A Theory of Regret

“Drawing on discourses of philosophy, cinema, literature, institutions, and bureaucracies, Brian Price has crafted an original thesis about regret as an affective imprint of thought. Against the constraint imposed by the imperative to act without remorse, he painstakingly unpacks regret’s characteristic shifts and pauses, identifying in them a transformative potential that restores thought to the openness of contingency and freedom.” - Rey Chow, Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature, Duke University

“Brian Price brings forth his deep and surprising insights on the relation of ethics to epistemology with clarity, depth, and humor. Thinking of regret as a modality of moral reasoning, Price shakes up our self-assurance and self-satisfaction with our thoughts and our mode of existence. A Theory of Regret is a compelling and provocative work that will stimulate debate in a variety of domains, including political theory, moral philosophy, and film theory.” - D. N. Rodowick, author of Elegy for Theory

"I marvel at the argument and the intricate conceptual architecture of the book. This is an incisive, exciting, and very welcome meditation on the power of regret to make us more thoughtful human beings." - Katherine Goktepe, Contemporary Political Theory

"[A Theory of Regret] is navigating one of the most fraught questions of our current scholarly moment, in which theory is being surpassed, elegized, ignored, and derided, and yet so very many of us still crave its appearance, its surprises, and its speculations. Thus, among the many other things it is, A Theory of Regret is also a powerful model for how to write a theory of anything whatsoever." - Eugenie Brinkema, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies