Ross Abbinnett is Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Theory, University of Birmingham, UK. His main research interests lie in the areas of social and political theory, culture and aesthetics, and technology and society. He has published extensively in these fields, including Truth and Social Science, Culture and Identity, and Marxism After Modernity.

• Introduction: Elements of the Politics of Happiness \ 1. Liberalism and the Uses of Desire \ 2. Postmodernism, or, The Dream of Limitless Excess \ 3. Marxism and the Beautiful Object of Labour\ 4. Fascism and the Pleasure of Self-Destruction \ 5. Religion and the Love of the Sacred \ Conclusion: Happiness and Catastrophic Modernity

Can we be happy in a world marked by catastrophe? Should we try? What is happiness anyway? In this subtle and entrancing work Ross Abbinnett thinks deeply and profoundly about these questions. He draws on the European philosophical tradition to show why happiness is important and in so doing rescues happiness from the banalities of the new utilitarianism. This is an important book.

Ross Abbinnett is Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Theory, University of Birmingham, UK. His main research interests lie in the areas of social and political theory, culture and aesthetics, and technology and society. He has published extensively in these fields, including Truth and Social Science, Culture and Identity, and Marxism After Modernity.

• Introduction: Elements of the Politics of Happiness \ 1. Liberalism and the Uses of Desire \ 2. Postmodernism, or, The Dream of Limitless Excess \ 3. Marxism and the Beautiful Object of Labour\ 4. Fascism and the Pleasure of Self-Destruction \ 5. Religion and the Love of the Sacred \ Conclusion: Happiness and Catastrophic Modernity

Can we be happy in a world marked by catastrophe? Should we try? What is happiness anyway? In this subtle and entrancing work Ross Abbinnett thinks deeply and profoundly about these questions. He draws on the European philosophical tradition to show why happiness is important and in so doing rescues happiness from the banalities of the new utilitarianism. This is an important book.

Ross Abbinnett is Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Theory, University of Birmingham, UK. His main research interests lie in the areas of social and political theory, culture and aesthetics, and technology and society. He has published extensively in these fields, including Truth and Social Science, Culture and Identity, and Marxism After Modernity.

• Introduction: Elements of the Politics of Happiness \ 1. Liberalism and the Uses of Desire \ 2. Postmodernism, or, The Dream of Limitless Excess \ 3. Marxism and the Beautiful Object of Labour\ 4. Fascism and the Pleasure of Self-Destruction \ 5. Religion and the Love of the Sacred \ Conclusion: Happiness and Catastrophic Modernity

Can we be happy in a world marked by catastrophe? Should we try? What is happiness anyway? In this subtle and entrancing work Ross Abbinnett thinks deeply and profoundly about these questions. He draws on the European philosophical tradition to show why happiness is important and in so doing rescues happiness from the banalities of the new utilitarianism. This is an important book.