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A.W. Crosby has accorded Europe’s unprecedented imperial success, which began in early European Modernity, as due to a paradigmatic shift from a qualitative worldview grounded in ‘Platonic and Neo-Platonic idealism’ to a more quantitative worldview.1 He claims this development, which is said to have occurred between 1250 and 1600 AD, was a...

Many professional bodies trace their lineage back to the medieval guilds with their graded hierarchy of apprentice, journeyman, master, and grandmaster. Guilds often had statutes and private laws devised by members that set limits on who should enter a trade and how it should be practiced.1 Status and authority within the traditional guild were based on merit associated with the ability...

This chapter I begin with a review of the managerial template that has become the normative model for the organization of the university. This chapter explores these developments we associate with managerialism, financialization, and the neoliberal ideology as they have affected university governance, while the next chapter focuses on curriculum reform and the perilous condition of humanities...

This chapter studies the decline in the study and teaching of the humanities within the university context from a financial perspective. As humanities departments are either closed down or have their curriculum attenuated, in the obvious sense we can say that the revenue that was previously present to support such programs has been not been forthcoming. Often this has been explained by the...

Having identified the decline of the humanities with the erosion of the concept of the public good, it is important to understand how the quantification of outcomes has led to a loss of intelligibility, and moreover, the rendering of the unintelligibility of the notion of the public good. Financialization through the aegis of neoliberalism has sought to implement a standardized system of...

The last chapter discussed the Islamic philosophical tradition and its adherence to leading ideas of the classical thought, yet despite this apparent traditional civilized approach to the fundamental issues of human existence, many have been dismayed by the apparent mindlessly violent fanaticism of contemporary militant groups that claim to be inheritors of Islamic traditions. Many Westerners...

The text has to this point given significant attention to financialization and managerialism, as they restructure a contemporary institutional and organizational reality, and thereby move us into a closer embrace with the imperatives of neoliberalism. The following pages turn to the political landscape and the role of the state. While neoliberalism seeks to resolve all social issues into market...

In a publication in the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung on September 20, 2001, following the events of 9/11, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben warned of the dangerous developments in the discourse of security, and the invocation of the security issue as a threat to the political process and democracy. As he stated, “Because they...

Although Schmitt had embraced twentieth-century fascism as an apparent approximation of the older monarchical order that had, according to Schmitt, created the unity of the state and thereby linked a diversity of economic and social interests, he was aware that the contemporary Zeitgeist had conceptualized an alternative ontology of immanence...

In the last chapter, we analyzed Foucault’s interpretation of our contemporary “disciplinary society.” This chapter offers a consideration of Giorgio Agamben’s conception of the issues that divide political and social existence, with emphasis on his proposed resolution of these conflicts in the Coming Community.1 Initially it is worthwhile to consider...

This chapter offers a critical evaluation of Agamben’s ideas and then proceeds to outline the conclusions reached on the central issues, which have been discussed throughout the text. The chapter begins with a focus on the issue of the primacy of economic interests and the sovereignty of the political state. This also leads to a final discussion of the relation between the biopolitical and...

David Lea is a professor of philosophy in the Department of International Studies at the American University of Sharjah in the Emirate of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. His principal field is applied philosophy with central interests in the philosophical foundations of property rights and business ethics. He has published in the Business Ethics Quarterly,...