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)

Robert Dahl's democratic theory has been remarkably consistent over the course of his long career. While Dahl has maintained a markedly un‐romantic view of modern democracy, and can best be read as an immanent critic of its liberal variant, he has steadily clung to certain radical aspirations, even as their prospects have waned. Dahl's often‐unnoticed radicalism lies in his desire to see democracy break out of the institutional bonds of the liberal state. Reviewing his career forces one to consider the (...) ultimately Utopian character of his quiet radicalism and the significance of its apparent failure. Paradoxically, Dahl's call for the extension of democracy into the economic sphere would be less Utopian if it were more radical at its foundation—that is, if his basic premises would lead him to seriously question citizens’ existing preferences. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of critique in Habermasian thought. Given that the concept of critique is a central theoretical category in the work of the Frankfurt School, it comes as a surprise that little in the way of a systematic account which sheds light on the multifaceted meanings of the concept of critique in Habermas's oeuvre can be found in the literature. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the various meanings (...) that Habermas attributes to the concept of critique in 10 key thematic areas of his writings: (1) the public sphere, (2) knowledge, (3) language, (4) morality, (5) ethics, (6) evolution, (7) legitimation, (8) democracy, (9) religion, and (10) modernity. On the basis of a detailed analysis of Habermas's multifaceted concerns with the nature and function of critique, the study seeks to demonstrate that the concept of critique can be considered not only as a constitutive element but also as a normative cornerstone of Habermasian thought. The paper draws to a close by reflecting on some of the limitations of Habermas's conception of critique, arguing that in order to be truly critical in the Habermasian sense we need to turn the subject of critique into an object of critique. (shrink)

The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo‐Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a ‘language of critique’. By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of critical pedagogy is twofold: 1) to correct the pessimistic conclusions of Neo‐Marxist theories, and 2) to transform a ‘language of critique’ into a ‘language of possibility’ . Then, (...) what political projects do critical pedagogies present to us? What alternative visions of schooling do critical pedagogies offer against the mainstream pedagogy? The purpose of this paper is to identify main projects of critical pedagogy, and to explore overarching politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy. Although there are diverse theories and approaches in critical pedagogy, three overarching projects can be identified, which I call: 1) the project of experience, 2) the project of anti‐system, and 3) the project of inclusion. Based on an examination of the general trends and characteristics of these three projects of critical pedagogy, I argue that three prominent politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy are culturalist politics, self/identity politics, and grassroots politics. In trying to better understand why and how critical pedagogy has developed the political stances as it has, the last part of the paper links these three politics to the historical developments of the New Left and the New Social Movements. (shrink)

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)

Wem wird geglaubt und wem nicht? Wessen Wissen wird weitergegeben und wessen nicht? Wer hat eine Stimme und wer nicht? Theorien der epistemischen Ungerechtigkeit befassen sich mit dem breiten Feld der ungerechten oder unfairen Behandlung, die mit Fragen des Wissens, Verstehens und Kommunizierens zusammenhängen, wie z.B. die Möglichkeit, vom Wissen oder von kommunikativen Praktiken ausgeschlossen zu werden oder zum Schweigen gebracht zu werden, aber auch Kontexte, in denen die Bedeutungen mancher systematisch verzerrt oder falsch gehört und falsch dargestellt werden, in (...) denen manchen misstraut wird oder es an epistemischer Handlungsfähigkeit mangelt. In diesem Buch wird eine Übersicht über die breite Debatte epistemischer Ungerechtigkeit, epistemischer Unterdrückung und epistemischer Gewalt gegeben, in dem unterschiedliche Theorien, die sich auf der Schnittstelle von Gerechtigkeitstheorie und epistemischen Fragen befinden, systematisch und kritisch diskutiert sowie theoretische Vorgänger dieser Theorien beleuchtet werden. (shrink)

Philosophers, theologians, physicists, and psychologists join their efforts to reflect on the crucial issues of limit and infinity, time and eternity, empty space and material space. The volume offers an invaluable contribution to some of the most important issues of our times: questions on God and consciousness are discussed in parallel with quantum theory, black holes, the inflationary universe, the Big Bang, and string theory, from different perspectives and angles, ranging from neuroscience to AI.

