Envisioning the Good Life

The Limits of Contemporary Vitalism

Benjamin Noys (Reader in English, University of Chichester)

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English

Edinburgh University Press
08 July 2025

Deconstructionism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism; Social & political philosophy; Philosophy of religion

Envisioning the Good Life is a call to re-imagine our lives beyond the limits of recent understandings. While contemporary thinkers of life have promoted a vision of life as excess to escape the crises that beset the present, these vitalist visions leave life detached from reality and fragmented. Contemporary vitalism imagines life as excessive, savage life, as damaged life that flees power, and as redeemed life that forms a new dispersed community. While exploring these visions of life, this book argues for an integrated understanding of the good life. Reading against the limits of the current imaginary, Envisioning the Good Life suggests that our lives are not defined by the limits of illness, death, and finitude. This book urges us to rediscover the vision of the good life in the collective and to grasp our own powers to transform our lives and the world.

By: Benjamin Noys (Reader in English University of Chichester)
Imprint: Edinburgh University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781399539319
ISBN 10: 1399539310
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 08 July 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Extracting Life Chapter I. Savage Life: Foucault, Deleuze and Ontological Anarchy 1. Ontologies of Annihilation 2. Crowned Anarchy 3. Blows Against the Empire 4. The Ethics of Excess Chapter II. Damaged Life: Negri, Laruelle, Adorno and the Victim 1. Job’s Great Complaint 2. Black Celebration 3. The Damage Done 4. Present Pessimism Chapter III. Redeemed Life: Henry, Laruelle, Žižek and the Figure of Christ 1. Personal Jesus 2. Christ Heretic 3. Christ Dialectical 4. Incarnating Community Chapter IV. Global Life: Schmitt, Blanchot and the Abstraction of Community 1. Enemy Life 2. Partisan Life 3. The Absolute Enemy 4. A Communism of Abstraction 5. Combined and Uneven Life Conclusion: Beyond Finitude Bibliography

Benjamin Noys is Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Chichester. His books include Crisis and Criticism: Essays, 2009–2021 (Brill, 2024), The Matter of Language: Abstraction and Poetry (Seagull, 2023), Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism (Zero, 2014), and The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2010).

Reviews for Envisioning the Good Life: The Limits of Contemporary Vitalism

In this book, Benjamin Noys is a kind of philosophical surgeon, dissecting our social needs and desires. We are obsessed with ""Life"" as a power and source of values, but we do not know concretely how to live. Noys probes this dilemma, and offers us glimpses of a way out. -- Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University