In a period of mounting global anxiety and widespread political unrest about democracy’s future, the moment has come for more thinking about thinking, and for considering the surprising connections between thinking and democracy.

• A book that aims to persuade scholars and publics alike that far too much current commentary about democracy is failing to come to grips thoughtfully with the predicaments, problems and puzzles of our age
• Critically engages the old prejudice, stretching back to Adam Smith and other 18^th-century founders of the social sciences, that modernity is socially disfigured and politically endangered by commoners’ thoughtlessness
• An unorthodox meditation on what it means to think: thinking as embodied, publicly framed by language games, a catalyst of new ways of seeing the world, practised in various ways at various moments by all people, not just philosophers, experts, poets, novelists and other intellectuals
• An illustration of these precepts by examining the manifold reasons why originally 18^th-century notions of civil society are transformative of the meaning of democracy; why the birth of green politics radically challenges the prevailing anthropocentrism within the way people imagine and live democracy; and why in these times it is necessary to return to a foundational question first posed by the sceptics and anti-democrats of the classical Greek world: why the political form known as democracy is so vulnerable to democide, to efforts by democrats and anti-democrats alike to destroy it?
• Further development of the idea and institutional dynamics of monitory democracy
• A critique of the dogma of pessimism; and why institutions and everyday experiences affected by the flow of time cannot be defined and lived with any absolute certainty

The era when theorists could urge democrats to whistle their way through the world with an air of ‘philosophical superficiality and light-mindedness’ (Richard Rorty) is over. In a period of mounting global anxiety and widespread political unrest about democracy’s future, the moment has come for more thinking about thinking, and for considering the surprising connections between thinking and democracy. This book provocatively encourages readers to pose afresh key questions – what does it mean to think about democracy, and what exactly is thinking? – and offers them real-world examples of how in these troubled times adventurous thinking about democracy can contribute in practice to new ways of rejuvenating its spirit and substance. Running through the pages of this assemblage of lectures is a passionate belief that in these troubled times democracy – popular self-government and a whole way of life committed to the non-violent refusal of arbitrary power – remains an indispensable planetary ideal.

A refreshing and inspiring must-read for those concerned and affected by our turbulent times. John Keane, a seminal thinker, shares experience, knowledge, and wisdom, from a relational and embodied perspective nourished by a diversity of sources and a deep commitment to democratic values. – Colombina Schaeffer, Ciudadanía Inteligente and People Powered

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