Pricing Lives

Ariel Colonomos is Research Professor at CNRS and Sciences Po in Paris where he is affiliated with CERI. He has taught in the Political Science department at Columbia and at SIPA, and has held numerous visiting positions in the US. His work focuses on international relations and political theory, and his recent works include Moralizing International Relations (Palgrave, 2008), The Gamble of War (Palgrave, 2013), and Selling the Future—The Perils of Predicting Global Politics (Hurst/OUP, 2016), which received the ISA Ethics section book award.

• Introduction: The lives-interests nexus Part I. Pricing Lives before the State: Some Political Lessons from Shakespeare 1: The many merchants of Venice 2: Henry V: An all-too-human gambler Part II. The Calculating State: Hobbes's Hidden Pendulum 3: The challenge of measuring the measures: Proportionality 4: The challenge of weighing up the value of hostages 5: The challenge of deciding upon reparations 6: The challenge of pricing pandemics Part III. Patriarchalism and Philanthropism 7: A political theory of hostage-taking: Patriarchalism 8: A political theory of the victim: Philanthropism Part IV. Pricing Distant Lives 9: Lest we forget the future: The fallacy of temporal discounting 10: Out of sight, out of mind? Conclusion: Knowing who we are. Pricing lives and taking responsibility

Pricing Lives is a tour de force and a book of many talents. It effortlessly brings together literature, philosophy, history, economics, and political theory to address the fundamental issue of the value of life in a variety of contexts. To what extent do we value life? How do we put a price on life? How do the answers given to these questions define us as human beings and societies? These are some of the issues that Ariel Colonomos explores. Last but not least, the book is written in a highly elegant style that makes it a real pleasure to read.