Front cover image for Bound to act : models of action, dramas of inaction

Bound to act : models of action, dramas of inaction

This study of models of action seeks to respond to the loss of faith in political action that seems to predominate in Western societies, to the sense that there is nothing we can do to change the course of events, or that political action is ultimately useless, without effect in a world governed by independent political and economic laws. Its topic is the tension between the theme of the impossibility of acting, a question since Hamlet, and the impression that many events involving human agency do indeed take place. The author deals with both philosophical and dramatic texts in addressing this question
Print Book, English, ©1999
Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., ©1999
vii, 275 pages ; 23 cm
9780804733304, 0804733309
40762673
Of proud audacious deeds
From act to compact
Locke and the performative subject
The harness of necessity
Ought and act
Certain acts: the tiger's thoughtless bound
After wars