ZusammenfassungIn diesem Artikel diskutieren wir Michel Foucaults Hauptwerke zum Thema „Wahnsinn und Psychiatrie“ von den Frühschriften bis in die siebziger Jahre. Zum einen rekonstruieren wir die globale theoretische und methodologische Entwicklung seiner Positionen im Lauf der verschiedenen Werkperioden. Zum anderen arbeiten wir Foucaults philosophische Überlegungen zum Gegenstand seiner Untersuchungen heraus. Nach der einleitenden Problemstellung zeigen wir entsprechend der neueren Forschung, inwiefern Foucaults frühe Positionen von 1954 (in der Einführung zu Binswangers Traum und Existenz sowie in Geisteskrankheit und Persönlichkeit) das spätere (...) Werk durch eine phänomenologische Deskription des Gegenstands und einen historisch-kritischen Anspruch vorbereitete. Davon ausgehend thematisieren wir die zentralen inhaltlichen und methodologischen Prämissen in Foucaults Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft von 1961. Seine Thesen zur „Abwesenheit des Wahnsinns“ in der Moderne verstehen wir als einen in sich widersprüchlichen Versuch, den Gegenstand der Untersuchung von gängigen Vorannahmen zu befreien. Anschließend situieren wir Foucaults Vorlesungen Die Macht der Psychiatrie von 1973/74 im Kontext seiner machtanalytischen Werkphase und betonen seinen erneuten Standpunktwechsel in den Annahmen zur „Produktivität“ des Wahnsinns als Machteffekt. Abschließend resümieren wir unsere Kritik im Zusammenhang mit der Rezeptionsgeschichte der dargestellten Studien und fragen nach der möglichen Bedeutung dieser Werke für die philosophische und historische Reflexion des psychiatrischen Gegenstandsfeldes. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 2, Page 184-208, February 2022. Being critical does not come easy, not even within Critical Theory. In this article I respond to criticism of my book from 2019, Capitalism, Alienation and Critique, arguing that contemporary Critical Theory has something to learn from the founding fathers. Firstly, for Adorno immanent critique has metaphysical implications beyond Honneth’s critique of bourgeois society as inconsistent in terms of its professed ideals. Secondly, immanent critique is not the same (...) as ideology critique, and when it comes to Horkheimer and Habermas, they conducted the latter rather than the former. Thirdly, even though today nature must be our concern, answers are to be found in politics and metaphysics rather than science. Finally, critique of neoliberalism should be conducted as critique of political economy, that is, ideology critique, rather than sociological descriptions of the empirical details of globalized capitalism. Denaturalizing economics is a condition for economic democracy. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present the main contributions to peace, democracy, and the philosophy of education in Colombia, made by philosopher Guillermo Hoyos-Vásquez (Medellín, 1935 – Bogotá, 2013). The work of this Colombian philosopher stands out for its important contributions to political philosophy as the vital, supportive, and responsible exercise of thought concerning the public interest. Using Kant’s concept of practical reason, Husserl’s lifeworld [Lebenswelt], and Habermas’s communicative action as starting points, Hoyos-Vásquez succeeded in going beyond these (...) political philosophers by trying to apply their ideas in the midst of the difficult context of corruption, drug trafficking and armed conflict in Colombia over the past five decades. At the same time, Hoyos-Vásquez developed throughout his life a varied public activity as a thinker and educator, belying the myth of the theoretical distance between the philosopher and his/her political present or historical reality. The thought of Guillermo Hoyos-Vásquez, and his public action as an educator, represent a substantial contribution to contemporary political and educational philosophy, maintaining a close connection between theory and practice. (shrink)

While Hegel's metaphysics was long reviled, it has garnered more interest in recent years, with even the so-called non-metaphysical Hegelians starting to explicitly discuss Hegel’s metaphysical commitments. This brings up the old question: what are the social-philosophical implications of Hegel’s metaphysics? This chapter provides a unique answer to this question by contrasting the former non-metaphysical reading (as developed by Robert Pippin) with a traditional way of interpreting Hegel’s metaphysics and social philosophy, whose lineage includes not Wittgenstein, Sellars, or Brandom, but (...) rather Schelling, Marx, and Adorno. After discussing the two varieties of metaphysics (Sections 1–3), I will argue that a traditional metaphysical Hegel is more realist when it comes to assessing the power of social structures (Section 4), focused on structural freedom rather than agency (Sections 5 and 6), and more empowering for and lenient towards individuals who can make their interests count and are free to be irrational and egoist (Section 7). (shrink)

