Die Kritische Sozialtheorie sowie die kommunistische Herrschaftsphilosophie haben in der posthegelianischen Befreiungslehre ihren Ursprung. Die Kritische Theorie versuchte diesen Denkansatz gegen seine totalitären Konsequenzen anzuwenden. Dieselben Weltdeutungschemata, die man an der Sowjetideologie anstößig fand, galten aber als akzeptabel, sobald man nur zur Kritik der westlichen Industriegesellschaft überging. Der Hauptpunkt der neomarxistischen Kritik des Sowjetsystems bestand darin, daß man die besondere institutionelle Form, in der der reale Sozialismus das Heil zu verwirklichen beanspruchte, in Frage stellte, ohne andere Lösungen der institutionellen Probleme (...) anzubieten oder das zugrundeliegende Denkprogramm aufzugeben, in dessen Kontext diese Probleme durchaus legitim gestellt werden konnten. Die relativen Leistungen der Kritischen Theorie sind in ihren sozial-politischen Folgen zu suchen, u. zw. darin, daß sie zwei Grundlagen der totalitären Ideologie, von der die Legitimierung des Gesellschaftssystems herrühte, erschütterte: (1) Verfügung über die Tradition; (2) Verfügung über die Sprache, in der über heilsrelevante Fragen gesprochen wurde. /// Both critical theory and communist philosophy arise from the posthegelian theory of salvation. Critical theory undertook the effort to preserve the hard core of this theoretical background and at the same time to criticize by its means the totalitarian consequences the communist ideology had derived from it. In effect, the very same patterns of thought which critical theory believed to denounce as instruments of totalitarian manipulation were accepted as soon as they proved useful to contest advanced industrial society and its world view. The crucial point of the new-leftist criticism of the Stalinist ideology was the rejection of a central claim of the latter according to which the salvation predicted in the leftist-revolutionary tradition has found its actual fulfilment in the institutional framework of the Soviet state. Challenging this claim, the Neomarxists neither abandoned this tradition nor offered another solution to the institutional problems which result from it. The relative achievements of critical theory lie in the damage it has caused to the two foundations of the totalitarian ideology, i.e.: (1) its authority over tradition and (2) its authority over language. (shrink)

An extended review essay on Andrew Feenberg's Heidegger and Marcuse that argues that the concept of negation in Hegel is distinct from that in Heidegger which makes such an attempted synthesis problematic.

The explosion of data grows at a rate of roughly five trillion bits a second, giving rise to greater urgency in conceptualizing the infosphere and understanding its implications for knowledge and public policy. Philosophers of technology and information technologists alike who wrestle with ontological and epistemological questions of digital information tend to emphasize, as Floridi does, information as our new ecosystem and human beings as interconnected informational organisms, inforgs at home in ambient intelligence. But the linguistic and conceptual representations of (...) Big Data—the massive volume of both structured and unstructured data—and the real world practice of data-mining for patterns and meaningful interpretation of evidence reveal tension and ambiguity in the bold promise of data analytics. This paper explores the tacit epistemology of the rhetoric and representation of Big Data and suggests a richer account of its ambiguities and the paradox of its real world materiality. We argue that Big Data should be recognized as manifesting multiple and conflicting trajectories that reflect human intentionality and particular patterns of power and authority. Such patterns require attentive exploration and moral appraisal if we are to resist simplistic informationist ontologies of Big Data, and the subtle forms of control in the political ecology of Big Data that undermine its promise as transformational knowledge. (shrink)

This article shows that forms of analysis and calculation specific to finance are spreading, and changing valuation processes in various social settings. This perspective is used to contribute to the study of the recent transformations of capitalism, as financialisation is usually seen as marking the past three decades. After defining what is meant by “financialised valuation,” different examples are discussed. Recent developments concerning the valuation of assets in accounting standards and credit risk in banking regulations are used to suggest that (...) colonisation of financial activities by financialised valuations is taking place. Other changes, concerning the valuation of social or cultural activities and environmental issues are also highlighted in order to support the hypothesis of a parallel colonisation of non-financial activities by financialised valuations. Specifically, the language of finance appears to gradually being incorporated into public policies, especially in Europe—and this trend seems to have gathered pace since the 2000s. Some interpretations are proposed to understand why public policies are seemingly increasingly reliant on financialised valuations. (shrink)

