Remembering Paul Piccone

July 12th marks 22 years since the passing of Paul Piccone. His vision, energy, and charisma created Telos and continues to inspire all of us who are connected with it, whether or not we had the good fortune of knowing him personally. He was always committed to following the truth, wherever it might lead him. This explains the complicated trajectory of interests in the history of Telos, from the Frankfurt School and Jean Baudrillard to Carl Schmitt and Ernst Jünger, from left-wing politics to populism, from debates about the 1980s peace movements to discussions of radical orthodoxy, from phenomenology to postliberalism. This continuing movement could not be constrained by disciplinary boundaries, but it would be misleading to consider the mix of topics as simply eclectic or interdisciplinary. We would be failing if we were simply drawing attention to obscure writers or movements. Rather, we seek to focus on what is vitally relevant but not yet recognized as such. The vagaries of Telos‘s trajectory reflect targeted shifts in attention that respond to new insights and current problems. This sixth sense was the key to Piccone’s genius. We cannot claim to have maintained it, but this remains the telos in Telos. As we commemorate Paul Piccone, we also rededicate ourselves to continuing his vision.

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The Travails of Trumpification Revisited

With Donald Trump’s second presidential term now underway, it is the perfect time to pick up your copy of Timothy W. Luke’s The Travails of Trumpification, from Telos Press Publishing. Save 25% on the paperback edition of The Travails of Trumpification by purchasing it in our online store and using the coupon code TRAVAILS25 during checkout. The journal Educational Philosophy and Theory published a collection of reviews of The Travails of Trumpification in 2022, excerpts of which appear below. Read the full set of reviews here (subscription required).

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Now Available: Ernst Jünger’s Approaches: Drugs and Altered States

New from Telos Press: Approaches: Drugs and Altered States, by Ernst Jünger. Order the paperback edition today in our online store and save 20% by using the coupon code BOOKS20. Also available in Kindle ebook format at Amazon.com.

Approaches: Drugs and Altered States

by Ernst Jünger

Translated by Thomas Friese
Edited and with an Introduction by Russell A. Berman

Telos Press Publishing is delighted to announce the publication of Ernst Jünger’s Approaches: Drugs and Altered States, now available in English translation.

In Approaches, Jünger describes his experiences with drugs over the course of his life, ranging from youthful drinking sprees, through experiments with hashish and morphine, to more powerful psychotropic substances like mescaline, peyote, and LSD. Taking his readers on a remarkable journey from beer to hallucinogens, he provides fascinating vignettes from key moments in Germany’s troubled twentieth century. Approaches is also a fundamentally philosophical, even spiritual journey toward hidden dimensions of existence that, in Jünger’s view, have been eclipsed by the ambient noise of modern life. The ecstatic altered states provided by drug use, he claims, can help us approach them and find a deeper truth.

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New Review of Carl Schmitt’s The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts

Writing at Infrapolitical Deconstruction, Gerardo Muñoz reviews the new English translation of Carl Schmitt’s The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts, now available from Telos Press Publishing. Order your copy in our online store, and save 20% on the list price by using the coupon code BOOKS20 during the checkout process.

An excerpt:

As David Pan correctly observes in the Preface, the Schmitt that we encounter here is one that is confronting the transformations of political enmity in light of a gloomy and dangerous takeover of a global civil war. In fact, one could most definitely argue that the Schmitt thinking within the Cold War epochality is one that is painstakingly searching for a “Katechon,” that restraining force inherited from Christian theology in order to give form to the ruination of modern legal and political order. The global civil war, cloaked under a sense of acknowledged Humanism, now aimed at the destruction of the enemy social’s order and form of life. This thematizes the existential dilemma of a jurist who was consciousness of the dark shadow floating over the efficacy of Western jurisprudence. In other words, the post-war Schmitt is one marked by a profound Hamletian condition in the face of the technical neutralization of every effective political theology. This condition puts Schmitt on the defensive, rather than on the offensive, as his later replies to Erik Peterson, Hans Blumenberg, or Jacob Taubes render visible.

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Now Available! Carl Schmitt’s The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts

New from Telos Press: The Tyranny of Values and Other Texts, by Carl Schmitt. Translated by Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, edited by Russell A. Berman and Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, and with a preface by David Pan. Order your copy in our online store, and save 20% on the list price by using the coupon code BOOKS20 during the checkout process.

Written during the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, and the Cold War, this collection of occasional pieces provides an instructive look at the ways in which Carl Schmitt employed his theories in order to make judgments about contemporary historical events and problems. Covering topics such as the political significance of universalism and jurisprudence, the meaning of the partisan, the world-historical significance of the Cold War, the deterioration of metaphysics into “values,” the relationship between theoretical concepts and concrete historical situations, and his views on thinkers such as Machiavelli, Bodin, and Rousseau, these essays establish a revealing counterpoint to his more formal work. They react on the one hand directly to contemporary political questions and demonstrate the way in which he saw the immediate historical significance of his ideas. On the other hand, he also feels free to provide in these pieces the kinds of methodological reflections that help us to better understand the particular epistemological framework that makes his thought so unique.

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Now Available! Alain de Benoist's Democracy and Populism: The Telos Essays

New from Telos Press: Democracy and Populism: The Telos Essays, by Alain de Benoist. Edited by Russell A. Berman and Timothy W. Luke. Order your copy in our online store, and save 20% on the list price by using the coupon code BOOKS20 during the checkout process.

The crisis of democracy, the consequences of neoliberalism and globalization, the limits of sovereignty, and of course the rise of populism: few thinkers have given more sustained attention to these matters than the French author Alain de Benoist. Democracy and Populism collects de Benoist’s essays from the journal Telos, where many of his writings first appeared in English translation. Reading de Benoist in Telos provides access to a distinctive transatlantic intellectual dialogue and to an array of prescient insights into the current political condition on both continents. De Benoist clearly anticipated today’s political condition: the critique of neoliberalism, the contradictions in liberalism created by the postcolonial frictions of identity politics, and the implications of a resurgent populism. The specific forms of populist movements are sure to vary in the coming years, but the crisis of liberal democracy will remain the defining feature of political life for the foreseeable future. De Benoist explains why.

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