De moderne filosofie lijdt aan muziekvergetelheid. Opvallend is echter dat filosofen, wanneer ze toch aandacht schenken aan muziek, hun aandacht bij voorkeur op één bepaald genre richten, namelijk de opera. Filosofen zoals Søren Kierkegaard en Friedrich Nietzsche lieten hun gedachten over Don Giovanni, Parsifal en Carmen gaan, terwijl omgekeerd de filosofie van Arthur Schopenhauer de opera heeft beïnvloed via Wagner. Diens werk lijkt zich op het snijpunt van het grensverkeer tussen moderne filosofie en moderne muziek te bevinden. Het was zijn (...) ambitie de menselijke existentie en de menselijke geschiedenis in één panoramisch oeuvre te vatten, vanaf het primordiale begin tot en met de dramatische finale die ophanden leek: een catastrofale apotheose die een geheel nieuwe toekomst mogelijk zou maken. Dat is althans de verhaallijn van zijn meesterwerk Der Ring des Nibelungen. Aan het slot van Götterdämmerung lijkt zich een algehele verwoesting te hebben voltrokken: ‘Everything is destroyed and there is an enigmatic kind of hovering over the scene of destruction’ (Badiou 2010, p. 106), een ambivalente stemming van hoop en destructie zette Wagner op muziek. Voor Wagner is dan ook een hoofdrol in deze studie weggelegd: voor zijn muziektheoretische geschriften (waarin hij over een ‘muziek van de toekomst’ filosofeerde), maar meer nog voor de muzikale totaalkunstwerken die hij daadwerkelijk componeerde. (shrink)

This volume aims to develop a philosophical diagnostic of the present, focussing on contemporary technoscience. psychoanalysis submits contemporary technoscientific discourse to a symptomatic reading, analysing it with evenly-poised attention and from an oblique perspective. Psychoanalysis is not primarily interested in protons, genes or galaxies, but rather in the ways in which they are disclosed and discussed, focussing on the symptomatic terms, the metaphors and paradoxes at work in technoscientific discourse. This monograph presents a psychoanalytical assessment of technoscience. The first four (...) chapters provide a short introduction into the psychoanalysis of technoscience, its basic concepts and methods, as developed Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Gaston Bachelard and Jacques Lacan. In subsequent chapters, this approach is fleshed out with the help of case histories (palaeoanthropology, classical conditioning and virology). Psychoanalysis reveals that, rather than by disinterested curiosity, technoscience is driven by desire, resistance and the will to control. Moreover, the focus is on primal scenes, such as Dubois’ quixotic quest for the missing link and Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex. In addition, psychoanalysis opts for triangulation: understanding technoscientific research by comparing it to “different scenes”: to genres of the imagination, notably novels, so that, in this volume, the discovery of a Homo erectus skull by Dubois is compared to missing link novels by Jules Verne and Jack London (dating from the same period), Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex is compared with B.F. Skinner’s novel Walden Two and virology as a research field is considered through the lens of viral fiction. (shrink)

This article starts by critically engaging with exclusion within the hegemonic European philosophical discourses based on racist and civilisational narratives both during the colonial past and in the present. As a counter-strategy, it rejects any defence of peripheral cultures based on particularist narratives or essentialising identities. In this light, it critically discusses the project of ethnophilosophy in the African context. The author defines relativism as a trap that imprisons postcolonial subjects rather than truly liberating them. The project of universalism is (...) neither European nor Eurocentric, but universal in scope, since intellectuals in all cultures make truth-claims. Accordingly, it pleads for conceptualising the universal not as a given that can be embraced or rejected, but as a goal and an infinite horizon that all cultures of the world should work on together. (shrink)

