The Philosopher and His Poor

by Jacques Rancière

Book Overview

What has philosophy to do with the poor? If, as has often been supposed, the poor have no time for philosophy, then why have philosophers always made time for them? Why is the history of philosophy-from Plato to Karl Marx to Jean-Paul Sartre to Pierre Bourdieu-the history of so many figures of the poor: plebes, men of iron, the demos, artisans, common people, proletarians, the masses? Why have philosophers made the shoemaker, in particular, a remarkably...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822332744
• ISBN13: 9780822332749
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 247 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.7" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Among Rancière's most interesting works

The belated arrival of this early book of Jacques Rancière in English is very welcome. Andrew Parker's Introduction, which tells the convoluted story of the book's prior aborted translation, is worth reading by itself. And Parker goes beyond this story to provide not only the most thorough bibliography on Rancière that an English reader will ever have seen, but a compelling explanation of the philosopher's place in relation to his, and our, contemporaries (Althusser, Balibar, Bourdieu), and of his importance. And the book itself is fascinating stuff: a journey through the philosophical tradition tracking the contempt-laden figure of the working man. Rancière finds his favorite example, the shoemaker, in so many texts from so many centuries that one almost needs to check the references, lest we start to think the whole piece is some kind of Borgesian joke; but this is, completely in earnest, a fascinating synthetic argument about the condescension philosophy, even leftist philosophy, shows toward "simple" workers. The tone of the book isn't as hard to pin down as some of Rancière's other work (e.g. the terrific "Ignorant Schoolmaster"), and it is a little more of a scholarly, historical effort, a little more humorous, and a little more accessible than you might expect, but it's still a difficult, intelligent, and rewarding text for the philosophical reader.