Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 2, Page 245-267, February 2022. The ancient Cynic Diogenes was the first to declare ‘I am a citizen of the world ’ and the other Cynics followed him. In The Courage of the Truth, Michel Foucault analyses the Cynic mode of parrhēsia and living in truth, however, his text expands the cosmopolitical amplitude of Cynics since the Cynics’ true life contains an inherent cosmopolitan logic. Identifying the core of the Cynic true life in (...) the care for the self that leads to the care for the others within the horizon of the possibility of another life and another world, Foucault shows how the Cynic establishes ‘an intense bond with the whole of humankind’, cares ‘for all mankind’ and for the whole world as a ‘functionary of humanity’ and, as ‘the scout of humanity’, the Cynic prefigures the future and exercises the ‘government of the universe’. This article argues that Foucault’s account on Cynics maps the very first moments of becoming cosmopolitan and offers an insightful perspective on the process of achieving a cosmopolitan subjectivity, a process displayed by different expressions of cosmopolitanism, and especially the ‘insurgent cosmopolitanism’ from the bottom up. (shrink)

What is social construction? This essay offers a survey of the various ways in which something could be socially constructed and then addresses briefly the questions whether social constructionism involves an untenable anti-realism and what, if anything, unifies all social construction claims.

This article interprets Foucault’s intellectual project by analysing the relation between his understanding of critique and the political conditions of subjectivation out of which it emerged. After reviewing some of the most typical criticisms of Foucault’s work, the argument shows in what sense he conceived of critique as a form of resistance and how the latter, in turn, was theorised as a force co-extensive to the power it counters. The paper goes on to argue that his theory of resistance is (...) not necessarily to be viewed as a metaphysical representation of the immutable nature of political struggle, but might well be interpreted in performative terms, i.e. as a strategic re-inscription of existing political-discursive formations. More precisely, the analysis shows in what way Foucault’s articulation of critique represented an attempt to displace the forms of subjectivation that underpin anthropological thought and the government of the self in the modern age. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines Michel Foucault’s views concerning the ethical salience of critique and compares those views to the Buddhist Madhyamaka tradition. As a critic of the Enlightenment, Foucault’s approach to ethics vacillated between deconstructing moral concepts such as “self” and “freedom,” and affirming them as the basis of an ethics conceived as “self-fashioning.” Madhyamaka thought provides a critical account of social reality that resonates with Foucault, particularly concerning the emancipatory potential of critique, but it arrives at different ethical conclusions, (...) viewing compassion rather than vertiginous freedom as the outcome of any thorough critique of the self. (shrink)

Debates between Habermas and the poststructuralists - specifically, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard - over the nature of critiques of Enlightenment rationality and modernity are investigated in order to argue for an agenda for critical theory beyond the 'French Fries and the Frankfurter'.1 Part I interrogates key elements of Habermas' theory of communicative rationality in his reconstruction of Enlightenment modernity and his critique of the poststructuralists. This orients the discussion toward an evaluation of Habermas' neo-Kantianism, theory of language (discourse ethics), and (...) the 'critique' he employs in his bid to defend and complete the project of modernity. Key Words: critical theory • Derrida • Enlightenment modernity • Foucault • Habermas • Lyotard • Marx • postmodernism debates. (shrink)

This paper has two aims, as an exposition of Jürgen Habermas's response to the work of Michel Foucault, and to engage in and assess this debate between two influential contemporary schools of Continental philosophy. Habermas locates Foucault's project in the history of several attempts at a totalizing critique of reason, attempts which are trapped in a performative self?contradiction. Habermas also argues that Foucault is still caught up in the conceptual straitjacket of the philosophy of the subject which his theory was (...) meant to overcome. He shows that Foucault's central notion of power is used in two different and ultimately irreconcilable ways ? as a transcendental as well as an empirical concept. Much of Habermas's critique is justified and could, indeed, be extended to Foucault's anti?realist relativism, but Habermas's own defence of rationalism is not without difficulties of its own. Thus his notion of knowledge?guiding interests commits him to a form of anti?realism and a transcendental concept of instrumental power which is almost as problematic in its consequences as the anti?realism of Foucault. (shrink)

I here distinguish dissensual from consensual corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the grounds that the former is more concerned to organize (or portray) corporate-civil society disagreement than it is corporate-civil society agreement. In doing so, I first conceive of consensual CSR, and identify a positive and negative view thereof. Second, I conceive of dissensual CSR, and suggest that it can be actualized through the construction of dissent enabling, rather than consent-oriented, public spheres. Following this, I describe four actor-centred institutional theories—i.e. (...) a sociological, ethical, transformative and economic perspective, respectively—and suggest that an economic perspective is generally well suited to explaining CSR activities at the organizational level. Accordingly, I then use the economic perspective to analyse a dissent enabling public sphere that Shell has constructed, and within which Greenpeace participated. In particular, I explain Shell’s employment of dissensual CSR in terms of their core business interests; and identify some potential implications thereof for Shell, Greenpeace, and society more generally. In concluding, I highlight a number of ways in which the present paper can inform future research on business and society interactions. (shrink)

The aim of the present study is to articulate a comparative study of Zeno of Citium and Immanuel Kant. The main reason for the comparative form of the study is that the full extent of the selective affiliations, continuities and discontinuities in the philosophers’ thought with regard to democracy under a cosmopolitan condition, as they define it, has not yet been explored. Studying their political arguments does not entail, in the present study, a historical examination of their ideas. Historical research (...) has, to date, been the norm in the examination of the thought of these thinkers. However, although both thinkers focus both on citizenship as an indispensable condition for democratic governance, a systematic comparison of what citizenship and democracy are as major political concerns in Zeno and Kant remains unquestioned by researchers. The originality of the present research derives, first, from the comparison of both thinkers that has not been critically presented so far. Second, it derives from the critique of the political views of Zeno according to the research conducted in the Gregory Vlastos Archive (that has never been conducted and presented so far) and is followed by tracing symmetries and asymmetries in the works of Kant that extend their arguments on cosmopolitanism to the solidification of democracy and the avoidance of war. As for the focus of the study on Kant, the novelty that is being argued for is the priority attributed to the cosmopolitan agenda as a precondition of a sovereign democratic state instead of the opposite being presented and claimed so far. (shrink)

In the article, we elaborate an interdisciplinary methodological framework that enables us to study and prepare the grounds for the development of organizational practices through discourse perspectives. The framework differs from mainstream monological and complexity reducing tendencies within organizational studies in that it argues for an approach that takes in historical, broad, and situational power relations and discourses into consideration when we engage in ethical organizational development. We place the framework within organizational discourse studies (ODS) and discuss how the intersection (...) of Bakhtinian and Foucauldian ideas and concepts, as well as their diverse analytical strategies and focuses, contributes to the field. The combination entails taking a dissensus approach to organizational discursive phenomena that we view as dynamic features that are historically and locally (re)created through battles of unifying (centripetal) and diversifying (centrifugal) force relations. Following similar ideas of Deleuze and Bakhtin, we argue that dialogue and every (organizational) situation is seen as a plurivocal, open-ended, and unique time-space in which subjects have agency to change and transform the power relations and lines of subjectification that they are embedded in. We arrive at a methodological framework that bridges the gulf that often exists between discourse perspectives that tend to either focus on situated or more abstract and historical discursive dimensions. Furthermore, the frame involves an ethics of dispositif and dialogue that insists that organizational discourse scholars engage in organizational discourse activism furthering local change processes. (shrink)