Cornelius Castoriadis's theory of sublimation is not only innovative within the Freudian tradition, but opens up the domain of inquiry as to society's process of radical social institution. Sublimation is indeed socialization, not merely aesthetic cathexis. A specific sort of sublimation that may be said to mobilize the project of autonomy is linked to philosophy both because it is implicated in a process of interminable interrogation, and because it involves the psyche's practical and poetic engagement with the creation of new (...) imaginary forms. Philosophy's task, in this sense, is to consider thought from the standpoint of the unthought, a daring task that cannot ultimately take place without one's fully-fledged acceptance of one's own finitude. (shrink)

This article studies our philosophical understanding of experience in order to question the current political and theoretical dismissal of experiential accounts in feminist theory. The focus is on Joan Scott's critique of experience, but the philosophical issues animating the discussion go beyond Scott's work and concern the future of feminist theory and politics more generally. I ask what it means for feminist theory to redefine experience as a linguistic event the way Scott suggests. I attempt to demonstrate that the consequences (...) that she draws from such a theoretical move are both philosophically and politically problematic. A critical study of the evidence of experience does not have to imply metaphysical or epistemological foundationalism, as Scott claims, but on the contrary, such a study is indispensable for challenging them. We must hold onto experience as an important resource for contesting sexist discourses and oppressive conceptual schemas. (shrink)

This article pursues the question whether and inasmuch theories of corporate responsibility are dependent on conceptions of managerial freedom. I argue that neglect of the idea of freedom in economic theory has led to an inadequate conceptualization of the ethical responsibilities of corporations within management theory. In a critical review of the history of economic ideas, I investigate why and how the idea of freedom was gradually removed from the canon of economics. This reconstruction aims at a deconstruction of certain (...) axioms of neoclassical economics that hamper contemporary efforts in integrating ethics firmly into management education. I intend to show by these deconstructive endeavors that a constructive use of the idea of responsible freedom could correct and complement the current quantitative focus in business theory through qualitative orientations. I argue that with the help of qualitative success criteria, the strategic integration of the tenets of both business ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility into business practice can be advanced by further research. (shrink)

Could a person ever transcend what it is like to be in the world as a human being? Could we ever know what it is like to be other creatures? Questions about the overcoming of a human perspective are not uncommon in the history of philosophy. In the last century, those very interrogatives were notably raised by American philosopher Thomas Nagel in the context of philosophy of mind. In his 1974 essay What is it Like to Be a Bat?, Nagel (...) offered reflections on human subjectivity and its constraints. Nagel’s insights were elaborated before the social diffusion of computers and could not anticipate the cultural impact of technological artefacts capable of materializing interactive simulated worlds as well as disclosing virtual alternatives to the “self.” In this sense, this article proposes an understanding of computers as epistemological and ontological instruments. The embracing of a phenomenological standpoint entails that philosophical issues are engaged and understood from a fundamentally practical perspective. In terms of philosophical praxis, or “applied philosophy,” I explored the relationship between human phenomenologies and digital mediation through the design and the development of experimental video games. For instance, I have conceptualized the first-person action-adventure video game Haerfest (Technically Finished 2009) as a digital re-formulation of the questions posed in Nagel’s famous essay. Experiencing a bat’s perceptual equipment in Haerfest practically corroborates Nagel’s conclusions: there is no way for humans to map, reproduce, or even experience the consciousness of an actual bat. Although unverifiable in its correspondence to that of bats, Haerfest still grants access to experiences and perceptions that, albeit still inescapably within the boundaries of human kinds of phenomenologies, were inaccessible to humans prior to the advent of computers. Phenomenological alterations and virtual experiences disclosed by interactive digital media cannot take place without a shift in human kinds of ontologies, a shift which this study recognizes as the fundamental ground for the development of a new humanism (I deem it necessary to specify that I am not utilizing the term “humanism” in its common connotation, that is to say the one that emerged from the encounter between the Roman civilization and the late Hellenistic culture. According to this conventional acceptation, humanism indicates the realization of the human essence through “scholarship and training in good conduct” (Heidegger 1998, p. 244). However, Heidegger observed that this understanding of humanism does not truly cater to the original essence of human beings, but rather “is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of nature, history, world, and […] beings as a whole.” (Heidegger 1998, p. 245) The German thinker found this way of embracing humanism reductive: a by-product of Western metaphysics. As Heidegger himself specified in his 1949 essay Letter on Humanism, his opposition to the traditional acceptation of the term humanism does not advocate for the “inhuman” or a return to the “barbaric” but stems instead from the belief that the humanism can only be properly understood and restored in culture as more original way of meditating and caring for humanity and understanding its relationship with Being.). Additionally, this study explicitly proposes and exemplifies the use of interactive digital technology as a medium for testing, developing and disseminating philosophical notions, problems and hypotheses in ways which are alternative to the traditional textual one. Presented as virtual experiences, philosophical concepts can be accessed without the filter of subjective imagination. In a persistent, interactive, simulated environment, I claim that the crafting and the mediation of thought takes a novel, projective (In Martin Heidegger’s 1927 Being and Time, the term “projectivity” indicates the way a Being opens to the world in terms of its possibilities of being (Heidegger 1962, pp. 184–185, BT 145). Inspired by Heidegger’s and Vilem Flusser’s work in the field of philosophy of technology as well as Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological position presented in his 1928 book Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie, this study understands the concept of projectivity as the innate openness of human beings to construct themselves and their world by means of technical artefacts. In this sense, this study proposes a fundamental understanding of technology as the materialization of mankind’s tendency to overcome its physical, perceptual and communicative limitations.) dimension which I propose to call “augmented ontology.”. (shrink)

