[D66] Liberalism: A Counter-History

[Nord]

http://www.versobooks.com/books/960-liberalism

Liberalism: A Counter-History
by Domenico Losurdo
Translated by Gregory Elliott

One of Europe's leading intellectual historians deconstructs 
liberalism's dark side.

In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and 
philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as 
a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most 
illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery.

Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to 
the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent 
liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, 
and Sieyès, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual 
position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. 
Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the 
counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of 
the modern world order.

Paperback, 384 pages
ISBN: 9781781681664
February 2014

Reviews
“A brilliant exercise in unmasking liberal pretensions, surveying over 
three centuries with magisterial command of the sources.”
– Financial Times
“Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo stimulatingly 
uncovers the contradictions of an ideology that is much too 
self-righteously invoked.”
– Pankaj Mishra, Guardian
“The book is a historically grounded, very accessible critique of 
liberalism, complementing a growing literature critical of liberalism.”
– CHOICE
“Liberalism is far too serious to be left in the hands of the liberals.”
– Il Giornale
“There is always something to learn from books by Domenico Losurdo. And 
[this book] is no exception, for the outstanding knowledge of modern and 
contemporary political thought, the rigorous philology and the pursuit 
of sources that have been forgotten or expunged.”
– Il Corriere della Sera