The body plays an important role in the book of Job - as do animals. According to psychoanalytical specifically object-relations theory, a subjective body image was partly constructed through the internalisation of external stimuli from significant others who mirrored the subject through their feedback or through their own bodies, which served as an ideal or critique to the subject. Amongst the external stimuli, animals constitute such significant others. Animals could therefore have impacted Job's subjective body image, particularly as their bodies (...) were described in detail by God as a response to Job's complaints and searching. CONTRIBUTION: Two theoretical and interrelated problems were acknowledged although they cannot be satisfactorily solved: the cultural aspect of the body image and the relationship to animals. (shrink)

Summary This article discusses the development of German Social Democratic Party strategy in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, as a result of the works of Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky. It ties the evolution of Marxist orthodoxy to the emergence of parliamentary democracy in different European societies. In particular, it discusses the way parliamentary conditions impacted on how the proletarian revolution was imagined. Revolution was newly defined as the establishment through parliamentary (...) means of a new government representing a new social class. Also, the early Marxist strategy of ?permanent revolution?, which had allowed proletarian-socialist minority rule, was abandoned. (shrink)

Every single day, every newspaper in the world carries some further evidence as to how limited the Earth’s resources are. Every single day, therefore, we should grow more deeply convinced that the notion of abundance has become hopelessly irrelevant and can safely be shelved forever. Or so it seems. In the final section of this paper, I shall defend the opposite view: that growing awareness of the limits of our resources should make the notion of abundance, suitably defined, more and (...) not less relevant to our pursuits. Whether or not this defence turns out to be successful, I hope this paper will go some way towards clarifying this notoriously elusive notion, as well as its no less elusive and no less important antonym: scarcity. (shrink)

The article problematizes in aphoristic condensation the heterogeneous concepts of creativity in philosophy, psychology and sociology and outlines their paradoxes. Creativity in these concepts is tied to the human potential to bring into being something new and to the capacity of drawing differences. In its contingency, creativity is ambivalent to a high degree—at one and the same time a desirable resource and a threatening potential. So on the one hand, creativity is meant to be mobilized and set free; on the (...) other hand, it is meant to be controlled and reined in. The imperative of being creative is nowadays connected to the mobilization of the entrepreneurial self. Entrepreneurial action demands permanent innovation—and consequently ceaseless creative exertion. Everybody not only has to be simply creative, but more creative than the others. (shrink)

Growing social inequalities represent a major concern associated with the Digital Revolution. The article tackles this issue by exploring how welfare regulations and redistribution policies can be rethought in the age of digital capitalism. It focuses on the history and enduring crisis of social citizenship rights in their connection with technological changes, in order to draw a comparison between the industrial and the digital scenario. The first section addresses the link between the Industrial Revolution and the genesis of social rights. (...) It describes the latter as a legal ‘machine’ designed to offset the imbalances produced by the technological movement of industrialization. The second and third sections introduce the notion of ‘industrial citizenship’ to describe the architecture of social rights in mature industrial societies and to contend that European systems of welfare are still largely modeled on an industrial standard. The fourth part investigates the impact of the Digital Revolution on this model of social citizenship. It identifies debates on basic income as a major trajectory for redesigning welfare regulations in a post-industrial era, and the digital user as a crucial emerging subject of rights. The final part explores how digital users could be entitled to social rights as data suppliers. To this end, it introduces the idea of ‘digital-social rights’ resulting from the incorporation of welfare and redistribution principles into emerging digital rights. Hence, it proposes a legal-political framework for the redistribution of the revenues generated by data in the form of a ‘digital basic income’ for citizens of cyberspace. (shrink)

Brzozowski’s ‘philosophy of labour’—to which he devoted a number of writings starting in 1902—presents problems of interpretation. A conceptual approach to his conception shows it to be a sometimes uneasy mix of realist and anti-realist notions. Brzozowski appears to have thought that labour is not first of all about the things it supposedly transforms, but rather about itself. I suggest that Brzozowski can be read in the spirit of Nelson Goodman’s nominalist constructionalism (“worldmaking”). On this account, labour in Brzozowski’s idiom (...) turns out to be the constitution of forms of symbolizing sufficient unto themselves and the needs they satisfy. However, that Brzozowski was not entirely consistent in the views I impute to him—he forever sought for some ‘external’ measure of the rightness of labour/symbolizing—can be explained at least in part by his ‘humanism’, that is, his commitment to the task he assigns humankind, that of creating the one meaningful world attesting to virtually unrestricted human power. (shrink)

Carver's interpretation of Marx's value theory (Terrell Carver, ?Marx's Commodity Fetishism?, Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975]) is accepted, but his rejection of it criticized by explicating the reasons Marx gives for his theory after his faulty analysis of exchange-value at the very beginning of Capital. The central concept of abstract labour is shown to relate commodity exchange to other forms of distribution; by being compared to these the function of commodity exchange is recognized as the attachment of an amount of abstract (...) labour to a commodity, and exchange-value as that which determines that amount What it means to say value is thought to inhere in commodities is explicated. (shrink)

A citizens’ movement in Berlin advocates for the expropriation of housing corporations and has won a significant majority in a popular referendum in September 2021. Building on this proposal, this paper develops a general account of expropriation as a measure for corporate reform and thereby contributes to the ongoing debate on the democratic accountability of business corporations. It argues that expropriation is a valuable tool for intervention in a dire situation in some economic sector to enable a re-structuring of the (...) governance of the assets in question. Compared with other tools available, expropriation is a more forward-looking, genuinely political measure that does not depend on the legal assignment of guilt but rather proceeds in a pragmatic and problem-oriented manner. It also allows us to reconsider in how far the market mechanism should be employed in the administration of assets. Objections from private property rights against expropriation fail as corporations generally are privileged, quasi-public institutions that can justifiably be subject to democratic interventions. Expropriation is thus an important addition to the arsenal of corporate reform proposals, especially for those concerned with a broad democratization of the corporation. (shrink)

Popper has proposed a ?theory of situational rationality? as a basis for the social sciences. This theory of rational action is reconstructed and its methodological and substantial implications discussed. It is shown that methodologically Popper's idea of rational action leads to a version of theoretical instrumentalism which is incompatible with his general philosophy of science, and that substantially it implies an unacceptable theory of social institutions. Instrumentalism can be avoided by a more contentful theory of human action encompassing ?non?rational? or (...) ?irrational? kinds of action; Popper's theory of institutions might be improved through a more comprehensive theory of collective action. (shrink)

This article attempts to rehabilitate the concept of fetishism and to contribute to the debate on the social role of objects as well as to fashion theory. Extrapolating from Michel Serres’ theory of the quasi-objects, I distinguish two phenomenologies possessing almost opposite characteristics. These two phenomenologies are, so I argue, essential to quasi-object theory, yet largely ignored by Serres’ sociological interpreters. They correspond with the two different theories of fetishism found in Marx and Durkheim, respectively. In the second half of (...) the article, I introduce the fashion object as a unique opportunity for studying the interchange between these two forms of fetishism and their respective phenomenologies. Finally, returning to Serres, I briefly consider the theoretical consequences of introducing the fashion object as a quasi-object. (shrink)

Con el §187 de los Lineamientos de la Filosofía del Derecho, Hegel abre un tema también importante para comprender las sociedades capitalistas contemporáneas: ¿Cómo cambia la subjetividad humana, ¿cómo se forma bajo la dirección de una forma social de relación jurídicamente se rige por los principios del individuo privado y de la propiedad y está determinada económicamente por la producción de bienes? Hegel constata una relación dialéctica característica entre los fines de los individuos por un lado y los medios disponibles (...) para ellos en la forma de su propiedad o no-propiedad respectiva. Mientras que estos medios y, por tanto, las relaciones económicas con otros sujetos, desde un punto de vista subjetivo, sólo tienen la posición de medios para sus propios fines privados, a la inversa, el uso de estos medios en las relaciones sociales convierte al individuo en portador de una función de un contexto social, Hegel lo describe como “fin objetivo”, en la medida en que no existe como un fin perseguido conscientemente, sino como un sistema de dependencia mutua de los sujetos privados entre sí. Este escrito investiga esta relación dialéctica con la ayuda de tres preguntas específicas, a saber: ¿Cómo se aplica esta relación en primer lugar al campo de las necesidades humanas, en segundo lugar al campo del trabajo humano y en tercer lugar a la riqueza y la pobreza en las sociedades burguesas? El escrito viene, en parte con Hegel, en parte yendo más allá de él, a la conclusión de que, con todo el desarrollo de las necesidades, con todo el progreso técnico en la producción y con todo el crecimiento de los activos que produce el “sistema de las necesidades”, no tenemos frente a nosotros una historia exitosa de la libertad humana para todos. (shrink)

I develop an externalist perspective and analysis of the relatedness of loneliness and (harmful) alcohol use and the concept of loneliness. I depart from twenty qualitative interviews with people undergoing inpatient treatment for alcohol dependence. Both, loneliness and its relatedness to alocohol dependence turn out to be complex relational and interactional phenomena whose occurrence and dynamics depend on the social and situational conditions under which they arise. Despite huge variations in interviewees’ experiences of loneliness, they share a common phenomenological and (...) analytical structure. Loneliness arises when instances of social interaction fail to arrive at mutual understanding within a certain social context. Loneliness is neither reducible to individual experiences nor to distinctive characteristics of a person. Rather, it presents an evaluative and interactional phenomenon, a person’s awareness of his/her failure to establish mutual understanding with others in social interaction. The relatedness of alcohol dependence and loneliness is neither conceptual nor causal nor explainable by facts about the individuals concerned, but depends on the kind of loneliness involved and the function habitual ways of drinking alcohol have in a person’s everyday life and social environment. (shrink)

The mind-society problem deals with the relations between mental and social phenomena. The problem is crucial in the main methodologies of social sciences. The thesis of hermeneutics is that we can only understand but not explain the relationship between beliefs and social action because mental and social events are not natural events. The thesis of social holism is that social phenomena are emergent and irreducible to mental phenomena. The thesis of rational choice theory is that social phenomena are reducible to (...) mental phenomena and this reduction is explained by unrealistic a priori principles of rationality. These theses depend on their different solutions to the following fundamental philosophical issues: the mind-body identity; the causal nature of social explanation; the realistic goal of science. A positive answer to these issues implies support of a different solution to the mind-society problem: social phenomena are conventional concepts and they can be reduced and explained in terms of realistic concepts describing the causal mechanisms of individual reasoning and decision-making. Cognitive psychology seems to supply us some initial tentative models to explain social action, but research into neuropsychology might be able to generate the proper causal representations of the relation between mind and action. (shrink)

Homo sociologicus and homo oeconomicus are, for different reasons, unsatisfactory models for the social sciences. A third model, called “rational model in the broad sense”, seems better endowed to cope with the many different expressions of rationality of the social agent. Some contributions by Weber, Durkheim and Marx are early examples of the application of this model of social explanation based on good subjective reasons. According to this model and to the evidence of cognitive anthropology, it is possible to reconcile (...) primitive thinking with the inferential principles of Western people. Lastly, cognitive psychology can contribute to the discovery of generalizations of reason-based choices that can strengthen the explanatory power of “rational model in the broad sense”. (shrink)

“Racial capitalism” has surfaced during the past few decades in projects that highlight the production of difference in tandem with the production of capital—usually through violence. Scholars in this tradition typically draw their inspiration—and framework—from Cedric Robinson’s influential 1983 text, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. This article uses the work of Orlando Patterson to highlight some limits of “racial capitalism” as a theoretical project. First, the “racial capitalism” literature rarely clarifies what scholars mean by “race” or (...) “capitalism.” Second, some scholars using this conceptual language treat black subjectivity as a debilitated condition. An alleged byproduct of the Transatlantic slave trade, this debilitated form of black subjectivity derives from an African American exceptionalism that treats slavery as a form of abject status particular to capitalism without providing adequate theoretical justification or historical explanation. By contrast, we demonstrate how Patterson’s insights about property, status, and capital offer an analysis of slavery more attentive to race, gender, sexuality, age, and ability. We close by using the “forensics of capital” to explore the notions of causality and protocols for determining who owes what to whom implicit in Patterson’s concept of “social death.”. (shrink)

This paper examines the role played by consumers in producing what Iris Marion Young calls structural injustice. Through their consumption of a commodity, consumers can contribute to injustice, often as a result of their ignorance toward the ethical footprint of the commodity in question. After establishing that consumers are routinely implicated in structural injustice (Section I), I defend Young’s scepticism towards attributing blame to those who contribute to injustice through acts of consumption, whether their contribution to injustice result from a (...) state of moral or factual ignorance (Sections II-IV). I then examine the action-guiding implications of Young’s work and introduce the concept of conspicuousness to narrow the vast range of possibilities for action (Section V). I also suggest a revision to Young’s derivation of the responsibility she ascribes to people for ameliorating injustice. (shrink)

En este artículo abordaremos el problema de la relación entre el Estado y el capital como una disputa abierta en la modernidad entre la política y la economía. Desde la perspectiva de la filosofía hegeliana de la historia y el derecho, analizaremos la manera en la que la economía tiende en su proceso estructural de expansión espacial global a subsumir y subordinar las funciones administrativas y jurídicas de las formas estatales previas al ciclo sistémico inglés de acumulación capitalista. Para esto (...) analizaremos primero la conceptualización hegeliana de la economía política, para después exponer la manera específica en que esta se traduce en una forma de comportamiento global determinado por los procesos de distribución diferencial del capital y así, finalmente, abordar la manera en la que la economía cumple sus funciones determinantes en la conformación del mercado mundial y la historia universal, teniendo siempre como referencia directa el tiempo histórico en el cual Hegel desarrolló sus reflexiones filosóficas sobre la economía. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that sports at their best qualify as final ends, that is, as ends whose value is such that they ground not only the practices whose ends they are, but everything else we do as human agents. The argument I provide to support my thesis is derived from Harry Frankfurt's provocative work on the importance of the things we care about, more specifically, on his claim that it is by virtue of caring about things and practices, (...) really caring about them ? even loving them ? we are able to regard and treat them as final ends. Sports, I claim, are paradigmatic examples of practices cared about and loved in these deep ways, and as such deserve to be considered, rather than dismissed because of their supposed triviality, as one of those ends around which a life most worth living can be legitimately forged. (shrink)

En este artículo se estudia la idea de Europa que el poeta austríaco Hugo von Hofmannsthal desarrolla desde los albores de la Primera Guerra Mundial hasta entrada la República de Weimar. Hofmannsthal reivindica una idea de Europa que a la vez contenga, realice y supere a los Estados-nación; y cuyo núcleo no sería Alemania -excesivamente inclinada hacia el modelo prusiano como bloque homogéneo y cerrado sobre sí mismo-, sino Austria-Hungría -como Imperio duradero, nexo con Oriente, frontera fluida y comunidad plural (...) de pueblos diversos-. Con ello, Hofmannsthal se distancia de las tendencias dominantes en la Revolución Conservadora alemana. En primer lugar se presenta esta corriente, especialmente en la figura de Mœller van den Bruck; a continuación se exponen las reflexiones de Hofmannsthal sobre la guerra y sobre el modelo austríaco; finalmente se sintetiza su propuesta de una nueva idea de Europa. (shrink)

PurposeWith the rise of the internet, the act of sharing copyrighted material has received a lot of attention, culminating in a flood of lawsuits against file‐sharers as well as studies concerning the costs of file‐sharing for the entertainment industry. This paper attempts to judge whether file‐sharing really is an ethically problematic act and, upon achieving this, goes on to propose strategies to avoid file‐sharing and discuss ethical considerations surrounding those distribution alternatives.Design/methodology/approachThe paper limits its discussion to the medium of moving (...) images. It tries to achieve above aims by applying the ethics of Immanuel Kant to the phenomenon of file‐sharing on the internet and borrowing ideas for alternative, file‐sharing avoiding, strategies from practitioners and media commentators and applying Kant's ideas to those.FindingsThe paper argues that file‐sharing cannot, per se, be considered to be unethical. While file‐sharing has positive and negative aspects, the proposed alternative distribution strategies, a one‐stop shop and giving films away for free, seem to avoid the negative implications of file‐sharing while not impeding with its positive facets. The paper concludes that, since the suggested strategies exist but are not yet implemented by the commercial film industry, the moral responsibility for file‐sharing lies with the commercial film industry, not with the individual file‐sharer.Originality/valueThe paper hence adds to the discussions surrounding online files haring by shifting the focus towards the entertainment industry as well as by providing alternative, file‐sharing avoiding, distribution solutions. (shrink)

Con el objetivo de contribuir al diálogo sugerido por Heidegger entre su pensamiento y la obra de Marx, este trabajo pretende poner de manifiesto la confluencia existente entre la interpretación heideggeriana de la modernidad y el análisis llevado a cabo por Marx en El capital del modo de producción capitalista. Para ello se estudia la prevalencia que, desde su perspectiva ontológica, Heidegger otorga a la idea del producir en la época moderna a partir de la transformación del sentido de la (...) poíesis griega y en conexión con la esencia de la técnica, a la vez que se defiende el carácter igualmente ontológico que cabe atribuir a la noción marxiana de mercancía. En atención a la concepción del tiempo uniformizado y homogéneo que subyace a dicha noción, equivalente al establecido en la ciencia moderna, se plantea además la tesis de que la presencia moderna del ente como objeto incondicionalmente producible y calculable descrita por Heidegger coincide con la constitución de las cosas en mercancías como productos del trabajo que revela El capital. (shrink)

Partiendo del diagnóstico presentado por Guy Debord en La sociedad del espectáculo sobre la negación y falsificación de la vida que tiene lugar en las sociedades del capitalismo tardío, este ensayo pretende analizar algunos aspectos esenciales de la llamada Internacional Situacionista. Para ello, se examina el problema político que los situacionistas advierten en su tiempo histórico, consistente en el conformismo de las clases trabajadoras con las condiciones de trabajo y consumo que impone el capitalismo, así como su pretensión de incitarlas (...) a la acción revolucionaria mediante el proyecto de construcción de situaciones. Una vez expuestos los diferentes aspectos de este proyecto y las deficiencias que se detectan en su teorización, se reflexiona sobre el posible influjo de la Internacional Situacionista en la sociedad de su época desde la valoración de su percepción y expectativas en torno a los acontecimientos de Mayo del 68. (shrink)

In order to examine whether the usual identification of neoliberal ideas with an ideological discourse is valid, this paper starts off with an analysis of what Marx terms commodity fetishism in Capital, based on which a certain sense of the concept of ideology may be inferred which would result in its being both true and false. In order to determine whether this definition of ideology may be applied to neoliberal theory, we look at its fundamental features and how they continue (...) with or break away from economic liberalism as studied in Michel Foucault’s Birth of biopolitics. Attention is later moved to the characteristics detected by David Harvey in the socalled flexible accumulation as the latest stage of capitalism which coincides with the political implementation of neoliberal doctrine. At the end of the road travelled, it is hypothesised that this theory would be a form of ideology containing a dimension of both truth and falsehood, in line with Marx’s thought. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis contribution seeks to develop some reflections on Marx as an analyst of the economy. I argue for a discursive Marxism that makes the integration of Foucauldian ideas into a Marxian framework possible. Three distinctive but interrelated questions will be addressed. First, what is specific about a Marxian understanding of the economy, especially compared to certain tendencies in economic sociology and political economy? Second, how is a Marxian understanding of the economy reflected by current Marxist studies and how have these (...) studies contributed to a discursive-cultural turn in Marxist and neo-Marxist analysis of the economy? Third, while the discursive-cultural turn became increasingly important, what is the contribution of discourse studies of the economy to a Marxian framework? The paper concludes with the idea of a Discursive Political Economy approach in order to grasp the cultural and institutional complexity of power. To put discursive processes into a Marxian framework, a combined analysis of discursive-imaginary as well as institutionalized-sedimented power positions is required. (shrink)

En los textos del Marx maduro encontramos planteada una teoría del método científico entendido como proceso de «aproximaciones sucesivas». El punto de partida de la investigación no es la experiencia sensible, sino una representación caótica de la totalidad. El punto de partida del proceso de conocimiento es, para Marx, la ideología. En nuestra lectura del apartado del fetichismo de la mercancía en El capital descubriremos las resonancias lacanianas del planteamiento de Marx.

According to Gérard Genette, the chief function of an authorial preface is to ensure that the text is read properly. In other words, the purpose of the preface is to attract the reader’s attention and to steer him or her toward a particular understanding of the book. A preface, then, aims to get readers to read the book and often on certain terms, i.e., the author’s. As such, the authorial preface of Marx’s Capital (1867) is especially important — it allows (...) us to understand how Marx himself hoped to be understood by his readers. Commentators, whether hostile or sympathetic, usually focus on the postface to the second edition of Marx’s work. We will instead focus on the preface to the first edition, as to uncover Marx’s immediate political aims and ethical concerns. (shrink)

This paper considers the method of idealization and factualization as the main method of all advanced empirical science. The procedure is as follows. Some idealizing conditions are assumed: the vanishing of factors $(p_{i}=0)$ which never vanish in the real world. An idealization law is formulated -- a law which is exactly (non-vacuously) fulfilled only in an ideal model, not in any real system. Then the idealizing assumptions are abrogated one by one-it is a process of gradual factualization, of the transition (...) to the factual laws which are fulfilled in real systems. These laws may be directly applied and tested by experience. (shrink)

This paper presents a typology of human actions, based on Aristotle’s kinesis–energeia dichotomy and on a formal elaboration (with some refinement) of the Vendler–Kenny classificatory schemes for action types (or action verbs). The types introduced are defined throughout by inferential criteria, in terms of what here are referred to as “modal-temporal expressions” (‘MT-terms’). Examples of familiar categories analysed in this way are production and maintenance, but the procedure is meant to offer a basis for defining various other commonsense categories. Among (...) the more theoretical categories introduced are “Aristotelian projects”, i.e. actions defined in terms of Aristotle’s conceptions of movement/change, as well as “abstract projects”, in which the agent ensures that something changes from not being a fact to being a fact, and “conditional agency”, which involves actions that are to be performed when/if certain conditions come to be fulfilled. A category like “starting an action” is itself inferentially defined here in MT-terms, and so, inter alia, are proceeding with, finishing, stopping and interrupting an action. There is also a demonstration of how actions of one type may be converted into those of other types, where this is a matter of the way they are “seen” or described. There is also an implication to the effect that some of these distinctions may be useful for formulating certain critical insights regarding modern life. (shrink)

Things make sense to us. The identity of a thing is a meaningful style that expresses the usability of the thing. The usability is a dynamic order of the praxis in which the thing is embedded and in which we are ourselves de-centered. According to Merleau-Ponty, this sociocultural and psychosocial order is a formation of practical understanding and interpretation that rests upon and resumes the elementary, perceptual-expressive structuring of being. The Spiel is one of the three dimensions of corporeal intentionality, (...) in which this entire organization of meaning and experience unfolds. So, the Spiel of usability is a corporeal and practical intentionality that reaches from an aesthetic-ontological structuring of meaning to the order of the things in modern everyday praxes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to construct Karl Marx's concept of social space by examining a few fragments of his works with relevant terminology (space, spatial). The main result of this interpretation is the definition of social space as a suprasensible form of division between necessary labour and surplus labour, which due to private property on all means of production creates the appearance of the absence of exploitation. While in slave-holding mode of production slave is socially naturalized labour instrument, thus the (...) division of forms of labour have only formal meaning to him/her, and in feudal mode of production the labour instrument is a nature itself, namely cropland, the division of forms of labour acquires a social character per se (social relation of labourer to means of production via wages, and socialized means of production, namely, nature (and everything else except wage labourer) subsumed under private property) only under capitalism. Unlike the established in philosophical literature concepts of social space based on Marx's theory, the definition introduced in this article is characterized by sensible-suprasensible, extraterritorial-territorial dialectics. RESUMEN Este artículo tiene como objetivo construir el concepto de espacio social de Karl Marx mediante el examen de algunos pasajes de sus obras con una terminología relevante (espacio, espacial). El resultado principal de esta interpretación es la definición del espacio social como una forma suprasensible de división entre el trabajo necesario y el trabajo excedente debido a la propiedad privada en todos los medios de producción, lo que crea la apariencia de la ausencia de explotación. Por lo tanto, el espacio social no se define como un contenedor, un lugar de producción, sino como una relación social. El espacio social es un fenómeno puramente capitalista, que crea una forma especial de apariencia, que esconde su propia socialidad en contraste con los modos de producción esclavo y feudal, donde las relaciones sociales particulares se manifiestan de manera sensual y material. (shrink)

In response to an impasse, articulated in the late 1980s, the cognitive capacities of ordinary people assumed central place in contemporary critical social theory. The participants’ perspective gained precedence over scientific standards branded as external. The notion of cognition, however, went unchallenged. This article continues the move away from external standards, and discusses two models of critique, which differ based on their underlying notions of cognition. The representational model builds on cognitive content, misrecognition and normativity; three features which are illustrated (...) with positions adopted by prominent exponents of critical social theory. An alternative understanding relies on action-oriented disclosure and the participants’ basic familiarity with the social world. On this reading, what clashes with unequal structures is skilful coping, rather than representations and normative standards. The action-oriented approach may overcome the dilemma of understanding both the impact and the possible transcendence of unequal structures, although it cannot ultimately replace representational critique. (shrink)