While Cavell is well known for his reinterpretation of the later Wittgenstein, he has never really engaged himself with post-Investigations writings like On Certainty. This collection may, however, seem to undermine the profoundly anti-dogmatic reading of Wittgenstein that Cavell has developed. In addition to apparently arguing against what Cavell calls ‘the truth of skepticism’ – a phrase contested by other Wittgensteinians – On Certainty may seem to justify the rejection of whoever dares to question one’s basic presuppositions. According to On (...) Certainty, or so it seems, the only right response to someone with different certainties is a reproach like ‘Fool!’ or ‘Heretic!’. This article aims to show that On Certainty need not be taken to prove Cavell wrong. It explains that Wittgenstein, in line with the first two parts of The Claim of Reason, does not reject scepticism out of hand but rather questions the sceptic’s self-understanding. Using arguments from Part Three of The Claim, the article moreover argues that a confrontation with divergence calls for self-examination rather than self-righteousness. Precisely because Wittgenstein acknowledges ‘the groundlessness of our believing’ or, in Cavellian terms, ‘the truth of skepticism’, he is not the authoritarian thinker that some have taken him to be. (shrink)

We are in a state of impending crisis. And the fault lies in part with academia. For two centuries or so, academia has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how. This has enormously increased our power to act which has, in turn, brought us both all the great benefits of the modern world and the crises we now face. Modern science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, the explosive growth of the world’s population, global (...) warming, modern armaments and the lethal character of modern warfare, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, immense inequalities of wealth and power across the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, even the aids epidemic (aids being spread by modern travel). All these global problems have arisen because some of us have acquired unprecedented powers to act without acquiring the capacity to act wisely. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities so that the basic intellectual aim becomes, not knowledge merely, but rather wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. This is an argument I have propounded during the last three decades in six books, over thirty papers, and countless lectures delivered in universities and conferences all over the UK, Europe and north America. Despite all this effort, the argument has, by and large, been ignored. What is really surprising is that philosophers have paid no attention, despite the fact that that this body of work claims to solve the profoundly important philosophical problem: What kind of inquiry best helps us make progress towards as good a world as possible? There are, nevertheless, indications that some scientists and university administrators are beginning to become aware of the urgent need for science, and universities, to change. This is prompted, partly by growing awareness of the seriousness of environmental problems, especially global warming, and partly by a concern to improve the relationship between science and the public. So far, however, these changes have been small-scale, scattered and piecemeal. What we require is for academics and non-academics alike to wake up to the urgent need for change so that we may come to possess what we so strikingly and disastrously lack at present: a kind of inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity make progress towards as good a world as possible. (shrink)

His Paulskirche speech on October 14, 2001, marked Habermas’s turn to public criticism of the unilateral politics of global hegemony as he promoted a globaldomestic and human rights policy. Two years later he joined ranks with Jacques Derrida against the eight “new” Europeans who lent signatures to the second Gulf War. Lest we misjudge the joint letter by Habermas and Derrida as peculiarly Eurocentric and even oblivious to the worldwide nature of the antiwar protest on February 15, 2003, we must (...) read their new alliance in the context of its emergence: Derrida and Habermas introduce a corrective that neither invokes the geographical heart of Europe nor the cosmopolitan westernization of the world. In this essay, first, I revisit the imaginary conversation between Habermas and Derrida from 1995. Second, I highlight the persisting differences in their post-2001 thinking, pairing up key political concepts that illustrate how each thinker hopes for that which is to come after the death of God. Third, I press ahead to a new critical theory that articulates postsecular hope after the death of God. (shrink)

