In the context of the worsening economic crisis analogies tend to be drawn between the economic and political crisis in Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the current situation. Now as then, it is argued, there is the risk that a systemic economic crisis and the crisis of representative politics will in turn lead to authoritarian outcomes. Rarer, however, is the idea that the current political and economic crisis may lead to a “progressive” outcome. This article examines both options (...) under the light of the thinking of one of the most important interpreters of political crisis and change in the 1920s and 1930s: Antonio Gramsci. One of the central arguments in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is the crisis of parliamentarism and democratic politics. Gramsci did not limit his analysis to the crisis however. His theoretical undertaking also consisted in the attempt to imagine the conditions for moving beyond the democratic crisis in a progressive manner. What emerges is an existing continuity between the Gramscian categories of Cesarism-Bonapartism, economic-corporative State, hegemonic crisis and contemporary politics, particularly with reference to phenomena such as populism, technocracy and neo-liberalism; the utility of the conceptual category of Passive Revolution to comprehend the current forms of exerting power and building social consent; the potential fruitfulness of Gramsci’s schemata on counter-hegemonies, to understand the changes in the party-organization and the possibilities of building counter-hegemonies. (shrink)

This paper examines the views of Fogelin, Woods, Johnstone, etc., concerning deep disa-greements, force-five standoffs, philosophical controversies, etc. My approach is to reconstruct their views and critiques of them as meta-arguments, and to elaborate the meta-argumentative aspects of radical disa-greements. It turns out that deep disagreements are resolvable to a greater degree than usually thought, but only by using special principles and practices, such as meta-argumentation, ad hominem argumentation, Ramsey’s principle, etc.

A critical examination of the dialectical approach, focusing on a comparison ofthe illative and the dialectical definitions of argument. I distinguish a moderate, a strong and a hyper dialectical conception of argument. I critique Goldman's argument for the moderate conception and Johnson's argument for the strong conception, and argue that the moderate conception is correct.

This is a critical appreciation of Govier’s 2006 ISSA keynote address on the fallacy of composition, and of economists’ writings on this fallacy in economics. I argue that the “fallacy of composition” is a problematical concept, because it does not denote a distinctive kind of argument but rather a plurality, and does not constitute a distinctive kind of error, but rather reduces to oversimplification in arguing from micro to macro. Finally, I propose further testing of this claim based on examples (...) involving public vs. private debt in economics; oligarchic tendencies in politics, and the emergence of societal wholes in sociology. (shrink)

One of the ideas elaborated in my recent book is what I called the hermeneutical\nprinciple of the asymmetry between negative and positive evaluation: ’this\nprescribes that the textual evidence needed to justify a negative, unfavourable\nevaluation must be of a high quality, strength, and rigor, whereas for a positive\nevaluation less exacting standards are sufficient’ (Finocchiaro, 1988: 247). There,\nI applied this principle to several cases, relating in one way or another to\nGramsci: some were his critiques of other authors, some were my own critiques\nof (...) his ideas, and some were critiques by others; and the issues involved such\nquestions as the status of Marxism as a religion, as a science, and as politics.\nI believe the principle ought to be applied to book reviews. Now, Geoffrey\nHunt’s recent review of my book in this journal (Hunt, 1990) seems to me to be a\nclear violation of this principle, and therefore an answer to it will not only set the\nrecord straight, but may prove generally instructive. That is, his review devotes a\ngreat deal of space to criticizing my work, and very little to analysing, describing,\nor even summarizing it; and whatever description we find, it is largely inaccurate,\nunfair, and one-sided. In short, what he advances is a negative evaluation of my\nbook not properly and adequately documented and justified. (shrink)