Revisiting The Longing for Total Revolution

ABSTRACT This paper reconsiders the arguments of my book, The Longing for Total Revolution, in response to the thoughtful analyses collected in this symposium. It restates the book’s main genealogical and critical arguments about the philosophical sources of uniquely modern forms of social discontent, while distinguishing those arguments from recent attempts to uncover the deeper, theological sources of discontent. It focuses, in particular, on the role played in modern social discontent by the group of thinkers I describe as the “Kantian left”: a long line of social critics who sought to “realize” Kant’s understanding of human autonomy in society, thereby gaining what Marx called “control and conscious mastery” over our social world, not just over our wills.