This paper begins by defending the twofold relevance, political and theoretical, of the notion of social suffering. Social suffering is a notion politics cannot do without today, as it seems indispensable to describe all the aspects of contemporary injustice. As such, it has been taken up in a number of significant research programmes in different social sciences (sociology, anthropology, social psychology). The notion however poses significant conceptual problems as it challenges disciplinary boundaries traditionally set up to demarcate individual and social (...) phenomena. I argue that philosophy has a role to play in the attempt to integrate the diverging perspectives stemming from the social sciences. I attempt to show that, as it engages with the social sciences to account for the conceptual and normative issues thrown open by the question of social suffering, philosophy in fact retrieves the very idea of critical theory, as a conjugated critique of social reality and of its knowledge. I conclude by showing how the question of social suffering then becomes a useful criterion to distinguish between the different existing approaches in critical theory. (shrink)

Thomas Flynn's work on Sartre and Foucault, the first of a two-volume project, offers a unique opportunity for examining an existential theory of history. It occasions rethinking existential-social categories from the vantage point of the poststructuralist turn. And it contributes to developing existential variants of critical theory. The following questions guide me in each of the three above areas. First, how is human history intelligible, given not only our finite sense of ourselves but also claims that we have reached the (...) end of history? Second, with the poststructuralist eclipse of dialectics, can we render existential categories in social terms and vice versa? Third, critics decry grand theorizing even in fallibilist reason, e.g., of Habermas, while others are worried by the normative deficits of poststructuralist nominalism, e.g., of Foucault. Can existential variants of critical social theory, anticipated before Sartre by Marcuse, split the difference? (shrink)

Globalization is often seen as the final stage in the transition towards a market economy. It is argued that a side-effect of globalization is cultural homogeneity and loss of life world, or ‘McDonaldization’. McDonaldization represents the rationalization of society in the quest for extreme efficiency. More recently, Meštrović has argued that the rationalization of emotions has also occurred and that Western societies are entering a postemotional phase. In postemotional societies there has been a separation of emotion from action. The result (...) is synthetic, manufactured emotions manipulated and standardized for mass consumption. In this paper I explore what it means to nurse in a ‘postemotional society’ and what impact this dulling of the emotions has had on a profession that locates ‘care’ as its central defining concept. My aim is to generate critical discussion of the shape and direction of contemporary society and the role of nursing within it. (shrink)

This paper presents some results of a case study of the usage of the social networking platform studiVZ by students in Salzburg, Austria. The topic is framed by the context of electronic surveillance. An online survey that was based on questionnaire that consisted of 35 (single and multiple) choice questions, 3 open-ended questions, and 5 interval-scaled questions, was carried out (N = 674). The knowledge that students have in general was assessed with by calculating a surveillance knowledge index, the critical (...) awareness towards surveillance by calculating a surveillance critique index. Knowledge about studiVZ as well as information behaviour on the platform were analyzed and related to the surveillance parameters. The results show that public information and discussion about surveillance and social networking platforms is important for activating critical information behaviour. In the case of studiVZ, a change of the terms of use in 2008 that brought about the possibility of targeted personalized advertising, was the subject of public discussions that influenced students’ knowledge and information behaviour. (shrink)

The debate between Marcuse and Habermas over technology marked a significant turning point in the history of the Frankfurt School. After the 1960s Habermas's influence grew as Marcuse's declined and Critical Theory adopted a far less Utopian stance. Recently there has been a revival of quite radical technology criticism in the environmental movement and under the influence of Foucault and constructivism. This article takes a new look at the earlier debate from the standpoint of these recent developments. While much of (...) Habermas's argument remains persuasive, his defense of modernity now seems to concede far too much to the claims of autonomous technology. His essentialist picture of technology as an application of a purely instrumental form of nonsocial rationality is less plausible after a decade of historicizing research in technology studies. The article argues that Marcuse was right after all to claim that technology is socially determined even if he was unable to develop his insight fruitfully. The article derives a new approach to technology criticism from both constructivism and Habermas's communication theory. The essence of technology is shown to be historical and reflexive, like the essence of other social institutions. As such an institution, its rationality is always implemented in value?biased forms subject to political critique. (shrink)

