The latest discussions about civil society have been reconsidering the globalization processes, and the theoretical discourse has been broadened to include the notion of the global civil society. The notion and the practice of a civil society are being globalized in a way that reflects the empirical processes of inter-connecting societies and of shaping a world society. From the normative-mobilizing perspective, civil society activists and theoreticians stress the need to defend the world society from the global threat of a nuclear (...) war, environmental catastrophes, crime and violence, domination of world powers over the fate of individual countries and societies, i.e. the need to oppose the tendency of “power policy” on the world level, and to defend the autonomy of the society as one compatible primarily with the expansion of policies based on the rule of law worldwide, and incompatible with the policy of force, state reasons, and domination of world power-centers. The globalization processes result in a conflicting and/or assimilative crossing of civilizations and cultures, as well as controversial tendencies of, on one hand, attempts for the introduction of international political institutions and the adoption of international conventions for human rights’ protection, for the defense of democratic values, for combating terrorism and segregation on various grounds, thus leading to a global standardization of the human-rights culture and of democratic political and legal order, and on the other, of rising xenophobia, particularization and ethno nationalism, civil wars, ecological threats, global terrorism, threat of hunger problem, nuclear war, new disease, etc. Contemporary victory of liberal and democratic values is the positive reach, but followed by the contested issue of sovereignty, urban decay, racism, ethnic cleansing, xenophobia, failing political legitimacy , and followed at the world scale by: global injustice, poverty, environmental dangers, mass and deadly diseases, oppression of minority groups, relentless growth of population, political and economic power great asymmetries, terrorism at the global scale, threat of a nuclear disaster, etc. Global civil society has three dimensions: 1) empirical phenomena of globalized social relations, interconnections, 2) mobilizing, formative force of the project/vision, and 3) social actors at the global/transnational level. The anti-globalization movement is an effort to counter perceive negative aspects of the current process of globalization. Although adherents of the movement often work in concert, the movement itself is heterogeneous and includes diverse, sometimes opposing, understandings of this process, alternative visions, strategies and tactics. Thus, more nuanced terms include anti-capitalist/anti-corporate alternative globalization. Participants may use the positive terms such as ‘global justice’ or ‘fair trade movement’; or ‘Global Justice and Solidarity Movement’; or ‘Movement of Movements’; or simply ‘The Movement’; or ‘anticorporatist capitalism movement’. Generally speaking, anti-globalization movement is not so much an opposition to globalization as such than an opposition to the particular way it is taking place – like neoliberal process of globalization. In that sense, many representatives of the Movement prefer to be called altermondialism. (shrink)

This article examines Václav Havel's unconventional route to democracy. At the core of the enquiry is an analysis of the role his Absurdism played in the development of his thought and activism. The essay illustrates how a typically literary, non-democratic intellectual orientation sustained Havel in his struggle for democratic political change against the abuses of really existing socialism. Yet, Havel's thought did not stop there; he eyed Western liberalism critically as well. Springing from his Absurdist sensibility was a vision of (...) democracy that was neither wholly liberal nor socialist, yet quite practical. By making a case for reconsidering ideas that typically fall outside the purview of democratic theory, this article also suggests the possibility of critically rethinking democracy itself. (shrink)

My contribution intends to show that the traditional philosophical concept of work leaves out a crucial dimension. Work is reduced, for example, to the interaction with nature, the problem of recognition, or economic self-preservation. But work also establishes an ethical relation having to do with the needs of others and to the common good—a view of work that should be of particular interest for feminist and gender philosophy. This dimension makes visible, as socially necessary work, the so-called reproductive sphere pertaining (...) to giving birth and raising children, but it also generalizes the aspect of care, which plays a significant role in traditional woman's work. The ethical relation to the other is a characteristic feature of human work and in this sense, the possibility of working is a part of a good life. (shrink)

The `sexual citizen' is a new phenomenon in the erotic world, and a new player in the political and cultural arena, a product of the new primacy of sexual subjectivity in contemporary societies. Living at the fateful juncture of private claims to space, self-determination and pleasure, and public claims to rights, justice and recognition, the sexual citizen is a hybrid being, who tells us a great deal about the pace and scale of cultural transformation and new possibilities of the self (...) and identity. Consideration of the sexual citizen also offers a new angle on recent debates about citizenship in all its complex dimensions, bringing to the fore issues that have often been occluded in these debates. The article explores these issues through the prism of three significant social developments: the democratization of relationships; the emergence of new subjectivities; and the proliferation of new `stories' about the body, the erotic and intimate life which both signal and encourage the growth of social and cultural capital, and in turn lead to new demands on the institutions of political life. (shrink)

During the winter of 1968–69, members of the so-called Budapest School formulated a scathing “review” of Georg Lukács’ late work, Ontology of Social Being. In the wake of the objections (but not in accordance with them), Lukács began to revise the text, but was unable to complete it: he died in June 1971. The disciples’ critique, published in English and German in 1976, played a major role in the reception history of Ontology—or rather in the fact that the 1500-page “philosophical (...) fiasco” still has no remarkable reception history. The main criticism of the disciples is that Lukács’ work mixes two incompatible ontologies and recalls the worst traditions of Soviet Marxism. In this paper, I will argue that the disciples’ “review” is misleading (nevertheless, the historical circumstances may provide a sufficient explanation for this) because there are no “two ontologies” in Lukács’ unfinished book. I will concentrate on the source of the misunderstanding, the Lukácsian thesis of the “post festum-rationality” of history, and in the light of this I will analyse how Lukács describes the open determination of individual and collective action in the process of the social reproduction of life. (shrink)

This paper discusses Eastern European Marxists’ consideration of science and technology concerning aesthetic dimensions. Different from most of Western Marxists who take negative or dystopian attitudes towards modern science and technology from the aesthetic utopian perspective, those Marxists who come from countries such as Hungary, Yugoslav, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria or Romania, which once belonged to the socialist camp, under the influence of Soviet and Western culture, pay attention to the complicated tension between science-technology and aesthetics. In this paper, (...) I probe into these notions by reading György Lukács, Budapest School, Romanian theorists and the Yugoslav Praxis Group, which are divided into four key points: basic nature of science in contrast with arts; modern tension of culture between science and arts; the possibility of scientific aesthetics; and development of arts in the world of technology. There is a dialectical understanding of science and technology here which contributes to contemporary recognition of science and technology from the point of view of neo-humanism, not only in aesthetics but also human existence. This is relevant to theoretical reflection on the present and future Chinese socialist aesthetics. (shrink)

The conceptual and methodological contributions of Marxist aesthetics from Eastern European countries like Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and East Germany were productive and significant despite various hurdles faced concerning institutionalization, legitimization and differing theoretical abuses. In its mode of inquiry and discursive practices, Eastern European Marxist aesthetics is both similar and dissimilar to its Western, Soviet, Russian and Chinese counterparts. The specificity here is the function of a unique geographical and socio-historical context, as well as interaction with other (...) contemporary paradigms of thought. The innovative impulses of Eastern European Marxist aesthetics affected six scholarly domains: aesthetics of praxis, theory of realism, critique of modernity, semiotics, theory of genre and cultural theory. This paper provides a general survey of the intellectual achievements of Eastern European Marxist aesthetics across these six domains and will show how this theoretical tradition has influenced the modern history of ideas. (shrink)

From the point of view of reflected postmodernity, Ágnes Heller constructs her own discourse of aesthetics on the basis of György Lukács’s contribution. She locates aesthetics in her social philosophy, philosophy of history, and ethics, transforming aesthetics from a ‘Marxist Renaissance’ to a ‘post-Marxist’ position, and points out that the paradoxes of modern culture can be avoided by a personality that is autonomous and moral in action. The notion of the beautiful character in everyday life is a symbol of the (...) ideal type of society and of the good life in contrast to the God-forsaken world of modern dilemmas and the domination of the sublime in postmodernism. It is the expression of freedom and democracy in the contemporary age. Heller’s neo-humanist aesthetics is in essence the presentation of her cultural politics as a Great Republic. (shrink)