In der Debatte um Freiheit bei Foucault wird das „Freiheitsproblem“ verhandelt: Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Der Aufsatz leistet eine Rekonstruktion und interne Kritik der besten Interpretationsstrategien von Foucaults Werk, die die Lösung dieses Problems zum Ziel haben, und entwickelt dabei eine neue These: Freiheit als Fähigkeit zur reflexiven Kritik der eigenen Subjektivierung ist abhängig von freiheitlicher Subjektivierung durch politische Institutionen. Die Interpretationsstrategien werden systematisch unterschieden und anhand der Arbeiten exemplarischer (...) Vertreter_innen diskutiert: 1. Foucault ist kohärent, 2. Foucault korrigiert sich, 3. Foucault kritisiert kohärent, 4. Foucault ist nicht genug. Gegen Lemke wird argumentiert, dass Freiheit nicht durch eine anarchistische, sondern nur durch eine institutionalistische Foucault-Lesart bestimmt werden kann. Mit Saar wird gezeigt, dass das Ziel einer eindeutigen Definition von Freiheit im Gegensatz zur Methode der genealogischen Kritik steht und nur im Rahmen der normativen politischen Theorie verfolgt werden kann. In Auseinandersetzung mit Allen wird argumentiert, dass Freiheit nicht in linken Bewegungen verortet werden kann, sondern nur in demokratischen Institutionen. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn diesem Artikel diskutieren wir Michel Foucaults Hauptwerke zum Thema „Wahnsinn und Psychiatrie“ von den Frühschriften bis in die siebziger Jahre. Zum einen rekonstruieren wir die globale theoretische und methodologische Entwicklung seiner Positionen im Lauf der verschiedenen Werkperioden. Zum anderen arbeiten wir Foucaults philosophische Überlegungen zum Gegenstand seiner Untersuchungen heraus. Nach der einleitenden Problemstellung zeigen wir entsprechend der neueren Forschung, inwiefern Foucaults frühe Positionen von 1954 (in der Einführung zu Binswangers Traum und Existenz sowie in Geisteskrankheit und Persönlichkeit) das spätere (...) Werk durch eine phänomenologische Deskription des Gegenstands und einen historisch-kritischen Anspruch vorbereitete. Davon ausgehend thematisieren wir die zentralen inhaltlichen und methodologischen Prämissen in Foucaults Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft von 1961. Seine Thesen zur „Abwesenheit des Wahnsinns“ in der Moderne verstehen wir als einen in sich widersprüchlichen Versuch, den Gegenstand der Untersuchung von gängigen Vorannahmen zu befreien. Anschließend situieren wir Foucaults Vorlesungen Die Macht der Psychiatrie von 1973/74 im Kontext seiner machtanalytischen Werkphase und betonen seinen erneuten Standpunktwechsel in den Annahmen zur „Produktivität“ des Wahnsinns als Machteffekt. Abschließend resümieren wir unsere Kritik im Zusammenhang mit der Rezeptionsgeschichte der dargestellten Studien und fragen nach der möglichen Bedeutung dieser Werke für die philosophische und historische Reflexion des psychiatrischen Gegenstandsfeldes. (shrink)

This article aims at presenting the concept of “phantasmagorical interpellation”. This theoretical effort is inspired by Walter Benjamin’s concept of “phantasmagoria” and Louis Althusser’s concept of “ideological interpellation”. The proposal is to ally their respective philosophical work-in-progress in their “anthropological” and “aleatory” materialisms in order to provide a socio-political analysis of today’s capitalist aesthetics as displayed in postmodern architecture or the design of everyday life. The aim is also to open new perspectives of resistance to the normativity of the consumer (...) imaginary using a critical interpretation of cultural creations which, following the inspiration of both authors, could reveal a new subject history capable of burst onto the scene of history. (shrink)

With Hegel’s metaphysics attracting renewed attention, it is time to address a long-standing criticism: Scholars from Marx to Popper and Habermas have worried that Hegel’s metaphysics has anti-individualist and authoritarian implications, which are particularly pronounced in his Philosophy of History, since Hegel identifies historical progress with reason imposing itself on individuals. Rather than proposing an alternative non-metaphysical conception of reason, as Pippin or Brandom have done, this article argues that critics are broadly right in their metaphysical reading of Hegel’s central (...) concepts. However, they are mistaken about what Hegel’s approach entails, when one examines the specific types of states discussed by the philosopher in his Philosophy of History. Even on a traditional metaphysical reading, Hegel is not only non-authoritarian; he also makes a powerful argument concerning freedom, whereupon the freest society involves collective oversight and the shaping of social structures so as to ensure that they benefit everybody. (shrink)

The concept “immaterial labor” is one of the most hotly debated topics in contemporary social theory. In his 2007 work The Concept of Labor: Marx and His Critics, Sean Sayers offered an extensive response to several critical redefinitions of labor (Habermas, Benton, Arendt) and immaterial labor (Lazzarato, Hardt and Negri). Sayers returned to the subject in his more recent book, Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes.1 As one of the few accounts that contests the contemporary Marx critics with regard (...) to fundamental concepts such as labor and immaterial labor, his contribution should be taken seriously. (shrink)

This article focuses on five flaws of Christian Fuchs’ approach of Web 2.0 economy. Here, Fuchs’ views on immaterial production, productivity of labor, commodification of users’ data, underestimation of financial aspects of digital economy, and the violation of Marx’s laws of value production, rate of exploitation, fall tendency of profit rate, and overproduction crisis are put into question. This article defends the thesis Fuchs fails to apply Marxian political economy to the contemporary phenomena of Web 2.0 economy. It is possible (...) to avoid Fuchs’ errors, and another approach is possible to remake Marxism relevant for an analysis of the new media economy. (shrink)

