Wendy Brown, philosopher: "Instead of being so reactive to everything the right says or does, the left needs to set out its own vision."

To celebrate the publication of the Spanish edition of her latest book, Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber, Wendy Brown, UPS Foundation Professor in the Institute's School of Social Science, spoke with EL PAÍS about the relevance of Weber today and how both knowledge and politics have been stricken by nihilistic boundary breakdowns and degradation of values.

"Wendy Brown, 67, is one of the most influential American thinkers in the field of political science. From the left, she has theorized about how neoliberalism laid the foundations for authoritarian populism, and studied predicaments of sovereignty, tolerance and identity politics. Nihilistic Times continues the concern with nihilism with which she concluded her 2019 work, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Anti-Democratic Politics in the West.  

After retiring from the University of California, Berkeley three years ago, she accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the former intellectual home of—among others—Einstein and Oppenheimer."

Read more in Spanish and in English at EL PAÍS.