The Business of LIfe and Death, Volume 1: Values and Economies - Softcover

This book examines the intersecting fields of economics, power politics, knowledge, and reality, with a vision wide and deep enough to place social and political philosophy as the new ‘first philosophy’, as Descartes placed epistemology and Lévinas placed ethics. Continuing the work of John McMurtry, Baruchello’s research fills in the unacknowledged missing pieces in the work of well known writers including Paul Krugman, Naomi Klein, and Noam Chomsky. The complete picture, presented here and in The Business of Life and Death Volume 2, Politics, Law, and Society, lays bare the frightening reality of how capital has controlled civil society, to the detriment of the life-flourishing of its members. Yet its argument remains optimistic: it shows how the power of capital can be escaped, and how the life-ground of human goodness can replace it.

Born in Genoa, Italy, Giorgio Baruchello is an Icelandic citizen and works as Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Akureyri, Iceland. He read philosophy in Genoa and Reykjavík, Iceland, and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Guelph, Canada. His publications encompass several different areas, especially social philosophy, theory of value, and intellectual history. Since 2005 he edits Nordicum-Mediterraneum: The Icelandic E-Journal of Nordic and Mediterranean Studies.