De récents débats ont reconsidéré les processus de mondialisation, élargissant le discours théorique afin d’étendre la notion de société civile mondiale. La notion et la pratique de société civile ont été mondialisées de façon à refléter les processus empiriques d’inter-connexion des sociétés et de formation d’une société mondiale. D’un point de vue normatif et mobilisateur, les militants et les théoriciens de la société civile soulignent le besoin de défendre la société mondiale de la menace d’une guerre nucléaire mondiale, des catastrophes (...) écologiques, du crime et de la violence, puis de la domination des grands pouvoirs sur le sort de certains pays et sociétés, c’est-à-dire le besoin de s’opposer à une « politique du pouvoir » à l’échelle mondiale et de défendre l’autonomie d’une société compatible avec l’expansion des politiques fondées sur le règne de la loi mais incompatible avec des politiques de la force, des raisons d’État et de domination des pôles de pouvoir. Les processus de mondialisation mènent à la confrontation et/ou au métissage assimilateur de civilisations et de cultures, ainsi qu’à des tendances controversées : d’une part, à des tentatives d’instauration d’institutions politiques internationales et d’adoption des conventions internationales en matière de droits de l’homme, de protection des valeurs démocratiques, de lutte contre le terrorisme et de différentes formes de ségrégation, avançant vers une standardisation mondiale de la culture des droits de l’homme et de l’ordre politique et juridique démocratique ; d’autre part, à la hausse de la xénophobie, des particularismes, de l’ethnonationalisme, des guerres civiles, des menaces écologiques, du terrorisme à l’échelle mondiale, de la menace de la famine, de la menace nucléaire, de nouvelles maladies etc. La victoire contemporaine des valeurs libérales et démocratiques est un aboutissement positif, mais elle s’accompagne de la question controversée de souveraineté, de délabrement urbain, de racisme, de nettoyage ethnique, de xénophobie, de défaut de légitimité politique . À l’échelle mondiale, cet aboutissement s’accompagne d’une injustice globale, de pauvreté, de dangers écologiques, d’épidémies mortelles, d’oppression des minorités, d’une croissance non maîtrisée de la population, de déséquilibre de pouvoir politique et économique, de terrorisme à l’échelle mondiale, de la menace nucléaire etc. La société civile mondiale comporte trois dimensions : 1.) phénomène empirique de relations sociales et d’interconnexions ; 2.) mobilisation, une force structurante du projet/vision ; 3.) acteurs sociaux au niveau mondial/transnational. L’anti-mondialisation est un mouvement qui tente d’agir à l’encontre des aspects négatifs de la mondialisation. Même si les adeptes de ce mouvement agissent souvent de concert, le mouvement en soi est hétérogène et englobe des visions, des stratégies et des tactiques diverses et parfois opposées. Ainsi, des termes plus nuancés impliquent une mondialisation alternative, anti-capitaliste/anti-corporatiste. Ses acteurs peuvent utiliser des expressions positives telles que la ‘justice mondiale’, le ‘mouvement pour un commerce équitable’, le ‘mouvement pour la Justice et la Solidarité Mondiale’, le ‘Mouvement des Mouvements’, ou simplement ‘Le mouvement’, ou encore le ‘mouvement anti-corporatiste capitaliste’. De manière générale, le mouvement anti-mondialiste n’est pas une opposition à la mondialisation en soi mais à une certaine façon dont cette mondialisation se déroule, à savoir le processus de mondialisation néo-libéral. Dans ce sens, nombre de représentants du Mouvement préfèrent être appelés alter-mondialistes. (shrink)

The article tracks the development of Agnes Heller”s political philosophy as it evolves through the Marxism and reform communism of her years as a dissent Hungarian intellectual, followed by the period of her encounters with the Western Left and with the currents of postmodern liberalism.

Established scholarship in arts education is invariably related to theories of development founded on notions of multiple intelligence and experiential learning. Yet when contemporary arts practice is retraced on a philosophical horizon, one begins to engage with other cases for learning. This state of affairs reveals art’s inherent paradox where the expectation of learning is substituted by forms of unlearning. This paper begins to approach unlearning through the tension between art and education, and more specifically through the dialectical relationship between (...) education’s dialogic agonism and art’s negative antagonism. What is here being proposed as unlearning reflects a critique of the moral-pedagogical outlooks that are imposed on art where artworks are expected to tell stories of truth through their propensity towards the beautiful and the good. In re-reading experiential anticipation as a form of anamnesis through a process of negation and contradiction, unlearning is also located in forms of mimetic scoping by which art’s assumed pedagogical trajectory turns into the opposite of recollection: as an act of willed forgetfulness. This peculiar ‘movement’ from a state of learning to that of unlearning constitutes the basis for a special kind of pedagogical aesthetics where the challenges of criticality and laterality articulate a special ‘world’ where learning may well work backwards. (shrink)

This paper discusses Heller’s aesthetic ethics in her feeling theory. ‘Feeling’ is an aesthetic problem as well as an ethical problem. Heller discusses the important role of emotions in modern life. ‘Housekeeping of feelings’ is the key category of Heller’s ethical aesthetics, which is related to one’s self-realization. It is beneficial to the formation of individual value and helps to reconstruct an increasingly atomized community. The housekeeping of feelings is some kind of care, which is important both ethically and aesthetically. (...) Heller’s feelings theory is based on human value itself, which is of great methodological significance for the reconstruction of the broken emotional community in the post-epidemic era. (shrink)

A review essay of key works and trends in the political thought of Central and Eastern Europe, before and after 1989. The topics examined include the nature of the 1989 velvet revolutions in the region, debates on civil society, democratization, the relationship between politics, economics, and culture, nationalism, legal reform, feminism, and “illiberal democracy.” The review essay concludes with an assessment of the most recent trends in the region.