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)

In this paper, I examine the extent to which Marcien Towa (1931-2014) can be considered the Father of Cameroonian Critical Theory. In this regard, I compare what can be called his social philosophy with the project of a critical theory of society, as outlined by Max Horkheimer (1895-1973). I specifically consider Marcien Towa’s idea of philosophy, which I confront with Horkheimer’s project from the perspectives offered by their sociopolitical premises, conceptual references, and progressive goals. On each of these aspects, I (...) discover sufficient correspondences that allow me to argue that Towa and Horkheimer, who barely knew each other, formulated a somewhat similar claim, namely to provide a critical theory of society, whose aim is not only to understand society but more importantly to change it. (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)

"Roger Garaudy was for many years at the centre of the French Communist Party but was eventually expelled for his liberal views. In the Seventies he developed a project to bring Marxism and Christianity together, to include all humanity in a project to set all people free. What emerges from Garaudy's project is a very modern Marxism, with its emphasis on the individual, its ecological politics, and in its insistence on religion as central to human emancipation. Although Garaudy himself became (...) frustrated by the West and converted to Islam in 1982, ending his life discredited in the West, it is certainly possible that Garaudy's project represents a good, perhaps even the best, starting point for Marxism in today's world"--. (shrink)

Este libro promete ser una contribución para el estudio de la teoría crítica en general y para el análisis de la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt en particular. Todos los trabajos que están contenidos en este volumen hacen parte del amplio marco teórico de la teoría crítica de la sociedad. Muchos siguen las huellas de los fundadores de esta tendencia, mientras que otros se presentan como críticos de la misma y unos cuantos más tratan de vincular problemas y contextos (...) de relevancia a los conceptos más destacados que se empezaron a construir hace cien años en Frankfurt. Encontramos como buena excusa para su publicación precisamente el año centenario del Instituto de Investigación Social. Además, hemos creído conveniente organizar los materiales en secciones que van desde la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta la consideración de algunos interrogantes de actualidad motivados por el desarrollo de la teoría crítica. No obstante, con esto no pretendemos establecer límites absolutos de clasificación. Confesamos que nuestra forma de organizar los ensayos responde simplemente a criterios editoriales más que a cuestiones teóricas y conceptuales. Claramente las intersecciones entre los estudios aquí presentados son amplias y hacen que cada una de las propuestas pueda dialogar con las otras en función de sus evidentes parecidos de familia. (shrink)

Questions are currently being posed concerning the implications of the clinical uptake of psychedelics. While enthusiasm surrounds the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics and critique surrounds their appropriation to commercial ends, limited attention has been given to the role of psychedelics in generating social transformation. Herbert Marcuse contended radical change requires ‘new imaginaries of liberation’. We consider whether clinical uptake of psychedelics may produce the perceptual shifts necessary to generate social transformation surrounding contemporary alienating conditions. Economic structures contributing to these (...) alienating conditions are highly resistant to change and may neuter psychedelics’ revolutionary potential. We illustrate how psychedelics may be instrumentalised: regulating individuals into unjust systems; redirecting psychedelic usage away from therapeutic ends towards productivity; distracting or diverting attention from systemic forms of control; usurping non- ordinary states into the domain of self-care; and fetishistically commodifying psychedelic experience as a consumable. There are, however, reasons to believe that psychedelics, in raising consciousnesses, may prove resistant to co-option. In particular, psychedelics induce perceptual experiences that: challenge the paradigmatic assumptions of industrial society by provoking alternative epistemologies and meta- physics; generate expanded or ecological constructions of selfhood, thereby offering resignifications of meanings, desires, and life potentials; and offer the enriched phenomenological insight into self, other, and world called for in combating ubiquitous social alienation. In this way, psychedelics may induce the revolution in perception necessary to imagine liberatory potentials and spark the desire for collective emancipation. (shrink)