Philosophy becomes speculative when it raises questions about the ultimate nature of being and thought. What does it mean to be? What does it mean to think? How are being and thought related? What does it mean to ask these questions? These questions have occupied a central place in philosophy throughout history, but have led a shadow existence in twentieth-century thought, which has cut the tie between reason and these fundamental questions, leaving the questions in the twilight, and reason instrumentalised. (...) A.N. Whitehead (1861-1947), one of the founders of analytic philosophy and co-author (with Bertrand Russell) of Principia Mathematica, is one of the few contemporary thinkers to have developed an explicit speculative philosophy. Unsurprisingly, his philosophy has played a marginal role in academic debates. In this study, the methodological foundation of Whitehead’s speculative thought is reconstructed. On the basis of a systematic and historical examination of the nature of the question of being, Whiteheads ontology of the event as the passage into novelty emerges in its full scope, allowing the reader to understand why and to what extent Whitehead has walked a different path than other contemporary thinkers. His philosophy contains a conception of reason that is not alien to newness and creativity while being more than procedural or pragmatic, and a mode of understanding existence that brings out the acuteness of freedom, value and legitimacy, as well as the unity of things, of thought and nature. In order to show what is really happening in this philosophy, the received interpretation of Whitehead’s ontology is radically dismantled. The central thought, that to be means to happen, is explained in a process of reiteration and gradual clarification, examining traditional philosophical problems in metaphysics and epistemology (on topics like: nature and matter, knowledge, categorical structure, freedom and necessity, truth and meaning, modality) from its perspective. What emerges is a philosophy in which the temporality of being, when taken seriously, changes the status of familiar problems and dualisms and offers possibilities for thought, which previously did not exist. Whitehead “hears” the classical questions of philosophy in a new way. Beyond the trenches of twentieth-century philosophy, Whitehead’s speculative thinking contains many elements that will be of value to those studying the foundations of thought today and looking for new directions. In a time when the dualism of nature and man is maintained cynically in our economies and dismantled, but only in a biologistic fashion and therefore only seemingly, as a cover-up, in science and philosophy, Whitehead’s new and creative way of hearing, and answering, old questions about ultimate concerns, when understood properly, is more up to date than ever before. (shrink)

National University of «Kyiv-Mohyla academy» MEETING THE OTHER AS A CHALLENGE 15th International Conference “Philosophy: the New Generation” Summaries of Reports Kyiv, NaUKMA, April 21–22, 2023 .

Modernity is better defined as a time orientation, instead of as a set of institutions, which usually smuggles in some provincial or other aprioristic assumptions. A time conception of modernity also gives a precise meaning to postmodernity. Modernity in this non-Eurocentric sense, entails several different, competing master narratives, different social forces of, and conflicts between, modernity and anti-modernity, and different cultural contextualizations of the past-future contrast. But these different varieties do not simply coexist and challenge each other, they are entangled (...) with each other in various ways. Starting from observing how different time warps were interwoven in vanguard modernist art, an analytical framework for grasping, understanding, and explaining the entanglement of modernities is spelled out. (shrink)

Methodological nationalism in sociological theory is unfit for the current globalized era, and should be discarded. In light of this contention, the present article discusses Max Weber’s view of language as a way to relativize the frame of the national society. While a “linguistic turn” in sociology since the 1960s has assumed that the sharing of language—linguistic community—stands as an intersubjective foundation for understanding of meaning, Weber saw linguistic community as constructed. From Weber’s rationalist, subjectivist, individualist viewpoint, linguistic community was (...) a result of social actions, not a prior entity as assumed by German metaphysical organicism (and historicist holism). Indeed, Central Europe in Weber’s era was a battlefield of linguistic nationalism(s); in contrast to the national societies of the Cold War period, national borders were unstable and ultimately the multiethnic empires of the region were dismantled after World War I into ethnolinguistic nation-states. Experience of this contemporary reality brought Weber to the core of the relationship between language and politics: A language community is an imaginary one demarcated not by language itself but by conscious opposition against outsiders, with monolingual contexts within borders created artificially by homogenizing policies like linguistic standardization and national education—the first modernity of language. In this way, Weber felt, language can be a means to domination. (shrink)

