What does political agency mean for those who don't know what to do or can't be bothered to do it? This book develops a novel account of collective emancipation in which freedom is achieved not through knowledge and action but via doubt and inertia.

In essays that range from ancient Greece to the end of the Anthropocene, Bull addresses questions central to contemporary political theory in novel readings of texts by Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, and Arendt, and shows how classic philosophical problems have a bearing on issues like political protest and climate change. The result is an entirely original account of political agency for the twenty-first century in which uncertainty and idleness are limned with utopian promise.

In On Mercy, Malcolm Bull conducts a clever thought experiment on the question of whether mercy might not only be reconciled with justice but could displace it at the centre of our political life -- David A. Skeel * Wall Street Journal *
Charmingly erudite and an important work of political philosophy -- Joe Humphreys * Irish Times (for On Mercy) *
Highly compelling. Bull is to be congratulated on presenting such a thought-provoking study -- Alexander Marr * Apollo (for Inventing Falsehood, Making Truth) *
Stimulating and delightful, subtle and deep -- Taylor Carman * Times Literary Supplement (on Anti-Nietzsche) *
All of Bull's studies are utopian, in an oblique, offbeat way. In the spirit of Marx, you must see the future as in a glass darkly so as not to make a fetish of it. He combines a keenly analytical mind with a visionary impulse. It is a style for our times. -- Terry Eagleton * London Review of Books *

Malcolm Bull teaches at Oxford University. His previous books include Anti-Nietzsche and On Mercy, which was a 2019 New Statesman Book of the Year. He is on the editorial board of New Left Review and writes for the London Review of Books.