This thesis studies the enabling properties of ICT and their effects and potential for social change, and prepares the ground for a sustainability-oriented ethico-political assessment of this technology. It primarily builds on interdisciplinary scholarship to describe and explain the multifaceted co-evolution between the global deployment of ICTs and the emergence of the Information Society, understood as a socioeconomic restructuring of capitalism. Beyond the role of ICTs in this regime transition, the thesis delivers other philosophical insights about crucial aspects of ICT (...) development, applications and management. These include arguments about how we should conceptualize ICTs on the basis of their different roles in extending human communication and in performing or facilitating the remote control of humans and animals, machines and systems operations; about the entanglement between telecommunications, transport networks, urban development and work and organization; and about the relations between ICTs, culture and human values. Examples are offered to illustrate the potential that these empirical and philosophical lessons may hold for the construction of a framework for the ethico-political assessment of ICTs. (shrink)

J.L. Austin argues that ordinary language should be used to identify when it is appropriate or inappropriate to make, accept, or reject knowledge claims. I criticize Austin’s account: In our ordinary life, we often accept justifications rooted in racism, sexism, ableism, and classism as reasons to dismiss knowledge claims or challenges, despite the fact such reasons are not good reasons. Austin’s Ordinary Language Epistemology (OLE) classifies the discounting of knowledge claims in classic cases of epistemic injustice as legitimate ordinary maneuvers. (...) I provide recommendations for revision of OLE and offer a means of distinguishing between dismissals in cases of epistemic injustice and their legitimate counterparts. (shrink)

This article traces the trajectory of theory and praxis aroundnocivitàor noxiousness – i.e., health damage and environmental degradation – drawn by the workerist group rooted in the petrochemical complex of Porto Marghera, Venice. While Porto Maghera was an important setting for the early activism of influential theorists such as the post-workerist Antonio Negri and the autonomist feminist Mariarosa Dalla Costa, the theories produced by the workers themselves have been largely forgotten. Yet, this experience was remarkable because it involved workers employed (...) by polluting industries denouncing in words and actions the environmental degradation caused by their companies from as early as 1968, when the workerists had a determining influence in the local factories. The Porto Marghera struggles against noxiousness contradict the widespread belief that what is today known as working-class environmentalism did not have much significance in the labour unrest of Italy’s Long 1968. The Porto Marghera group’s original contribution was based on the thesis of the inherent noxiousness of capitalist work and an antagonistic-transformative approach to capitalist technology. This led to the proposal of a counterpower able to determine “what, how, and how much to produce” on the basis of common needs encompassing the environment, pointing to the utopian prospect of struggling for a different, anti-capitalist technology, compatible with the sustainable reproduction of life on the planet. (shrink)

There is an extensive body of literature detailing the forces behind and experiences of alienation in a modern capitalist world. However, social scientific interest in alienation had become parochial and balkanized by the 1970s. To reconstruct a unifying theory of alienation that addresses general features of capitalism, such as compulsory growth and commodification, and particular phases like financialized capitalism, we begin with the notion of futurelessness. Futurelessness refers to a deficient relationship to the future in which people’s senses of possibility (...) ossify, narrow, or dissipate. It may result from inclusion in and exclusion from capitalist mechanisms or processes. Moreover, processes of inclusion and exclusion may appear more voluntary or involuntary. With these general terms, we identify four manifestations of futurelessness in financial capitalism: commercial exhaustion, imaginative marginalization, therapeutic nowism, and pragmatic denialism. The conclusion addresses future-sustenance in an alienating world and the prospects of a more systemic and synthetic approach to alienation. (shrink)

This article explores objections made against ideal theorizing in political philosophy by two prominent contemporary critical theorists: Axel Honneth and Charles Mills. In Freedom’s Right, Honneth...

Este texto muestra cómo la tradición fenomenológica de la filosofía de la tecnología ha interrogado y cuestionado a la tecnología moderna entendida como ciencia aplicada y neutral. El análisis inicia con la indagación ontológica sobre el significado de la técnica para el hombre llevada a cabo por Heidegger y Ortega, para señalar luego la pertinencia de encontrar vínculoscon otros modos de considerar la acción práctica del hombre y explicitar con ello el acercamiento entre la racionalidad técnica con el poder humanizante (...) de la imaginación y la creatividad. Finalmente se muestra cómo este vínculo fue desarrollado por Gaston Bachelard bajo la sugerente idea de un racionalismo inventivo que debe acompañar tanto a la práctica científica del sabio como a la construcción técnica de los fenómenos por parte del ingeniero. (shrink)

