Hegel’s natural assumption: The first sentence of the Phenomenology of Spirit

The ‘Introduction’ to the Phenomenology of Spirit has enjoyed a long and rich critical reception in the history of Hegel scholarship. 1 Distinguished from the famous ‘Preface’ in that it introduces the particular ambitions of the Phenomenology as opposed to Hegel’s philosophical enterprise as a whole, the opening section of the 1807 work has been […]

Helen Macfarlane: Independent object

Helen macfarlane Independent object David black and ben watson Talking of the destructive nature of egoistic desire, its satisfaction that the other is nothing, Hegel made room for further development, an empirical moment which might surprise those who think German Idealism only ever allowed for abstraction: ‘In this satisfaction, however, experience makes it [the simple […]

Translatorial hexis: The politics of Pinkard’s translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology

Most branches of philosophy and many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences studied in the anglophone academy draw on texts written in languages other than English and therefore rely on the products of translation, especially translations of historical, European philosophy. However, surprisingly little philosophical attention has been paid to the role of individual […]

Politics in a Tragic Key

In memory of Joel Olson (1967–2012) In the quarter-century or so since the obscure disaster of the Soviet bloc’s collapse, two words have been pinned to that of ‘communism’ with liberal abandon: ‘tragedy’ and ‘transition’. Tragedy, to signify the magnitude of suffering, but not the greatness of the enterprise; the depth of the fall, but […]

Truly Liberating

Yotam feldman Dialectics of liberationKevin B. Anderson and Russell Rockwell, eds, The Dunayevskaya–Marcuse–Fromm Correspondence, 1954–1978: Dialogues on Hegel, Marx and Critical Theory, Lexington Books, Lanham MD and Plymouth, 2012, 269 pp., £49.95 hb., £21.95 pb., 978 0 73916 835 6 hb., 978 0 73916 836 3 pb. Raya Dunayevskaya died in 1987 aged 77, but […]

Voyage au bout de l’ennui

After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer, BAK, Utrecht, 20 May–15 July 2012; OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, 21 September–16 November 2012; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 17 October 2012–7 January 2013. In a darkened room stand seven podiums, like black treadmills at a standstill. Each faces a digitized photo­graph projected onto a bare wall. The […]

More than everything: Žižek's Badiouian Hegel

More than everything Žižek’s Badiouian Hegel Peter osborne There are philosophical books, minor classics even, which are widely known and referred to, although no one has actually read them page by page… a nice example of interpassivity, where some figure of the Other is supposed to do the reading for us. Slavoj Žižek1 Allow me […]

Disguised as a dog: Cynical Occupy?

Disguised as a dog Cynical Occupy? Peter osborne I take my title and my philosophical cue from a passage in Marx’s 1839 ‘Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy’. I take my artistic cue from the early work of Valie Export. The passage from Marx reads as follows: As in the history of philosophy there are nodal points […]

Subjectivity as medium of the media

Dossier: What is German Media Philosophy?

Contemporary, let us say ‘post-modern’, discourses on media, communication, information and so on are functioning in our society in at least two different – if interconnected – ways.* First, they describe scientifically the functioning of contemporary media and their growing role in our society. But the development of media theory during recent decades was, in […]

Humanism and Nature

Humanism and Nature John O’Neill Those who aim to construct links between Marxism and the green movement often look to Marx’ s early work on alienation as a source for a green Marxism. I There is an immediate apparent problem with any such attempt to marry the early Marx and the greens, viz. that Marx’s […]

The Early Marx on Needs

The Early Marx on Needs Andrew Chitty Following the first widespread dissemination of Marx’ s early writings, his treatment of human needs was often taken as the basis for a critique of the ‘false needs’ created by capitalism and its consumer culture. 1 ‘True needs’ for meaningful social interaction were counterposed to the ‘false needs’ […]

62 Reviews

Michele Le Doeuff, Hipparchia’s Choice Catherine Wilson Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition Martin Ryle Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory Thomas McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory Jane Braaten, Habermas’ s Critical Theory of Society Anthony Elliott Hubert […]

Internationality

Internationality Jonathan Ree With the unification of Gennany and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union and its satellites, nationhood has suddenly become a topical issue. * And, by good fortune, scholars are well prepared to debate it: in the past decade several historians and social scientists have revived and perhaps transfonned the whole question of […]

The Spirit of Modernity and its Fate: Jürgen Habermas

The Spirit of Modernity and its Fate: JOrgen Habermas Nick Smith Jurgen Habennas’s ongoing opus is organised around distinctive conceptualisations of ‘modernity’, ‘crisis’, and critique’. * The Theory of Communicative Action (2 volumes, Boston, 1984 & 1987), in which these internally related concepts are articulated into a theory of rationality, was written by Habennas to […]