Place and Time in Socialist Theory Michael Rustin Sources of Contemporary Pluralism Pluralism has become fashionable on the left. This new-found enthusiasm for diversity and choice is in part a defensive response by socialists to the decline of the mass support hitherto provided by the working class, to the ‘Forward March of Labour Halted’ 1, […]

REVIEWS _ ‘$’npOfPAMMbl M 0 C K B A HEGEL CONTRA NIETZSCHE Stephen Houlgate, Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Metaphysics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987,300 pp, £27.50 hb In this closely argued and ambitious book Stephen Houlgate presents an Hegelian critique of Nietzsche. The essence of this critique is that Nietzsche’s thought is insufficiently […]

NEWS The Situation of Philosophy in South Africa P. Kirsten has noted in an issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy (Vol. 2, No. 3, 1983) commemorating the centenary of Marx’s death and calling for a more open-minded attitude towards Marxism: ‘I~ological bias, public ignorance and academic indifThere has been no ‘Graceland’ for South […]

LETTERS June 1987 Dear Comrades, Clearly, to judge from his letter in Radical Philosophy 46, my reviewofSartre’sFreudScenario (Radical Philosophy 44) sorely provoked Ian Birchall. I intended my remarks to be provocative but I did not expect them to be so badly misconstrued. In my review I spoke of a ‘legend’ amongst ‘Sartreans’ concerning this scenario. […]

EDITORIAL j i ! J This issue carries a wide-ranging series of articles ranging from the historical – consideration of Bergson’s influence on Sorel – to the immediate: Martin Barker’s analysis of the mass media and ideology. Readers will note Radical Philosophy’s steady expansion both in articles and reviews, a move in the opposite direction […]

Socialism and Myth: The Case of Sorel and Bergson Ma/co/m Vout and Lawrence Wi/de Georges Sorel (1847-1922) continues to exert a fascination for some radicals, as recent books and articles indicate [1]. This attraction is perhaps understandable, but in our view mistaken. It stems from his support for revolutionary syndicalism and his notion of the […]

Ethics and Group Conflict: Between Marxism and Liberalism Carl Hedman Consider the following case: As Jones is driving home from a union meeting, he sees an injured motorist lyirYg in the ditch. He stops to help, but as he steps into the ditch he realizes that the person he is about the help is Smith, […]

The Need to Work Sean Sayers The theme of this paper is work. At a time when mass unemployment is a major social and political problem throughout the industrial world, it is a theme which needs little introduction. Nevertheless, I shall begin with a bit. For I must confess that work is a subject that […]

Mass Media Studies and the Question of Ideology Martin Barker On the face of it, radical understanding of the mass media has to count as one of the great success stories of the post-’60s political and academic culture. Without attempting anything like a historical survey, it is unquestionably the case that whole new fields and […]

REVIEWS Whitehead Revisited A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World. London: Free Associated Books, 1985. £4.95 pb. Free Association Books have brought out a new edition of Science and the ~odern !orld, first published m 1926. It is some years since it was last available in the UK. The initiative for this facsimile reprint was […]

NEWS Appeasing the U.G.C.: The Threat to Philosophy at Bangor It is now almost certain that the Philosophy Department at University College of North Wales, Bangor – of which I am a member – is to take its last student entries this Autumn, and to award degrees for the last time in 1990. No plans […]

Philosophy and Medical Welfare Under the auspices of the Royal Institute of Philosophy the Philosophy Department, University of York (UK) is holding a conference on Philosophy and Medical Welfare from 11 to 13 September 1987. Speakers will include Martin Hollis (University of East Anglia), John Harris (University of Manchester), Michael Lockwood (University of Oxford). Further […]

EDITORIAL This issue of RadIcal Phllosophy covers a range of topIcs central to the journal’s concerns: the Frankfurt School, sodaHsm and democracy, feminist aesthetIcs, and reflections on the state of being a philosopher. Joseph McCarney’s article on the Frankfurt School in RP 42, ‘What makes CritIcal Theory CritIcal?’ is the subject of a reply by […]

The Frankfurt School and the Problem of Critique: A Reply to McCarney Peter Dews and Peter Osborne The question of the possibility, form, and validity of a ‘critical’ social science, of its relation to Marxism and to the ideas of dialectic and contradiction, received considerable attention on the pages of Radical Philosophy in the late […]

Socialism and Democracy: Beyond State and Civil Society Roger Harris Introduction This article started life as a review of John Keane’s Public Life and Late Capitalism ..:. Towards ~ Socialist Thaor y of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 1984), an Lt begins with a brief account of this important book. In the sections which follow I […]

From Virginia Woolf to the Post-Moderns: Developments in a Feminist Aesthetic Pauline Johnson Contemporary feminist art theory and practIce has, by and large, turned away from a modernist affirmation of the autonomy of art from IHe towards a post-modern problematisation of the specIfIc category of the aesthetIc. The modernist assertion of the freedom of the […]

The Question ‘Why Do I Do Philosophy?’ James Grant Someone recently suggested to me – not entirely unkindly – that I should try and write something to the title ‘Why do I do Philosophy?’ My first assumption was that the question was in effect ambiguous, and could be answered in two quite different ways. In […]

NEWS International Philosophers for Peace In RP41 we reported the formation of International PhiTos0r,hers for the Prevention of Nuclear Omnicide (IPPNQ~ Thegroup has now heTd its first mternational conference. The folJowing is an edited version of the report on the conference by John SomervilJe, the cochairperson of the North American section of IPPNO. At the […]

Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope Vincent Geoghegan Kate Soper, Humanism and Anti-Humanism Noel Parker Richard Edwards Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science Kathryn Russell G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophical Propaedeutic Sean Sayers Dick Howard, From Marx to Kant Keith Ansell-Pearson Hilary Lawson, Reflexivity: The Post-Modern Predicament The Second of January Group, […]