Critical discourse analysis stands on the shoulder of giants – different giants – in order to answer how its critique, its ethico-moral stance, is theoretically grounded and justified. Concerning this question, this article explores the role of the Frankfurt School in the discourse–historical approach. Although references to the Frankfurt School can regularly be found in the DHA's canon, I argue that an even more comprehensive discussion would help in combating accusations of the DHA being unprincipled and politically biased, and further (...) enrich the DHA's toolkit for empirical analysis. After reviewing existing references to the Frankfurt School, I discuss this intellectual tradition – from Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno's The dialectic of enlightenment to Jürgen Habermas's language-philosophy – showing to what extent it can ground the DHA's emancipatory and socially transformative aims. Thereby, I illustrate how the DHA's critical standard is not simply based on a coincidental, though progressive, consensus but theoretically justified. (shrink)

World Crisis and Underdevelopment examines the impact of poverty and other global crises in generating forms of structural coercion that cause agential and societal underdevelopment. It draws from discourse ethics and recognition theory in criticizing injustices and pathologies associated with underdevelopment. Its scope is comprehensive, encompassing discussions about development science, philosophical anthropology, global migration, global capitalism and economic markets, human rights, international legal institutions, democratic politics and legitimation, world religions and secularization, and moral philosophy in its many varieties.

Michelle’s thesis explores the extent to which a researcher could contribute to change by engaging leaders in conversations that might intensify commitment to or the direction of their actions around socio-environmental decline in Bermuda as a country historically organised in the tradition of an entrepreneurial for-profit enterprise. The framing of a space to reflect on highlighted the significance of time that led to the bricolage design of a heuristic device called a moon gate. Time, the keystone of the moon gate, (...) created a prism lighting up the twists and turns of kaleidoscopic images of the chaos of the markets and the creative diversity of human and nonhuman participants. She undertook a philosophical approach with her study of the contested space of time around sensitivity to maintaining a fulcrum point based on the wellbeing of people and planet. (shrink)

The disembodiment of cognitive science has resulted in curricula with disembodied concepts and practice. The emergence of the embodied cognitive science provoked public reflections on the nature of the curriculum. This has elevated the body from the ‘peripheral’ position to the ‘central’ position, acting as the subject in action and becoming the bridge to experience transformations. Meanwhile, the nurturing role of the environment for the mind is attracting increasingly more attention, and the environment, the body, and the mind jointly constitute (...) a dynamic system that prompts the transformation and restructuring of learners’ experience. The reshaping of the relationship between the body and education and the integration of physical experience and mind-building have led us to examine curriculum from a completely new perspective, and curriculum construction is thus transformed to the dynamic generation of interaction among the body, the mind, and the environment based on group experiences. To be precise, there are three basic dimensions in the construction of an embodied curriculum: returning to the life-world and promoting the integration of the curriculum narrative framework and the student’s learning trajectory; introducing the embodied experience and realizing the continuous interactions among the learner’s body, mind, and environment; and integrating the functions of technologies to provide a powerful mediating tool for the construction of embodied curriculum. (shrink)

A work ehic is a value-based motivation for working. In the now developed world, three such values have been stressed over time: soial status, duty, and wealth or, simply, money. Craft pride has also been proffered but is increasingly a victim of automation. Each will be considered here. First, however, a few remarks about how socio-economic conditions influence a society's stance regarding one's obligation to work.

This paper discusses and criticizes Joseph Nye’s account of soft power. First, we set the stage and make some general remarks about the notion of social power. In the main part of this paper we offer a detailed critical discussion of Nye’s conception of soft power. We conclude that it is too unclear and confused to be of much analytical use. However, despite this failure, Nye is aiming at explaining an important but also neglected form of social power: the power (...) to influence the will and not just the behavior of other agents. In the last part of this paper we briefly discuss Steven Lukes’ alternative view of a “third dimension” of power and end with a sketch of a more promising way to account for this neglected form of power. (shrink)

