A Seminary Co-op Notable Book “What makes Brown’s book especially well worth reading is her impressive ability to show how key themes in Weber’s scholarship―including his emphasis on the defining characteristics of modernity . . . speak to our own time.” ― Inside Higher Ed “Presses us to think more carefully and imaginatively about the relationships among human freedom, human value, and something beyond purely human concerns, be it truth, God, or Gaia.” ― Commonweal “Worth reading…A timely reminder of the nihilistic air we breathe.” ― Law & Liberty “Elegantly and concisely written…this insightful, thought-provoking book illuminates some objective culture factors contributing to the social division and degradation of public life in many democracies today.” ― Critical Theology How has politics become a playpen for vain demagogues? Why has the university become an ideological war zone? What has happened to Truth? Wendy Brown places nihilism at the center of these predicaments. Emerging from the replacement of God and tradition with science and reason, nihilism removes the foundation on which values, including that of truth itself, stand. It hyperpoliticizes knowledge and renders the profound trivial, the future unimportant, and corruption banal. To consider remedies for this condition, Brown turns to Max Weber’s Vocation Lectures. Weber decries the effects of nihilism on scholarly and political life and famously proposes to keep the two separate, restricting academic work to the pursuit of facts and the political realm to the legislation of values. Without accepting Weber’s arch oppositions, Brown acknowledges the distinctions they mark as she charts reparative strategies for our own times. She calls for retrieving knowledge from hyperpoliticization without expunging values from research or teaching, and she challenges the left to make good on its commitments to critical thinking and democratization. “Distinguished political theorist Wendy Brown revisits Weber’s lectures, struck by the resonance between our present moment and the plight of Weber’s audience. Universities are menaced by political and economic forces, as corrupt but charismatic demagogues reshape the social sphere. Can Weber’s stringent inspiration be a guide?” ― Kieran Setiya , Los Angeles Review of Books “What makes Brown’s book especially well worth reading is her impressive ability to show how key themes in Weber’s scholarship―including his emphasis on the defining characteristics of modernity, including disenchantment, rationalization, bureaucracy, efficiency, predictability, calculability and control and on subjective meaning―speak to our own time.” ― Steven Mintz , Inside Higher Education “For Brown, scholarship and teaching are callings in the Weberian sense to the extent that they demand a range of renunciations (of political propagandizing, moral preaching, and practical payoff), but she departs from Weber in her far more optimistic assessment of scholarship’s role in ‘developing an informed, politically engaged citizenry.’” ― Len Gutkin , Chronicle of Higher Education “Presses us to think more carefully and imaginatively about the relationships among human freedom, human value, and something beyond purely human concerns, be it truth, God, or Gaia.” ― Maeve Cook , Commonweal “Worth reading…A timely reminder of the nihilistic air we breathe. It’s easy to lose sight of this situation, especially if we’re caught up in defending some particular worldview or policy proposal. A well-crafted reminder of fundamental features of the contemporary human condition is always beneficial.” ― Mark K. Spencer , Law & Liberty “In recent years, Brown has been best known for her critical analysis of neoliberal rationality and the way it has weakened resources for political action…What she finds most valuable in Weber’s ethos, not least in its implications both for the left and for the academy, is the willingness to face uncomfortable truths without lapsing into wishful thinking or despair.” ― William Davies , London Review of Books “An exquisite meditation on Max Weber’s classic lectures on knowledge and politics as vocations.” ― Samuel Moyn , Critical Inquiry “Elegantly and concisely written…this insightful, thought-provoking book illuminates some objective culture factors contributing to the social division and degradation of public life in many democracies today.” ― Don Schweitzer , Critical Theology “[ Nihilistic Times ] is a passionate book about passion. It falls into what is now a long post-Weberian tradition of works seeking a transformative solution to the apparently irresolvable dilemmas and conflicts of the moment in the form of a spiritual revolution.” ― Stephen Turner , Society “In Nihilistic Times , the most important political theorist of her generation models how to think with someone else. Through a spirited engagement with Max Weber, Wendy Brown confronts the challenge of creating meaning in a dis