Power and Imagination

The Author: Leonidas Donskis is a Lithuanian philosopher, essayist, and critic. He received his first doctorate in philosophy from Vilnius University, Lithuania, and later earned his second doctorate in social and moral philosophy from the University of Helsinki, Finland. His main scholarly interests lie in philosophy of culture, philosophy of literature, philosophy of the social sciences, civilization theory, political theory, and history of ideas. He has researched and lectured in the United States, Great Britain, and continental Europe. Currently, Donskis serves as Professor and Dean of Vytautas Magnus University School of Political Science and Diplomacy in Kaunas, Lithuania. In addition, he acts as Docent of Social and Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Donskis is the author of eleven books, including The End of Ideology and Utopia?; Identity and Freedom; Forms of Hatred; and Loyalty, Dissent, and Betrayal.

«Power and imagination are the forces at work in Leonidas Donskis’s brilliant book. They are the true heroes in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Don Quixote’, Machiavelli’s ‘Il Principe’, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s ‘We’, George Orwell’s ‘1984’, and Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. Power and imagination decide on the fortune of men and women, of states and nations. Leonidas Donskis demonstrates how we can learn from these classic texts to get a better understanding of the world of politics, and of just how the ‘powerful’ learned from them to shape this world to their tastes and ambitions. We have to thank the author for this very informative book.» (Manfred Holler, Professor of Economics, University of Hamburg, Germany)«Leonidas Donskis’s book is a detailed proof of his basic thesis that classical literature often gives a better understanding of the world’s structure and changes than do the works of political philosophy. From the power of love and friendship shown in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Don Quixote’ to the twentieth century’s utopias, or rather dystopias, and political use of organized hatred, Donskis demonstrates by careful analysis how European literature again and again anticipated the political developments of the future. Five hundred years of European poetry confronted with the history of political ideas, and political reality yield a fascinating deep understanding of the genesis of the present world. It is a pleasure to read these highly informative, thought-provoking impressive pieces of European ‘Kulturphilosophie’.» (Hubert Schleichert, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Konstanz, Germany)