In contrast to other approaches, `modernity' in this article is not dealt with as a historical concept but as a normative-aesthetic term and as a mythical narrative in the sense of Nietzsche's `eternal recurrence of the same'. Paradoxically, there still exists a semantic shift between different historical concepts of modernity beginning in late antiquity and the Middle Ages up to the present confusions about `postmodernity'. However, the aesthetical bias of the discourse of modernity prevents any serious interpretation which is able (...) to refer these semantic shifts directly to some clear and incontestable socio-structural facts and developments. In its contemporary sociological form this discourse overlaps on the contrary with some main trends in aesthetic theory and practice: the exchangeability between `old' and `new' and the permanent suspension of the boundaries between `art' and `life'. Consequently, aesthetics as well as sociology are describing modernity as a cultural system which is `playing' with its own fundamental differentiations between `in' and `out' or self-reference and other-reference. (shrink)

The twin theories of late 20th-century societal constellations, functionalist modernization theory and neo-Marxist theories of late capitalism, fell into crisis and disrepute during the 1970s and 1980s. Social theory responded to such double crisis of the theorizing of `capitalism' and of `modernization' by embracing the term `modernity', a term that, almost unknown in social thought before the end of the 1970s, appeared to provide a new common ground in terms of representing the present societal constellation. At the same time, however, (...) the move towards such a common reference term appeared to entail the loss of all possibility of critique. Traditionally, critique used to embrace modernity (even without using the term) and to denounce capitalism because of its inability to complete the project of modernity - or rather: because of the obstacles it posed to such completion. To use the term `modernity' for a contemporary reality that was without doubt capitalist as well, made such a conceptual strategy impossible. Instead of returning to standard theories of capitalism, however, it is argued here that both capitalism and critique need to be reconceptualized in the light of their relation to modernity if the both intellectual and sociopolitical transformations since the 1970s are to be taken seriously. (shrink)

En el marco de un nuevo descubrimiento de la fenomenología, este trabajo ofrece diferentes argumentos para superar la clásica interpretación de Husserl considerándolo un representante prototípico del solipsismo. En primer lugar, se refuta la interpretación mentalista de Dreyfus de la fenomenología husserliana, mostrando que su programa filosófico va más allá de la tradicional dicotomía entre internalismo y externalismo; en segundo lugar, se señalan algunas de las principales contribuciones realizadas por la fenomenología de Husserl al campo de las ciencias cognitivas y (...) a la filosofía analítica de las mentes, destacando la importancia concedida a las síntesis pasivas en la llamada fenomenología genética. In the frame of a new discovery of phenomenology, the present essay offers different arguments to overcome the classical interpretation ofHusserl considering him a prototypical solipsist. First we refute Dreyfus' mentalistic misunderstanding of Husserlian phenomenology, and show that his philosophical program is beyond the traditional dichotomy between internalism and externalism. Second, it is our aim to point out some of the fundamental contributions made by Husserl's phenomenology to the cognitive sciences and analytical philosophy of mind, especially highlighting the importance attributed to passive synthesis in his genetic phenomenology. (shrink)

Weiming’s program of overcoming the enlightenment mentality and throws a critical light on his conceptions of religious or spiritual Confucianism, of a Confucian modernity, and of the multiple modernities theory in general. It defends a unitary rather than multiple concept of modernity in terms of the realization of a morally controlled principle of free subjectivity and tries to show how Confucianism, understood as a secular ethics, could contribute to this goal.

Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Karsten Schubert liefert die erste systematische Rekonstruktion der sozialphilosophischen Debatte um Freiheit bei Foucault und eine neue Lösung für das Freiheitsproblem: Freiheit als die Fähigkeit zur reflexiven Kritik der eigenen Subjektivierung – kurz: Freiheit als Kritik – ist das Resultat von freiheitlicher Subjektivierung in politischen Institutionen. Der Band zeigt so die Konsequenzen von Foucaults Freiheitsdenken für die Demokratietheorie und die allgemeine sozialphilosophische Freiheitsdiskussion auf.

Die Simmel-Cassirer-Kontroverse behandelt den grundlegenden technikphilosophischen Gegensatz zwischen Kulturpessimismus und Kulturoptimismus. Diesen virtuellen Dialog beider Denker arbeitet Oliver Honer neu auf und entwickelt in einem aufsteigenden Reflexionsgang die Simmel'sche Rede von der »kulturellen Logik der Objekte« zum Begriff. Damit modelliert er das Verhältnis agierender Individuen zu ihren jeweiligen Möglichkeitsräumen und zeigt deren prekären Subjektstatus in diesen Räumen auf. Die dabei freigelegten Verhältnisse eröffnen angesichts technisch induzierter Eigenlogiken neue Wege einer dialektischen Kulturkritik.

