Being at Large

Reviews / Votes

"One often uses culinary comparisons to characterize great books: it's the creme de la creme, it takes the cake. Zabala's book is too important for such games. If anything, it is - or should become - the daily bread of all those who want to find their way in the labyrinth of our ideological struggles. Zabala sets the record straight in the ongoing debate on fake news in which philosophical issues gained political urgency." Slavoj Zizek, author of Like a Thief in Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism and Sex and the Failed Absolute "This is a much-needed path-breaking book, systematically showing how widespread appeals to facts, whether pure or alternative, are not only yet another claim to power, but also a new and dangerous recall to order. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in the possibility of freedom and survival in our time, this book fully illustrates the strength of Zabala's philosophy and its potential for emancipation." Chiara Bottici, author of A Philosophy of Political Myth and Imaginal Politics: Images beyond Imagination and the Imaginary

"Timey and engagingly written, Being at Large advances a thesis developed in Zabala's previous work, namely, that we live in times of a dominant "absence of emergency," despite being surrounded by and immersed in emergency. This means that a long list of ongoing emergencies - including climate change, military conflicts, refugee movements, homelessness, rising inequality, the manipulation of personal information and, of course, pandemics such as the spread of COVID-19 - are framed by those in power as somehow normal, leading Zabala to the Heideggerian notion that "the only emergency is the lack of a sense of emergency."" Public Seminar

"Riveting and crucial." William Eggington, Los Angeles Review of Books "[Being at Large] is an invitation to take an existential stand for freedom. Zabala cannot tell anyone what to do, but he can invite participation in the interpretive openness of Being at large, and from that freedom one can take an existential stand." Hong Kong Review of Books

"Society is a place where citizens practice their art, rights, and science. Society also now reflects political and cultural conditions, and the current emergency reflects a loss of freedom-as if history and culture have ended. Zabala is sounding the philosophical alarm about dangers to freedom in a society and culture in which power shapes the field of alternative facts. This a powerful, energetic, and wise book." Choice "Zabala ... manages, in this erudite book, to walk readers through a genealogy of interpretation as an "active practice" (with detailed attention to Augustine and Luther), and to say a great deal about metaphysics and ontology. Moreover, all thinkers will find in Zabala's theory of 'being at large' a call to action, to intellectual work as an urgent task for our times." Religious Studies Review