Critical theory of technology brings technology studies to bear on the social theory of rationality. This paper discusses this connection through a reconsideration of the contribution of the Frankfurt School to our understanding of what I call the paradox of rationality, the fact that the promise of the Enlightenment has been disappointed as advances in scientific and technical knowledge have led to more and more catastrophic consequences. The challenge for critical theory is to understand this paradox without romantic and anti-modern (...) afterthoughts as a contribution to a progressive worldview. (shrink)

According to Foucault, power in modern society is diffuse and pervasive, and works through the agency of free subjects. Its imperatives are internalized by indi­viduals who become self-disciplined, are tied to a particular identity, and govern their own behavior accordingly. Drawing on recent insights from neuroscience, the whole process of norm internalization can be seen as an expression of “neuropower” and a form of “neuropolitics” through which social and power relations become ingrained not just in human bodies and minds, but (...) also in human brains. In recent decades, this process has been partly reversed as a result of the proliferation of information technologies and the electronic media. (shrink)

Being young today is no longer a transitory stage, but rather a choice of life, well established and brutally promoted by the media system. While the classic paradigms of adulthood and maturation could interpret such infantile behavior as a symptom of deviance, such behavior has become a model to follow, an ideal of fun and being carefree, present in a wide variety of contexts of society. The contemporary adult follows a sort of thoughtful immaturity, a conscious escape from the responsibilities (...) of an anachronistic model of life. If an ideal of maturity remains, it does not find behavioral compensations in a society where childish attitudes and adolescent life models are constantly promoted by the media and tolerated by institutions. (shrink)

This article focuses on the power of technological mediation from the point of view of autonomist Marxism. The first part of the article discusses the theories developed on technological mediation in postphenomenology and critical theory of technology with regard to their respective power perspectives and ways of coping with relations of power embedded in technical artifacts and systems. Rather than focusing on the clashes between the hermeneutic postphenomenological approach and the dialectics of critical theory, it is argued that in both (...) the category of resistance amidst power-relations is at least similar in one regard: resistance to the power of technology is conceptualized as a reactive force. The second part of the article reads technological mediation through the lens of the antagonistic power-perspective on class struggle developed in autonomist Marxism. The outline of a provisional autonomist philosophy of technology is developed using Foucauldian dispositifs of biopower in contrast to the hermeneutic and dialectical approach. It is thus argued that resistance should here be understood in terms of practice that subverts the technically mediated circuit of production itself. (shrink)

‘I don’t believe that we can change moral intuitions except as educators – that is, not as theoreticians and not as writers’. (Jürgen Habermas 1992, 202) ‘The thinker as lifestyle, as vision, as ex...

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)

The character of the current controversy over geneticallymodified (GM) agriculture, typified by protesters' use of emotivesymbolism, has been largely inspired by the Green movement'snon-governmental organizations and political parties. This articleexplores the deeper philosophical and spiritual motivations of the Greenmovement, to inquire why it is implacably opposed to GM agriculture. TheGreen movement's anti-capitalism, exemplified by the hate-symbol statusof Monsanto as the company pioneering GM crops, is viewed within thewider context of alienation in the modern era. A complex of meanings isseen in (...) Frankenstein as the focal symbol of GM protests, includingperceptions of risk, fears of the remixing of living identities seen ingenetic engineering, and resentment at the spiritual nihilism of thereduction of life to the digital code of DNA. By contrast, RobertGoodin's Green Theory of Value, which postulates the deep psychologicalimportance of nature in locating the self in a meaningful context largerthan ourselves, can explain the power of the Green symbol of thethreatened environment, Gaia. The advent of GM agriculture seems toimply that capitalism and technology can now enframe nature itself,leaving a world devoid of natural myth or meaning, with no escape fromthe alienation and nihilism of modernity. The central question posed forprotagonists of the GM debate is whether their agenda is based on thesepowerful but mythical conceptions of the environment, or whetherpreservation of the real environment is their primary ethic. (shrink)

