely. It is thus possible that even "freedom" enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk.

Frank Ruda is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Dundee. His most recent book is Reading Hegel (with Agon Hamza and Slavoj Zizek).

Review Quotes

Indifference and Repetition is a timely and interesting challenge to the modern liberal ideology that freedom is our inalienable natural right. It offers a weapon against the illusory freedom of algorithmically determined choice in increasingly virtual social interactions.---S. D. Chrostowska, York University

Ruda writes with authority, masterfully guiding readers through material that ranges from the familiar to the intriguingly obscure, while demonstrating how the latter still matters.---Vincent Lloyd, author of Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination

The free offer of freedom, of a capacity one is permitted to use at will, is a gift horse Ruda looks in the mouth. What he finds stowed away there is indifference and the arbitrariness of choice. The alternative he argues for is remarkable for being off-menu: a freedom won only from the negation of the given. A strongly argued, important book.---Joan Copjec, Brown University

About the Author

Frank Ruda (Author)
Frank Ruda is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Dundee, Scotland. His most recent books are Reading Hegel (with Agon Hamza and Slavoj Zizek); The Dash--The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (with Rebecca Comay); and Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism.

Alain Badiou (Foreword By)
Alain Badiou is former chair of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, and, with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard, founder of the faculty of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII.

Heather H. Yeung (Translator)
Heather H. Yeung is Reader in Literature (Poetry and Poetics) at the University of Dundee