In response to an impasse, articulated in the late 1980s, the cognitive capacities of ordinary people assumed central place in contemporary critical social theory. The participants’ perspective gained precedence over scientific standards branded as external. The notion of cognition, however, went unchallenged. This article continues the move away from external standards, and discusses two models of critique, which differ based on their underlying notions of cognition. The representational model builds on cognitive content, misrecognition and normativity; three features which are illustrated (...) with positions adopted by prominent exponents of critical social theory. An alternative understanding relies on action-oriented disclosure and the participants’ basic familiarity with the social world. On this reading, what clashes with unequal structures is skilful coping, rather than representations and normative standards. The action-oriented approach may overcome the dilemma of understanding both the impact and the possible transcendence of unequal structures, although it cannot ultimately replace representational critique. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz wird die bislang kaum beachtete frühe Moralphilosophie von Max Horkheimer aus den 1930er Jahren in ein produktives Spannungsverhältnis zu den Grundannahmen des ethischen Naturalismus gesetzt. Horkheimer versteht die Moral als ein normatives Instrument, mit dem die menschliche Gattung ihr gesellschaftliches Leben zu organisieren versucht. Die natürliche Normativität der menschlichen Lebensform ist für Horkheimer selbst historisch bestimmt, als die menschliche Lebensform sich notwendig nur historisch realisieren kann. In der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft ist diese Normativität nach Horkheimer widersprüchlich verfasst: Einerseits (...) sollen die Menschen moralischen Normen und nicht allein ihren eigenen Interessen folgen, andererseits erfordert die bürgerliche Gesellschaft gerade das rücksichtslose Verfolgen eigener Interessen, da sonst die Selbsterhaltung der Menschen gefährdet würde. Die Auswirkungen dieser Widersprüchlichkeit werden hier anhand von drei Aspekten untersucht: die Opazität und Naturhaftigkeit der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, das Leiden der menschlichen Natur, Geschichte als Anpassungsprozess der menschlichen Natur. Abschließend wird Horkheimers Ansatz hinsichtlich seiner theoretischen Reichweite in den moralphilosophischen Diskussionen der gegenwärtigen Kritischen Theorie verortet. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 64 Heft: 2 Seiten: 193-212.

With the deep economic crisis we face since 2008 also the interest in Marxian theories increased worldwide. This was not really surprising: while in Marx’s economic theory crises play an important role, they are nearly neglected in mainstream economics. They appear there as mere accidents, which could be prohibited by flexible markets (this is the belief of neoclassical economists) or by an appropriate economic policy (the belief of the Keynesians). But talking about Marxian economic theory, we should always have in (...) mind, that there is a certain development in Marx’s thinking as well as there are certain ambivalences in basic theoretical concepts. In traditional Marxism, which mostly tried to present Marxian theory as a complete and perfect building, especially such ambivalences were often negIected or even denied. In the following I will give a short overview about the main stages of Marx’s theoretical development, and then I will focus on the ambivalences of Marx’s mature theoretical work. (shrink)

What is the origin of language? For Levinas, from Aristotle to von Humboldt, the tradition of Western metaphysics has understood language as a representation of reality, going beyond or transcending experience. In this way, language is a metaphor that substitutes for experience—and all language is originally metaphorical. Experience however, is essentially inexpressible—for it not only transcends language, but it does so because experience is always experience of the other, of that which remains infinitely other. And language reminds us of its (...) failure (a failure which Derrida sees, ironically, as a success) to express this other by maintaining a trace of the inexpressible in every expression—and metaphor is failure of expression par excellence. But what is the origin of this original failure? In fact, it can be found in the way in which language makes metaphors (which is the way in which it makes itself, transcends itself, substitutes for itself, becomes other than itself). For as Aristotle reminds us: metaphor-making (indeed, all language, every word and deed) is poiēsis—and the origin of poiēsis is improvisation. If we have, however, discovered the origin of language in improvisation—but what is that? (shrink)