Abstract

This fascinating book brings together philosophical and historical essays on the European experience of empire. Its main thesis is that at the heart of political experience stands a metaphysical one, with a rich trail of evidence in the historical record. The book sets out to explore this in the case of a succession of European empires between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. Power changed everything. It took away the old conceptions of morality and exposed the nature of the world in a way that forced these empires to make a choice on who they were and what they wanted. The study of this choice, translated into a million other choices and acts, forms the core of the text. It proceeds in two steps. The first examines the philosophical concepts of power; the second investigates the real experience of these concepts in the turbulent history of Europe from the Reformation to the Second World War and its aftermath. The result is a passionate and elegant work that offers a groundbreaking look into the psychology and psychosis of imperial power and achieves the rarest of feats: a philosophical work on politics that actually matters.