In analogy with Rousseau's concept of ?civil religion? as a system of ?positive dogmas?, ?without which?, as he observed, ?a man cannot be a good citizen?, this paper advances the concept of ?civil epistemology? as the positive dogmas without which the agents of government actions cannot be held accountable by democratic citizens. The civil epistemology of democracy shapes the citizen's views on the nature of political reality, on how the facts of political reality can be known and by whom. Modern (...) liberal democratic politics assumes that the exercise of political power can be manifest in a visible domain of publicly accessible facts. It rests on the Enlightenment faith in the powers of light and visibility to demystify political power, render political actors more exposed and therefore more honestly accountable and enlist the sense of sight as a vehicle of universal political participation. It is, in this context, that technology has come to play such an important symbolic role in the construction of the particular democratic genre of public action as a political spectacle. Democratic civil epistemology, and technology ? in the widest sense of the word ? as the prototype of action which can be observed in the field of visual perception, uphold the democratic conception of politics as a view. Together they define political actors as visible performers, journalists as observers (who translate actual seeing into virtual seeing) and the citizens as witnesses. (shrink)

Psychiatry is increasingly dominated by the reductionist claim that mental illness is caused by neurobiological abnormalities such as chemical imbalances in the brain. Critical psychiatry does not believe that this is the whole story and proposes a more ethical foundation for practice. This book describes an original framework for renewing mental health services in alliance with people with mental health problems. It is an advance over the polarization created by the "anti-psychiatry" of the past.

This book argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change in (...) the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value – problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being. (shrink)

For over half a century market segments have been considered objective groupings of individuals which marketers identify, understand, and target with advertising messages. The process of market segmentation has, therefore, occupied a position of moral neutrality. An increasingly popular method of segmentation is by consumer personality, with advertisers targeting messages to specific personality types. This paper explores personality segmentation, and presents empirical evidence to support the proposition that personality metrics that are used to assign individuals to segments may, in fact, (...) be manipulable by advertising executions themselves. Quite apart from the implications that this has for the business efficacy of the segmentation process, the ethical implications – particularly as applied to children – are considerable. (shrink)

Simon A Longstaff; Democratic Education and the Curriculum Safety-net: a tantalising illusion?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 1, 30 May 2.

: This essay explores how early approaches in feminist aesthetics drew on concepts honed in the field of feminist legal theory, especially conceptions of oppression and equality. I argue that by importing these feminist legal concepts, many early feminist accounts of how art is political depended largely on a distinctly liberal version of politics. I offer a critique of liberal feminist aesthetics, indicating ways recent work in the field also turns toward critical feminist aesthetics as an alternative.

La trayectoria intelectual de Marcuse está acompañada de un compromiso constante con las formas de la crítica filosófica heredadas de la tradición occidental, desde la forma en la cual aparece la negación de lo dado a través del diálogo socrático hasta la manera en que se configura la crítica del sistema capitalista en el siglo XX. Esto no quiere decir que Marcuse haya sido un erudito que absorbió y comprendió a cabalidad todos los sistemas e ideas filosóficas y que las (...) utilizó al servicio de su propia consideración crítica del mundo; más bien resalta que entre sus elaboraciones han estado presentes algunos de los contextos e ideas más potentes del pensamiento que ha entendido de manera crítica la estructura de las sociedades humanas. (shrink)

The future has become a problem for the present. Almost every critical issue is now understood and experienced through the prism of the future since this is the primary focus for the playing out of crises. Senses of the Future offers a wide-ranging discussion of theories of the future. It covers the main ideas of the future in modern thought and explores how we should view the future today in light of a plurality of very different and conflicting visions. The (...) key contribution of this book is to bring together the different approaches with an account that is grounded in sociological and philosophical analysis as opposed to visions of the future that are inspired by extreme visions of catastrophe or approaches that see the future as only the continuation of the present. Given a revival of apocalyptical visions of the ‘end times’ and dystopian views of the future of human societies, there is urgent need for a new approach on how we should imagine the future. The author explores the future as a field of tensions that is revealed in narratives, utopian desires, hope, imaginaries, and social struggles concerning the potential possibilities of the present: the future does not just arrive; it has to be fought for. This book is an important contribution to a critical sociology of the future. It is both a work of reconstruction and critique grounded in a historical and philosophical hermeneutics of the future. Table of Contents Chapter One Introduction: Conflicting Visions of the Future Contested Visions of the Future Today Return to the Future Outline of the Chapters References Chapter Two When is the Future? The Problem of Time and the Human Condition Time in the Physical World: Lessons from Physics Has the Future already Begun? Time and History Time, Life, and the Human Condition: Biology, Evolution, and Culture Conclusion References Chapter Three Lessons from the Past: What Does the Past Tell Us about the Future? The Future in the Past Failed Societies and Civilizational Collapse Catastrophes and History Conclusion References Chapter Four Modernity and the Concept of the Future: Utopia, Progress, and Prophecy The Future as Expectation The Future as an Imaginary and the Emergence of Utopianism The Future as Possibility The Future as Experience Conclusion References Chapter Five Ideas of the Future in the Twentieth Century: Futurism, Modernism, Sociology, and Political Theory New Political Ideas of the Future after 1945 Responses to the Future: From Fear of the Future to Futurology Sociological Theory and the Future Conclusion: The New Sociology of the Future References Chapter Six Critical Theory and the Future: The Sources of Transcendence The Intellectual Origins of Critical Theory: A Brief Outline The Idea of the Future in the Critical Theory of the Early Frankfurt School Habermas and the Communication Paradigm The Responsibility Paradigm and Cosmopolitanism: Jonas and Apel Critical Cosmopolitanism and the Idea of the Future Conclusion: Cultural Models and the Future as Possibility References Chapter Seven Conclusion: In The Shadow of the Future Do We Need a Theory of the Future? Are we already in a New Historical Era? AI and a Posthuman Future Struggles for the Future References Index. (shrink)