Como tesis de este artículo se plantea que la filosofía heideggeriana posibilita meditar en torno a la experiencia del reconocimiento del otro. Después de poner en cuestión algunas de las críticas dirigidas a Heidegger debido a su énfasis sobre el ámbito ontológico, se aborda el sentido del concepto de reconocimiento y su nexo con la noción de cercanía, para culminar en la identificación de la cercanía con el lenguaje. Esta identificación dará a la experiencia del reconocimiento un carácter particular (óntico- (...) ontológico), que permitirá comprender su “esencia”. La pregunta por la condición de posibilidad del reconocimiento conducirá al concepto de “pre-sentimiento”, no abordado por Heidegger pero posibilitado por su filosofar. Se concluye con la concepción del reconocimiento como condición estructural de la existencia humana. (shrink)

In order to understand Hegel's approach to philosophy, we need to ask why, and how, he reacts to the well-known criticism of German Romantics, like Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel, against philosophical system building in general, and against Kant's system in particular. Hegel's encyclopedic system is a topical ordering of categorically different ontological realms, corresponding to different conceptual forms of representation and knowledge. All in all it turns into a systematic defense of Fichte's doctrine concerning the primacy of us as actors (...) with respect to any knowledge claim or scientific theory. Hegel's limitations of the principle of causality and of the possibility of using mathematical methods in science show, in fact, how a merely compatibilist solution of Kant's third antinomy can be overcome. (shrink)

Two distinct doctrines of the will operate in Nietzsche. On one, each person has a will that grows out of their engagement with life. This view can be the basis for a feminist epistemology. On the other, the will must be stimulated through the creation of unattainable goals and games of seduction. This view of the will is misogynist, as it posits a self that must constitute for itself a dominated and silenced other.

Starting from a Foucaultian perspective, the article draws attention to current developments that neutralise democracy through the 'governmentalisation of democracy' and processes of 'governmental subjectivation'. Here, ideas of Rancière are introduced in order to clarify how democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of 'political subjectivation', that is, a disengagement with governmental subjectivation through the verification of one's equality in demonstrating a wrong. We will argue that democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of political subjectivation, and that today's consensus (...) society tends to depoliticize all processes of subjectivation. A final step in the argumentation is to introduce the concept of 'pedagogic subjectivation'—to be understood as the experience of potentiality—that is to be distinguished from governmental subjectivation and also from political subjectivation. The concept 'pedagogic subjectivation' is proposed as a way of thinking of the school as a public place. (shrink)

In 1983, two philosophers, Michel Foucault and Peter Sloterdijk, engaged with ancient Cynicism and the outspokenness and laughter of Diogenes as a critical practice. Foucault and Sloterdijk did so to position themselves ‘after’ critique: ‘after’ a period of and ‘beyond’ a certain style of dogmatism and theoretical deadlocks that troubled left thinking in the early 1980s (and continue to do so today). I show how Foucault and Sloterdijk, while differing in their critical politics, both read Diogenes’ politics of truth as (...) radical subversive otherness. While Diogenes performed this antagonizing critique from a subaltern position, his politics nevertheless risked ending up in a self-righteous intransigence to know the truth. As an alternative, I turn to another politics of laughter in Hellenistic philosophy, that of the Thracian Maid, and its sceptical impulse that is situated ‘before’, ‘beyond’ and ‘after’ critique in the space of what Hans Blumenberg calls Nachdenklichkeit (pensiveness). (shrink)

By applying classical and contemporary insights of the phenomenological tradition to key findings within the literature on stereotype threat, this paper considers the embodied effects of everyday exposure to racism and makes a contribution to the growing field of applied phenomenology. In what follows, the paper asks how a phenomenological perspective can both contribute to and enrich discussions of ST in psychology. In answering these questions, the paper uses evidence from social psychology as well as first personal testimonies from members (...) of marginalized groups to argue that subjectively experienced racial oppression is embodied and thus has effects on selfhood that are harmful. More specifically, it makes the case that what are most often considered to be temporary or context-based consequences of ST are in fact more wide reaching and harmful than assumed in that the harms that result from suffering ST become a part of one’s identity, and thus a background lens through which one experiences the world. (shrink)

The main concern of both Berdjaev's and Bulgakov's philosophical strivings consists in developing a concept of the person as the foundation of human dignity and creativity within a Christian world view. Once attracted by Marxism with its emphasis on human dignity and social justice, they started to struggle against Marxism's atheist materialism because of its lack of a concept of person. However, the same concern will lead both thinkers down very different paths with different consequences. This paper argues that, even (...) though Berdjaev has become famous as a philosopher of the person and a herald of creative ethics, Bulgakov developed a more solid Christian justification of the same claims. Both systems are presented by means of comparing some crucial notions within their concepts of personality—potentiality, trinity and autonomy. (shrink)

