On Mercy

It's always a pleasure to be in the company of Malcolm Bull's mind, and this perceptive and interesting book is no exception. -Sophie Smith, University of Oxford There's no one quite like Malcolm Bull. Part of the pleasure of this book is that it leaves readers to do some of the thinking for themselves: it is thought-provoking in just the right ways. -Christopher Brooke, University of Cambridge In this thoughtful and highly original study, Malcolm Bull develops a vision of social life as dependent on humans' willingness to exercise mercy. He shows how this novel approach can serve as a corrective to the traditional excessive focus on the state and on justice, which has been characteristic of some recent political thinking, and how it throws unexpected light on a wide variety of pressing issues in politics. -Raymond Geuss, author of Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno In his brilliant treatise On Mercy, Malcolm Bull recuperates this ancient notion, displaced in modern political thought, and powerfully reinserts mercy at the heart of contemporary politics. In a sweeping, masterful, erudite history ranging from Seneca and Cicero through Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Montaigne to Shklar and Bernard Williams, Bull demonstrates that politics, in the end, is nothing more or less than power mercifully exercised. The only way that we, as a society, will overcome the dangers of global climate change or the threat of AI apocalypse will be to adopt a politics of mercy. I urge you to read On Mercy; it is a book for our times. -Bernard E. Harcourt, author of The Illusion of Free Markets