This chapter explores the tripartite relationship between transgender identities, political activism, and sonic practice. In particular, this chapter employs theorizations of noise to explore a rupture in the prevalent binarisms of sound and gender in the American punk scene and its aesthetics. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as Herbert Marcuse’s one-dimensional society and Jean-François Lyotard’s conception of a libidinal economy, the sonic practices of trans-feminist artists such as GLOSS (Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit) and the HIRS Collective are re-examined to (...) interrogate their capacities to initiate acts of intentional antagonism to construct new spaces for the invisible and/or overlooked. Through such a trajectory, the intended goal is to reveal not only such trans-feminist artists’ collective actions of political resistance towards the modern neoliberal state, but perhaps most importantly, the typically less examined yet far-reaching ramifications of their inherent situatedness outside of such socio-political structures and machinery. While such artistic practice pits itself against the increasingly one-dimensional state of commodification in the punk genre, it also probes deeper to illuminate the related homonormative currents which have exerted considerable effort to flatten notions of diversity and difference within contemporary LGBTQ2S communities. It is ultimately through this complex matrix of identity, affective flows, and a political (dis)engagement with the dynamics of the American punk genre that we can begin to bear witness upon a modern form of sonic anarchism; one which fragments itself off from previous constructions yet reveals a possibility for new formations to those previously rendered silenced, both figuratively and literally. (shrink)

I argue that propaganda does not characteristically interfere with individual rationality, but instead with group agency. Whereas it is often claimed that propaganda involves some sort of incitement to irrationality, I show that this is neither necessary nor sufficient for a case’s being one or propaganda. For instance, some propaganda constitutes evidence of the speaker’s power, or else of the risk and futility of opposing them, and there is nothing irrational about taking such evidence seriously. I outline an alternative account (...) of propaganda inspired by Hannah Arendt, on which propaganda characteristically creates or destroys group agency. One aspiring to control the public should have an interest in both creating and suppressing group agency, I argue, both because groups have capacities that individuals don’t, and because participation in group action can have a transformative effect upon the individual. Finally, I suggest that my characterization of propaganda suggests a vision of resistance to propaganda quite unlike the one that emerges from irrational-belief accounts, on which propaganda cannot be resisted by oneself. (shrink)

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

In the last decade, we have witnessed the return of one of the most controversial terms in the political lexicon: totalitarianism. What are we talking about when we define a totalitarian political and social situation? When did we start using the word as both adjective and noun? And, what totalitarian ghosts haunt the present? Philosopher Simona Forti seeks to answer these questions by reconstructing not only the genealogy of the concept, but also by clarifying its motives, misunderstandings, and the controversies (...) that have animated its current resurgence. Taking into account political theories and historical discussions, Totalitarianism especially focuses on philosophical reflections, from the question of totalitarian biopolitics to the alleged totalitarian drifts of neoliberalism. The work invites the relentless formulation of a radical question about democratic age: the possibilities it has opened up, the voids it leaves behind, the mechanisms it activates, and the "voluntary servitude" it produces. Forti argues that totalitarianism cannot be considered an external threat to democracy, but rather, one of the possible answers to those questions posed by modernity which democracies have not been able to solve. Her investigation of the uses and abuses of totalitarianism as one of the fundamental categories of 20th and 21st centuries promises to provoke much-needed discussion and debate among those in philosophy, politics, ethics, and beyond. (shrink)