This contribution is a critical and constructive engage ment with discourse ethics. First, it clarifies why discourse ethics has difficulties with the grounding and application of moral norms. Second, it turns to a positive appropriation of the formal and proce dural aspects of discourse ethics. The goal is the elaboration of an ethics that is able to incorporate the material aspects of goods and the formal dimension of ethical validity and consensuability. Every morality is the formal application of some substantive (...) good. Every ethical perspective demands its evaluation in terms of its uni versability. In order to achieve this mediation, it is suggested that we must incorporate not only the historical dimension of moral systems, but also the role of critical consciousness and the negativity embod ied by those who are victims of the existing consensus. The essay con cludes with six points that need to be considered when formulating a material ethics that is universalizable and, most importantly, that can address the massive poverty and dehumanization of those excluded from the present community of communication. Key Words: application • consensual • corporeality • discourse ethics • formal • grounding • intersubjective • Kantian • liberation • ethics • material • phronesis • procedural • validity. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The authors of this paper seek to comprehend, on the basis of ethics of discourse and communicative philosophy, the dimensions of human existence in times of war. This involves solving the following research tasks: to show the importance of moral and ethical norms in the structure of human existence and to emphasize the need for their observance by a person in the realities of war; to find out what the role of responsibility and co-responsibility is in preserving the space (...) of human existence in times of war; to explore the influence of discourse on the establishment of rational and social dimensions of human existence, formation of communicative space of understanding. _Theoretical basis._ The ideas of communicative philosophy and principles of discourse ethics, focused on the problems of substantiating ethical norms and values in their relationship with the human life world, and its activities are underlying the research. The analysis of human existence in times of war was carried out considering the theoretical and methodological foundations of philosophical anthropology. _Originality._ It is substantiated that the recognition of the universality of moral norms and values, and the productive power of communication contribute to deepening the understanding of the complexity and versatility of human existence in times of war. It has been determined that human existence’s rational and moral dimensions acquire particular significance in the context of russian aggression against Ukraine. The role of discourse was defined for affirming the humanistic foundations of human existence, in achieving cohesion, interaction, social solidarity, which is a condition for human development as a collective and unique being. It is noted that in war conditions the value of individual forms of human existence is complemented by the obligatory responsibility and co-responsibility for a person, awareness of the significance of coexistence in a situation where there is a threat to human life. _Conclusions._ The study of human existence involves the use of the methodological potential of discourse ethics, the significance of the ideas of which is increasing in the modern world because of the dangers caused by russian aggression against Ukraine. The recognition of the power of universal moral norms and the productive power of communication results in the affirmation of the humanistic foundations of human existence, the formation of the communicative space of understanding and consent necessary for a person. In times of war, the need for communicative rationalization of human existence, awareness of the value of morality and human humanity becomes obvious. (shrink)

This article explores Hegels concept of education within the context of his idea of ‘second nature’. Hegel believes that institutional life forms, which have been formed through education, culture, technical and social progress, constitute the ‘second nature’ of human beings. The immediacy of institutional forms which act as humans’ ‘second nature’ is the product of social and cultural mediation. The phenomenon of morality is here of central importance, because through morality the natural arbitrariness of the will is transformed and the (...) substantial spirit of freedom prevails. In Hegel’s opinion, human individuals differ from animals on account of education ; only through education does the human being become that which he should be. Bildung is a ‘formatio’ of the personality, which transcends particular knowledge, because it enables one to make a judgment concerning relationships and objects of our experience. By education human beings achieve the ability to raise themselves up from the concrete to the universal. We become conscious thereby that we exist within the ‘realm of the spirit’ and educate ourselves from its abundance. (shrink)

This article outlines arguments in Schiller's major philosophical works, including his writings on tragedy, "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man" and "On Naive and Sentimental Poetry.".

The question examined in this article is whether the contemporary world system is leading to a world society. World system connotes that we live in an increasingly interdependent world. The author examines the nature of world system in relation to world society. Then the author examines the nature of the world system as a growing interconnected global order, and the yet non-existent world or global society, a society as a network of social relations with mutual expectations and normative consensus. Difference (...) perspectives of world society are discussed, followed by a focus on cosmopolitan ethics and transnational civil society. Institutions of democratic world society and the implications are examined. The author concludes: more and more people come to live in a single world system; a transnational civil society and an international public space are growing; a global communitarian culture and a cosmopolitan ethics are gaining ground. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 3 Seiten: 456-469.

