Roberto Esposito

In this book, Roberto Esposito continues his philosophical exploration of the relation between institutions and human life. Starting from the enigmatic Latin term vitam instituere, he charts its early emergence in modern philosophy and its development along a path that culminates in a novel understanding of the relationship between politics and life. Although the concept of institutio vitae originated in...

Amid a devastating economic crisis, two tragic events coming from the outside – the wave of immigration and Islamic terrorism – have radically changed the profile and significance of the space we call Europe. Given a paradigm leap of this sort, philosophical reflection is in a position to exert its creative power more than other types of knowledge. But this...

The Faces of the Adversary by Roberto Esposito is a poetic and historically layered book that draws on a famous, and famously opaque, passage from the Old Testament to shed light on the vision of self and domination that has profoundly shaped western identity and left its mark on western culture. These ten lines from Genesis tell the tale of...

After two years of global pandemic, it is no surprise that immunisation is now at the centre of our experience. From the medicalisation of politics to the disciplining of individuals, from lockdowns to mass vaccination programmes, contemporary societies seem to be firmly embedded in a syndrome of immunity. To understand the ambivalent effects of this development, it is necessary to...

This new book by the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito addresses the profound crisis of contemporary politics and examines some of the philosophical approaches that have been used to try to understand and go beyond this crisis. Two approaches have been particularly influential – one indebted to the thought of Martin Heidegger, the other indebted to Gilles Deleuze. While opposed in...

The pandemic has brought into sharp relief the fundamental relationship between institution and human life: at the very moment when the virus was threatening to destroy life, human beings called upon institutions – on governments, on health systems, on new norms of behaviour – to combat the virus and preserve life. Drawing on this and other examples, Roberto Esposito argues...

For some while we have been witnessing a series of destructive phenomena which seem to indicate a full-fledged return to the negative on the world stage – from terrorism and armed conflict to the threat of environmental catastrophe. At the same time, politics seems increasingly impotent in the face of these threats. In this book, the leading Italian philosopher Roberto...