Technology and society are deeply interconnected, as technology emerges from the existent cultural framework and consequently shapes society on the micro level of human interaction and the larger scale of social structure and system. This paper tackles the digital transformation present in Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0. We analyse disruptive digital technologies by focusing on the social or cultural context of their creation, their core philosophy, and the impact they seem to have or how society may be shaped by their (...) extended implementation and adoption. As technology is basically not neutral in its purpose, serving different personal and organizational interests, we use a multiple point-of-view approach to our study in order to elaborate an encompassing representation of the phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper explores happiness as an aim of education, particularly schooling. What role does happiness play in philosophy of education? How do critics view the aims of public schooling today and its relation to happiness? Is happiness embedded in the concept of education as an aim of education? The paper explores happiness—understood inclusively as a positive mental state—by examining the relevant literature from various disciplines. It looks briefly at critical views of current trends in public school practice and concludes that (...) happiness is not a central concern in present public school practice. Turning to philosophy of education, the author finds that happiness has been considered in relation to the philosophical conception of the human self and consequently eudaimonia has been prioritized over hedonia. The paper concludes by proposing that happiness is an appropriate and valid aim of education and schooling based on the normative implications of the concept of education. (shrink)

This response to Asger S?rensen?s paper From Ontology to Epistemology: Tong, Mao and Hegel is made on the basis of a reflection on the author?s intellectual development with special reference to the idea of?dialectics?. This development is mainly composed of three periods, in which the author formed his strong antipathy toward dialectics as a mere tool of power, learnt to understand the importance of?dialogical logic? in providing conceptual tools for human knowledge of a type of reality which is both objective (...) and subjective - human practices - and attempted to understand the?dialectics of rationalization? by integrating?dialectics? in the Western tradition of Critical Theory with the Chinese tradition of?dialectics? systematically interpreted by Feng Qi since the 1990s. (shrink)

“Informed consent” implicitly links the transmission of information to the granting of permission on the part of patients, tissue donors, and research subjects. But what of the corollary, informed refusal? Drawing together insights from three moments of refusal, this article explores the rights and obligations of biological citizenship from the vantage point of biodefectors—those who attempt to resist technoscientific conscription. Taken together, the cases expose the limits of individual autonomy as one of the bedrocks of bioethics and suggest the need (...) for a justice-oriented approach to science, medicine, and technology that reclaims the epistemological and political value of refusal. (shrink)

This article proposes a more culturalist and variegated conception of the individual than that presented by individualization theorists. Inspired by the approach of the individual advocated by Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and John Meyers, it first outlines the general script of the individual-as-actor that informs modern individualism as well as the generic characteristics that are routinely attributed to persons such as agency and free will. It subsequently reconstructs three predominant interpretations of this general script, i.e. utilitarian, moral and expressive individualism. (...) For each variant, the intellectual genesis and overall definition of the institutionalization in specific societal domains and the dominant articulations in social theory are briefly presented. With this threefold distinction, the aim is to synthesize the extensive literature on individualism and to show the sociological strengths of approaching subjectivity in terms of institutionalized scripts. (shrink)

This thesis offers a systematic analysis of the ideological structure in the Islamic Republic of Iran through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalytic critique of ideology. The Lacanian emphasis on the libidinal constitution of ideology changes the object of analysis from social reality in its empirical aspects to the unconscious or disavowed conditions sustaining social reality in the Islamic Republic. The overall analysis of this thesis is divided into three interrelated research domains: the first domain of political subjectivity examines how subjectivity (...) in Iran is embedded in the ideological order, as well as how that order was constructed through the 1979 Islamic revolution by tapping into the unconscious agency of political subjectivity; the second theologico-political domain inquires into the form of ideology materialised in the socio-political framework of the Islamic Republic and analyses its libidinal sustainability; the third domain explores the political economy in Iran by conflating its historical and ontological inquiry. The analysis of the three domains helps me to discern the inherent contradictions of the ideological structure in contemporary Iran and the peculiar way these contradictions are mediated. Their mediation conversely ensures the reproduction of ideology on an unconscious level. This thesis therefore explores how ideology in the Islamic Republic of Iran enables a consistent experience of social reality and how subjectivity sustains the ideological order through libidinal investments. (shrink)