This paper deals with Ágnes Heller’s suggestion, in A Theory of Modernity (1999), to ascribe to science a central role in the ongoing development of modernity. As we shall argue, this is not merely a historical issue but, rather, a historical-philosophical one that entails the problem of defining modernity, science and technology and their mutual interconnections. As for modernity, according to Heller, it is a free developmental project without any foundations other than freedom itself. In particular, the evolution of science (...) and technology is one of its main developmental tendencies. Science, she argues, has become the dominant world explanation while technological thought is the corresponding dominant (but not unique) imaginary institution. Her attempt to isolate the essential cultural features of science-technology owes much to Habermas’s analyses of the 1960s on the technocratic developments of contemporary societies legitimized through an ideological employment of science. Like Habermas, Heller embraces an instrumental and problem-solving conception of technology and ‘normal’ science which appears questionable, however, in the light of conclusions on the intrinsic creativity of the science-technology interface deriving from historical epistemology and an externalist history of science. Considerations and examples derived from the recent agenda of historical epistemology could integrate Heller’s philosophical and cultural analysis of the role of science in modernity while challenging some of her assumptions. (shrink)

This article discusses the problem of understanding in Adorno’s critical theory. It is argued that another rationale for the contingency of understanding is provided by Adorno, one that justifies understanding critical theory as disclosing critique. For Adorno, what is responsible for the contingency of understanding is not the local limitation of our knowledge and vocabulary, but the presupposition of understanding itself. In this article, two readings of this contingency of understanding are distinguished: an epistemo-critical one and an ideology-critical one. Finally, (...) the case is made for adopting the epistemo-critical view of the contingency of understanding in preference to the ideology-critical view - not least because it contains a normative impulse which goes beyond contextualism. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo presenta la idea de que el ensayo tiene una estética, un estilo literario, pero al tiempo esta estética es un estilo mental que presupone una ética como base. Por tanto, pensamos el ensayo como filosofía. Es más: en la modernidad, la filosofía es ensayística. Esta filosofía del ensayo tiene cinco características principales que son inseparables entre sí. El ensayo se basa en el mundo de la vida y en consecuencia es una filosofía experimental opuesta al sistema racionalista. (...) Esta filosofía es una filosofía de la finitud, antiabsolutista, que defiende la relevancia filosófica del sujeto concreto y real. Finalmente, el ensayo entiende la reflexión crítica como un método de libertad. La filosofía ensayística contiene una ética con todas las reservas que evita tanto el totalitarismo racionalista como el nihilismo esteticista, y que concluye en un pluralismo dialógico.: This paper introduces the idea that essay has a aesthetics, a literary style, but at the same time this aesthetics is a mental style that presupposes a ethics as ground. Therefore, we think the essay as philosophy. More precisely: in modernity, philosophy is essayistic. This essay’s philosophy has five main characteristics that are inseparable from each other. Essay is based on life-world and in consequence is a experimental philosophy opposed to the rationalist system. This philosophy is a philosophy of finitude, anti-absolutist, that defends the philosophical relevance of the concrete and real subject. Finally, the essay understands critical reflection as a method of freedom. Essayistic philosophy contains a ethics that avoids both rationalist totalitarianism and aestheticist nihilism, and that concludes in a dialogical pluralism. (shrink)

In the contemporary epistemological debate on social reality, characterized by the crisis of post-modern theories and the emergence of new forms of realism, are there any approaches not acknowledging some specific ontological character to the construction of social objects? The question is apparently rhetorical, but the implication of this problem are not obvious. In the sociological literature the opposition between reality and construction is not clearly defined. Sometimes it is considered a dichotomy, in other situations the synthesis of alternative theses (...) in a dialectical horizon. The more systematic attempt considers reality and construction as analytical macro-dimensions where the relation between social ontology and epistemology operates. From this stance, the acknowledgement of the role of social construction in a wider realist horizon is the true overtaking of postmodern philosophy. If it is true that facts exist beyond representations, it is also true that representations themselves have a specific effect on reality, who continually re-structures itself around specific relations of emergent power. Stating that reality is socially constructed is an evident limit of postmodern theories. On the other hand, stating that only facts exist constitute an impoverishment of realism and its replacement in neo-positivism. Social phenomena are real because they are based on specific properties of the inter-subjective construction of social reality. This thesis represents the revitalization of an advanced, anti-positivistic realism and the definition of the specificity of social objects. The aim of this essay is to search for a specific place of construction within the development of realist social ontology. (shrink)