Towards a Critical Existentialism: Truth, Relevance and Politics

Jeffrey Bell argues that a motivating problematic for existentialist writers is the attempt to think through the implications of the problematic nature of life.

He applies a Deleuzian theory of problems to an analysis of some key concepts in contemporary social and political theory. Building on the metaphysics of problems set out in his book, An Inquiry into Analytic-Continental Metaphysics, he provides a new way of integrating the concerns of existentialist writers into contemporary political and social debates.

Jeffrey A. Bell is Professor of Philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University. He has recently been a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, during which time much of this book was written. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari, including Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy?: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), Deleuze’s Hume (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and The Problem of Difference: Phenomenology and Poststructuralism (University of Toronto Press, 1998). Bell is co-editor with Paul Livingston and Andrew Cutrofello of Beyond the Analytic-Continental Divide: Pluralist Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2015) and with Claire Colebrook of Deleuze and History (Edinburgh University Press, 2009).