Agnes Heller continued her commitment to socialist theory, seeking a democratic alternative to the actually existing socialist system in Soviet-type societies in the early 1980s. Heller conceptualized socialism as a long-term social experiment based on social imagination and the radicalization of democracy, which contrasted with the Soviet socialist project on the one hand, and went beyond Western parliamentary systems on the other hand. My aim in this paper is to examine the 1982 pamphlet, Why We Should Maintain the Socialist Objective, (...) and present it as a crucial step that Heller takes to depart from Marxism and explore her post-Marxist socialist theory. This paper will examine the social imagination, radicalization of democracy, and other key ideas elaborated in the pamphlet, linking these ideas to her subsequent book, Dictatorship Over Needs, and her essay ‘The Great Republic’. (shrink)

The Collective Imagination explicates the media of social creativity and explains how the imagination has shaped historically significant social institutions. It focuses on the media of wit, paradox, and metaphor, and develops a distinctive and original interpretation of the imagination’s appositional quality. Murphy’s conception of the collective imagination is compared with that of Cornelius Castoriadis. The discussion suggests that Murphy’s claims are likely to be disputed, particularly because they diverge from the common equation of contemporary creativity with social progress. Murphy (...) draws attention to a kind of conservative disposition that is necessary for imagination to have substantial social efficacy. Murphy claims that the creativity of the collective imagination has to a large extent been eclipsed by fantasy and kitsch. The deleterious effects of fantasy’s denial of reality are explored in relation to four domains of collective creativity: art, society, economy and politics. It is argued that the ramifications of Murphy’s profound interpretation of the imagination may be developed in ways that differ from some of his conclusions. (shrink)

The relationship of Marxist thought to the phenomena of everyday life and utopia, both separately and in terms of their intersection, is a complex and often ambiguous one. In this article, I seek to trace some of the theoretical filiations of a critical Marxist approach to their convergence (as stemming mainly from a Central European tradition), in order to tease out some of the more significant ambivalences and semantic shifts involved in its theorization. This lineage originates in the work of (...) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then stretches to Georg Lukács and the so-called ‘Gnostic Marxism’ of Walter Benjamin (as mediated by the important figure of Georg Simmel), and culminating most recently in the work of Agnes Heller. Such a Marxist theory is inseparable from a political project that seeks to unveil and critique what it takes to be the debased, routinized and ideological qualities of daily existence under the auspices of modern capitalist society, but also attempts to locate certain emancipatory tendencies within this selfsame terrain, an orientation that can be summed up in the phrase ‘everyday utopianism’. Although there are occasional lapses into dualistic modes of thinking in the work of these writers, the key insight they present to us is the need to overcome the pervasive dichotomy between the everyday/immanent and the utopian/transcendental, of a sort that has bedevilled the work of many other theorists and intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Argument of this text is that: to develop aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with aesthetics as philosophy of art but with aesthetics of everyday life; to start with aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with beautiful of ‘pure aesthetics’ but with the dramatic; to analyze the dramatic in sport, we should not open the analysis with analogy between theater and sport, but with sport as a sort of performance; to get at the meaning of sport as a (...) drama, we have to discuss different meanings ‘drama’ has in theory and everyday communication; to map the dramatic in sport as performance, we have to discuss some features of sport which determine its dramatics first, and its potential as spectacle later. To proceed with the argument, we have to take into account contemporary state of aesthetics, recent development of aesthetics of everyday life, and theory of performance, together with Bernard Suits’ definition of game, Gadamer’s idea of play, and Lévy-Strauss’ account on conjunctive and disjunctive ritual. (shrink)

I reviewThe Philosophy of Praxisby Andrew Feenberg, firstly, presenting a critical yet sympathetic summary of Feenberg’s argument, developed via Marx, Lukács and Marcuse. Despite sharing Adorno’s and Marcuse’s dismissal of proletarian revolution, he finds aspects of Marx and particularly Lukács compelling. Upon this synthesis he builds his own philosophy. Secondly, I argue that Feenberg’s treatment of Lukács’s 1920s work is unparalleled and may counter the systematic distortion to which it has been subject. He defends Lukács’s ontology with respect to nature (...) and his politics, countering the charge of authoritarianism. Finally, I suggest that Feenberg tends to elide the analysis of the state and politics in Marx and Lukács, and that this distorts his understanding of the latter. I suggest a Hegelian interpretation of Lukács’s concept of mediation by way of parallel withThe Phenomenology of Spirit. I conclude by suggesting the implications of this disagreement. (shrink)

This essay explores the methodological contributions of leading ethicist, activist, and mujerista theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz, for whom the category of lo cotidiano is central. Her work on lo cotidiano begs a basic epistemological question: How does one think critically from the standpoint of the everyday? What does conscientization look like from the perspective of lo cotidiano? In light of such questions, I explore what I find to be one of Isasi-Díaz’s most significant, yet underdeveloped, ideas — her articulation of (...) a ‘conscientized cotidiano.’ I expand this category further, drawing on the work of Agnes Heller, a major influence on Latin American and US Latina feminism, and John Dewey. Conversely, I show how Isasi-Díaz’s attention to issues of religion and gender serves as a constructive counterpoint to the work of these philosophers. (shrink)