Heidegger claimed that Western philosophy ended, failed even, in the German Idealist tradition. In The Culmination, Robert B. Pippin explores the ramifications of this charge through a masterful survey of Western philosophy, especially Heidegger's critiques of Hegel and Kant. Pippin argues that Heidegger's basic concern was to determine sources of meaning for human life, particularly those that had been obscured by Western philosophy's attention to reason. The Culmination offers a new interpretation of Heidegger, German Idealism, and the fate of Western (...) rationalism. (shrink)

The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

According to many accounts, propaganda is a variety of politically significant signal with a distinctive connection to irrationality. This irrationality may be theoretical, or practical; it may be supposed that propaganda characteristically elicits this irrationality anew, or else that it exploits its prior existence. The view that encompasses such accounts we will call irrationalism. This essay presents two classes of propaganda that do not bear the sort of connection to irrationality posited by the irrationalist: hard propaganda and propaganda by the (...) deed. Faced with these counterexamples, some irrationalists will offer their account of propaganda as a refinement of the folk concept rather than as an attempt to capture all of its applications. The author argues that any refinement of the concept of propaganda must allow the concept to remain essentially political, and that the irrationalist refinement fails to meet this condition. (shrink)

During the second half of the twentieth century, several philosophers of technology argued that their predecessors had reflected too abstractly and pessimistically on technology. In the view of these critics, one should study technologies empirically in order to fully understand them. They developed several strategies to empirically inform the philosophy of technology and called their new approach the empirical turn. However, they provide insufficient indications of what exactly is meant by empirical study in their work. This leads to the critical (...) question of what counts as an empirically informed philosophy of technology in the empirical turn. In order to answer this question, we first elaborate on the problems that the empirical turn philosophers tried to address; secondly, we sketch their solutions, and, thirdly, we critically discuss their conceptions of empirical study. Our critical analysis of the empirical turn contributes to new efforts to engage in an empirically informed philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Across the globe, radical conservative political forces and ideas are influencing and even transforming the landscape of international politics. Yet IR is remarkably ill-equipped to understand and engage these new challenges. Unlike political theory or domestic political analyses, conservatism has no distinctive place in the fields’ defining alternatives of realism, liberalism, Marxism, and constructivism. This paper seeks to provide a point of entry for such engagement by bringing together what may seem the most unlikely of partners: critical theory and the (...) New Right. Important parts of today’s New Right represent self-conscious appropriations of Critical themes and thinkers—turning them to self-declared “reactionary” ends. Developing outside the confines of the academy, these forms of thought have woven insights from across Critical theory into new and mobilizing forms of conservative ideology, seeking to link that ideology to social forces that play increasingly active roles in global politics. Our intention here is not to somehow blame Critical perspectives for the ideas of the New Right, either directly or by association. Rather, we seek to show how an engagement with Critical theory helps us understand the New Right, while also demonstrating some of the direct challenges the New Right poses for critical perspectives. (shrink)

In his article How Did Marx Invent the Symptom? Žižek discusses his project of a critique of ideology, he proposes, since the concept of real abstraction by Sohn-Rethel, that are a virtual dimension that structure the practices, which, in turn, the beliefs or the subjectivity is submitted to. On contrary to the classical critique of ideology, that step in the levels of practices or the subjectivity, in Žižek’s project the subjectivity is just a rebound effect of the practices and the (...) the practice is what are ideological, then the critique of ideology must to act over the practices, nor on the believes. And, the way to do this is acting over the real abstraction, or, the phantasy, the ideological phantasy. Our propose in this article is to show how this project of a critique of ideology fits in the lacanian structure known as Graph of Desire. In this way, the lacanian graph will be a generic topology to a critique of ideology or phantasy. (shrink)

Digital Twins are conceptualised in the academic technical discourse as real-time realistic digital representations of physical entities. Originating from product engineering, the Digital Twin quickly advanced into other fields, including the life sciences and earth sciences. Digital Twins are seen by the tech sector as the new promising tool for efficiency and optimisation, while governmental agencies see it as a fruitful means for improving decision-making to meet sustainability goals. A striking example of the latter is the European Commission who wishes (...) to delegate a significant role to Digital Twins in addressing climate change and supporting Green Deal policy. As Digital Twins give rise to high expectations, ambitions, and are being entrusted important societal roles, it is crucial to critically reflect on the nature of Digital Twins. In this article, we therefore philosophically reflect on Digital Twins by critically analysing dominant conceptualisations, the assumptions underlying them, and their normative implications. We dissect the concept and argue that a Digital Twin does not merely fulfil the role of being a representation, but is in fact a steering technique used to direct a physical entity towards certain goals by means of multiple representations. Currently, this steering seems mainly fuelled by a reductionist approach focused on efficiency and optimisation. However, this is not the only direction from which a Digital Twin can be thought and, consequently, designed and deployed. We therefore set an agenda based on a critical understanding of Digital Twins that helps to draw out their beneficial potential, while addressing their potential issues. (shrink)

