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Superweak

Laurent de Sutter
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A01=Laurent de Sutter
artistic creation
Author_Laurent de Sutter
autonomy of judgement
Category=QDH
Category=QDTS1
critical realism
critical reflection
critique
democratisation of reason
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
experimentation of thought
hierarchy of claims
human weakness
judgement
literary critique
literary judgement
postcritique
rational discrimination
reality
reason
the limits of critique
the limits of reason
thought experiments
value of art
what does postcritique entail?
what is critique?
what is modernity?
what is superweakness?
what is the critical project of modernity?

Product details

  • ISBN 9781509566464
  • Weight: 499g
  • Dimensions: 155 x 231mm
  • Publication Date: 07 Nov 2025
  • Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
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Description
We have become superheroes. Nothing can resist us anymore: not persons, ideas, facts, realities, or beings. We owe our superhuman strength to a tool we have taken up that submits everything to the scrutiny of our judgment: critique. After its first formulation at the end of the sixteenth century, the project of critique spread from one sphere to another until it became almost universal: we have all of us been transformed by our equal capacity to judge, approve, and reject. If modernity is defined as the journey we have taken to move away from the myths and dogmas of the past, then critique, with its emphasis on reason and the autonomy of judgment, has been the lynchpin of modernity.

Today, however, the critical project shows signs of exhaustion. We are beginning to realize that being right is useless, now that everyone can lay claim to the same power as we can. The democratization of reason, proceeding alongside the development of critique through modernity, has produced a stalemate: for every judgment that we pronounce, there is another opposing one – with grounds as solid as our own, and the same right to assert itself. Rather than elevating us above the world, critique has mired us in an impasse of claim and counter-claim.

The age of critique is now over, argues Laurent de Sutter, and in its place we need to develop a postcritical form of thinking, one he calls “superweak,” a form of thinking based not on establishing grounds, pronouncing judgment, and determining duty, but on welcoming possibility, exploring what the world has to offer, and cultivating a vertiginous appreciation for moving within a world less grounded and less bounded by the terms of critical reason.
About Laurent de Sutter
Laurent de Sutter is Professor of Legal Theory at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

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