The present article aims at investigating the political aspects of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, focusing mainly on the Philosophical Investigations. This theme remains rather marginal within Wittgensteinian scholarship, facing the key challenge of the sparsity of explicit discussions of political issues in Wittgenstein’s writings. Based on the broader anthropological and synecdochic character of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, the main objective of the article is to make explicit the implicit political import of some of the main themes of the Philosophical Investigations. This is (...) done by correlating them with certain political concepts and issues, such as reification, mystification, emancipation, self-institution and the common. In such a way, a new light is shed on Wittgenstein’s influence on and his relevance to contemporary political theory, while at the same time the first steps are taken for the enrichment of the discussion regarding personal and social autonomy and the critique of late capit... (shrink)

This paper elaborates on the value of a humanistic approach to the production and judgement of sociological knowledge by defending this approach against some common criticisms. It argues that humanising sociological knowledge not only lends an appropriate epistemological humility to the discipline, but also encourages productive knowledge development by suggesting that a certain irreverence to what is considered known is far more important for generating useful new perspectives on social phenomena than defensive vindications of existing knowledge. It also suggests that (...) the threat of what is called “relativism” evoked by critics of humanised conceptions of knowledge is largely illusory, and that in fact a far graver danger comes from dogmatic assertions of social truth that claim to have somehow secured access to non-contingent arenas of knowing, forestalling ongoing conversation, and tying future discovery to the limits of current perspectives. (shrink)

Este ensayo investiga el discurso global a la sombra de la década de 1960. Se basa en los puntos de vista de Nelson Goodman, Marshall McLuhan y Theodor W. Adorno para explorar tres conceptos centrales para la música en la época de la transmisión global: concordancia, corriente y virtualidad.

In his Sociology, Rosenstock-Huessy had argued that the translatio imperii was an important, but forgotten, Medieval Christian formulation which grasped that with the Church the aspiration of empire had entered onto a new historical path; the extinction that is the fate of all earthly empires need not be repeated if the powers of human endeavour are incorporated within a spiritual body (Augustine’s ‘heavenly city’) for whom ‘love is stronger than death’. This radical faith in the future has been retained in, (...) and is indeed intrinsic to, the secular Western revolutionary consciousness. This faith also provides the discipline of History with an eschatological mission far beyond merely chronicling of the past. History inevitably shares the same theological and philosophical roots not only of Europe but the entire world. For the ‘world’ we now inhabit is what it is because of the outgrowths of revolutions and world wars that were initiated in Europe. (shrink)

Most readers of Habermas would not classify him as an existential thinker. The view of Habermas as a philosopher in German Idealist and Critical traditions from Kant to Hegel and Marx to the Frankfurt School prevails among Continental as much as among analytic philosophers. And the mainstream Anglo-American reception of his work and politics is shaped by the approaches of formal analysis rather than those of existential and social phenomenology or even current American pragmatism. One may argue that both these (...) readings eclipse richer existential dimensions of a thinker who challenges the notorious methodological and political splits among analytic, Continental and pragmatist orientations. I argue that Habermas’ critical relation to Heidegger’s a historical history of Being and his misguided political career cannot explain a competing narrative of his own affirmative appropriation of existential-ethical dimensions of thought and activism. Second, if one sets in the foreground this competing narrative, there emerges a weak thesis, whether or not a plausible complementarity between the communications critical social theory and concrete existential categories can be established. Third, one may inquire further into a stronger thesis whether or not this link must be developed in order to render Habermas’ own theory of a communicatively competent self sufficiently concrete and critical. (shrink)

The functional approach to natural language (FANL) emerged in the late 1960s. It focused on the use and the sub-use of language expressions, taking into account role of the language context and the extra-linguistic situation of a given statements. This approach referred, both conceptually and methodologically, to the tradition of British analytical philosophy of language on the one hand, and to the achievements of the Lvov-Warsaw School on the other. It seems that despite the passage of more than half a (...) century since its inception, this approach has lost nothing of its relevance and its cognitive value, and may even provide inspiration for the exploration new research areas concerning the formulation of language utterances. The aim of this article is to show the potential applications of the FANL as a specific semiotic concept in the field of the philosophy of social sciences. The paper points out how the functional conception can be successfully used in methodological analyses of the logical methodology of social sciences. The case studies presented in the article refer to the research practice of social sciences. Examples of the use and sub-uses of terms are discussed in the light of the polyparadigmatic structure of social sciences and the differences in research patterns accepted by given scientific collectives. (shrink)