Efficient markets are alienating if they inhibit us from recognizably caring about one another in our productive activities. I argue that efficient market behaviour is both exclusionary and fetishistic. As exclusionary, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care alongside their market behaviour. As fetishistic, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care in their market behaviour. The conjunction entails that efficient market behavior inhibits care. It doesn’t follow that efficient market behavior is vicious: individuals might justifiably commit to efficiency because doing so serves (...) the common good. But efficient market systems nevertheless have significant opportunity costs. The discussion yields a range of desiderata for non-alienated economic organization. (shrink)

As the use of nudges by governmental agencies becomes more common, the need for normative guidelines regarding the processes by which decisions about the implementation of specific nudges are taken becomes more acute. In order to find a justified set of such guidelines one must meet several theoretical challenges to Libertarian Paternalism that arise at the foundational level. In this paper, I identify three central challenges to Libertarian Paternalism, and suggest that Susan Hurley's political philosophy as presented in her Natural (...) Reasons (1989) can be viewed as offering powerful responses to them. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to lay bare the roots of dialetheism in discussions about dialectics and dialectical logic at the time of the first development of paraconsistent logics. In other words, th...

One of the most influential recent developments in supposedly radical philosophy is ‘posthumanism’. This can be seen as the successor to ‘deconstructive postmodernism’. In each case, the claim of its proponents has been that cultures are oppressive by virtue of their elitism, and this elitism, fostered by the humanities, is being challenged. In each case, however, these philosophical ideas have served ruling elites by crippling opposition to their efforts to impose markets, concentrate wealth and power and treat everyone and everything (...) as mere instruments in a way that is not only undermining democracy and threatening economic, social and political stability through growing inequality, but is crippling efforts to deal with the global ecological crisis. Philosophers, Nietzsche claimed, are physicians of culture. Why should people claiming to be philosophers, or at least aligned with philosophers, subvert their own calling? In this paper I will suggest that with the expansion of education and the rise of neoliberalism, those involved in education and research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, have been proletarianized, and most have accepted this proletarianization. They have been reduced to a fraction of the proletariat - wage-slaves without economic security and therefore dependent on the will of others on whom they are dependent. They are not ordinary wage-slaves, however, but wage-house-slaves, having salaries rather than wages. If, as Marx argued, social being determines consciousness, posthumanism can be understood as the expression of ressentiment of these house-slaves at their condition while simultaneously serving to affirm their superiority to field-slaves while serving their masters. Their work is supported because it provides ideological cover for their masters, the new transnational managerial class or corporatocracy as they expand their power through information technology, while absolving this corporatocracy from responsibility for the consequences of their growing power. In making this claim I will argue that the real target of deconstructionists and posthumanists, although this is now seldom appreciated, has been the humanism of the New Left, a revival of the Radical Enlightenment inspired by Renaissance civic humanism and the German Renaissance. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the concept of alienation should be mobilized to develop a ‘geo-social’ critique of the generic forms of life that sustain contemporary capitalist societies, in a time when the stability of the Earth system is increasingly at risk. I contend that retrieving the full heuristic potential of the concept demands engaging the fields where it has been traditionally discussed (notably social philosophy and environmental philosophy) to demonstrate how their insights on alienation can be fruitfully combined. (...) By putting greater emphasis on how society and nature are mutually embedded, this new approach to alienation highlights the anthropocentrism that critical theory has long conveyed and indicates how it could be at least partially corrected. (shrink)

This paper argues that histories of the Green Revolution are often underpinned by commitments to theoretical models of technology and science which shape the parameters of such narratives in politically normative ways. This paper explores the accounts of the Green Revolution in India given by Vandana Shiva and Govindan Parayil and demonstrates the ways in which these accounts are influenced by their models of technology and science. It is argued that Shiva and Parayil represent key theoretical positions in technological theory, (...) determinist and instrumentalist, respectively, and that examination of their Green Revolution narratives clearly indicates the ways in which such theoretical commitments can determine the scope and content of analyses of technology-driven development, and thereby exclude political content necessary for the evaluation of the efficacy of such development and the validity of the theoretical model. (shrink)

The trajectory of critical ethical reflection on technology has been from big issues to small ones. It is time again to think in large-scale terms.