This paper attempts to explore the effects of the political developments that followed the financial crisis of 2008, particularly after the uprisings of 2011, on the field of philosophy and more specifically on philosophical practice. Philosophical practice concerns not only methodology and forms of argumentation but also and mainly the dispositive of the philosopher him/herself, that is the place he/she occupies and from which h/she speaks. Drawing from Gramsci’s and Althusser’s reading of Machiavelli an argument is developed according to which (...) certain conjunctures produce the possibility of a void both at the political and the philosophical level; a void which can disrupt the normal reproduction of political relations of power and of the dominant philosophical discourse. The task of materialist philosophy, which in those circumstances becomes even more urgent, is not to devote itself in securing the piece on the field of the philosophical and political battle but in contrast to point out the possibility of the emergence of the void and articulate philosophical positions aimed to intensify the rupture and thus to produce effects tending to realise the possibility of radical change. (shrink)

Although Machiavelli would appear to be only a minor figure in Foucault's genealogy of modernity, this article examines his 1977–1978 lectures at the Collège de France and argues that the author of The Prince plays a pivotal role in the development of ‘governmental reason’ and its critique. These lectures indicate how The Prince serves as the negative touchstone for the emergence of an extensive and evolving discourse on government, confirming that Machiavelli was more than a passing interest for Foucault. I (...) consider two ‘Anti-Machiavellian’ episodes in Foucault's genealogy as especially significant: the sixteenth-century discourses of the state and the eighteenth-century discourses of political economy. These moments are significant both in showing how the idea of government hinges on a repudiation of the political lessons of The Prince and in establishing the link between governmentality and another term so important for Foucault's thinking in this period – biopower. Finally, I show how the art of critique – or, what Foucault describes as ‘the art of not being governed quite so much’ – finds a timely resource in the figure of Machiavelli. (shrink)

This article revises Foucault's account of biopolitics in the light of the impact of the molecular and digital revolutions on `the politics of life itself'. The confluence of the molecular and digital revolutions informationalizes life, providing an account of what it is to be a living thing in terms of complex adaptive and continuously emergent, informationally constituted, systems. Also revisiting Foucault's The Order of Things and its interrogation of the modern analytics of finitude, the article argues that our contemporary politics (...) of life is therefore distinguished by the quasi-transcendentals that now distinguish informationalized life: circulation, connectivity and complexity. Here, too, the article argues, the figure of Man, which once united the quasi-transcendentals of life, labour and language, is replaced by the contingency that now unites circulation, connectivity and complexity. Observing that a life of continuous emergence is also one in which production is continuously allied with destruction, such a life is lived as the continuous emergency of its own emergence. This account of contemporary biopolitics, together with its emergency of emergence, contrasts, in particular, with that offered by Agamben in his appropriation of Schmitt. (shrink)

Can compensation repair the moral harm of a previous wrongful act? On the one hand, some define the very function of compensation as one of restoring the moral balance. On the other hand, the dominant view on compensation is that it is insufficient to fully repair moral harm unless accompanied by an act of punishment or apology. In this paper, I seek to investigate the maximal potential of compensation. Central to my argument is a distinction between apologetic compensation and non-apologetic (...) compensation. Apologetic compensation, I argue, is an act that expresses regret and apology by means of some offer of money, goods, or services. Non-apologetic compensation is an act that seeks to restore loss or harm without expressing regret or apology. In the paper, I defend the view that acts of compensation can be apologetic and argue that such apologetic compensation is sufficient for moral repair. (shrink)

In this thesis I outline a view of primary legislation from a systems perspective. I suggest that systems theory and, in particular, autopoietic theory, as modified by field theory, is a mechanism for understanding how society operates. The description of primary legislation that I outline differs markedly from any conventional definition in that I argue that primary legislation is not, and indeed cannot be, either a law or any of the euphemisms that are usually accorded to an enactment by a (...) parliament. I cite two reasons for such a conclusion. The primary reason for my conclusion is that I see primary legislation as being an output of a particular subsystem of society, while the law is the output of another subsystem of society. I argue that these outputs are the discrete products of separate subsystems of society. I argue that primary legislation should be viewed as a trinity. The first state of this trinity is that, upon enactment, primary legislation is a brute fact in that it is but a thing and the only property of this thing is that of being a text. The second state of this trinity is that following the act of enactment, the thing enacted will be reproduced and this reproduction is a separate thing that will sit in some repository until used. The third state of this trinity is that, upon use, this thing that is primary legislation will be transformed into an object and the user will attribute such functions and attributes to that object as are appropriate to the context within which the object is used. The thing has therefore become an object and an institutional fact. The second reason for my conclusion that primary legislation is not a law relates to the fact that the thing that is primary legislation is a text and the only function of a text is that it is available to be read. That is to say, of itself, a text is incapable of doing anything: it is the reader who defines the status of the text and attributes functions and attributes. Upon use, primary legislation thus becomes a censored input for future action and one of these actions may be some statement by a court of law. I assert that the view of primary legislation that has been accepted within the body politic is the product of the discourse of a particular subsystem of society that I have designated 'the legal practice', and I outline why and how this has occurred. Outlining a view about primary legislation also necessitates outlining a view as to the nature of the law. I assert that the law is a myth and I see this myth as a product of the discourse of the legal practice. I have asserted that although it is the judges that state the law, such statements flow from the discourse of those who practise the law. (shrink)