The Withholding Power

Reviews / Votes

Bridging the span between spiritual ontology and the cogs of material politics-two inseparable but warring brothers-across great conceptual distance, Cacciari is a dominant voice in continental philosophy today, a critical link in our understanding of German and Franco-Italian thinking. Extending meditations on Europe to quandaries unsettling the very foundations of contemporary world order, The Withholding Power brings Cacciari's latest reflections across the oceans in compellingly resonant form. -- Thomas Harrison, Professor of Italian, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Massimo Cacciari's The Withholding power is an essential reading to understand the question of political theology, to move beyond the misleading category of secularization and realize that the apocalyptic-eschatological ideas were intrinsically political since their origin. -- Massimo Lollini, Professor Emeritus of Italian, University of Oregon, UK In his discourse on notions of political theology, Massimo Cacciari offers new insights, both on subsequent thinkers on the subject and the tempestuous political and religious phenomena that have occurred since the 1990s. One of the most profound minds of this period, Cacciari re-examines the ineradicable relationship between politics and theology. The Withholding Power offers its readers an acute blueprint of how we might re-consider this last quarter century. -- Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean and Distinguished Professor of European Languages and Literatures, Queens College, The City University of New York, USA In his admirable study on withholding power, on power that prevents the worst from happening here and now, Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari alerts us to a number of difficulties that we face when trying to activate such power in our times. -- Alexander Duettmann, Professor and Executive Director of the Institute of Art History and Aesthetics, University of the Arts, Berlin