Pieces by Howard Caygill

Bildung and strategy The fate of the ‘beautiful sciences’ Howard caygill Kant’s 1798 Conflict of the Faculties makes an explicit case for viewing philosophy as the romantic transdiscipline. The ‘lower faculty’ he explained there is less tied to the professional restrictions on research and teaching characteristic of the ‘higher faculties’ of law, medicine and theology […]

REViEWS Heaven knows I’m miserable now Pier Paolo Pasolini, St Paul: A Screenplay, translated and introduced by Elizabeth A. Castelli, with a Foreword by Alain Badiou and an Afterword by Ward Blanton, Verso, London and New York, 2014. 240 pp., £16.99 hb., 978 1 78168 288 3. There are many reasons to welcome this translation […]

From Abstraction to Wunsch The Vocabulaire Européen des Philosophies Howard caygill DICTIONARY Say of it: ʻItʼs only for ignoramuses!ʼ . . ʻIʼd rather die than use one!ʼ Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Received IdeasThe Vocabulaire Européen des Philosophies* deserves a warm welcome from everyone interested in philosophy and its history. While connoisseurs of philosophical lexicography will […]

The vanguard party only teaches the correct methods of resistance. Huey P. Newton, 1967 ‘Hey Joe! How many of you motherfuckers are coming out here?’ ‘Here’ was Santa Rita Jail, California, early morning, Thursday 3 December 1964. ‘Joe’ was Joe Blum, a student radical, and the accompanying ‘motherfuckers’ were the 814 students who had been […]

Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: each endeavours to throw his adversary, and thus render him incapable of further resistance. Clausewitz, On War, 1832Receive our truth in your dancing heart. Zapata lives, also and for always in these lands. Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee ZNLA, ‘Votan-Zapata or Five […]

NEWS Gillian Rose, 1947-1995 Gillian Rose died on the evening of 9 December 1995 after a long and courageous struggle with cancer. The hour of her death coincided with the closing moments of a conference dedicated to her work at Warwick University. Although her rapidly deteriorating health prevented her from attending as planned, the conference […]

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 […]

Levinas’s political judgement The Esprit articles 1934–1983 Howard caygill Lebanon, Levinas revealed a capacity for political judgement that at first glance seems remote from the prevailing picture of Levinasian ethics. While refusing the synthesis of realpolitik and mysticism that to some extent characterized the Likud era in Israeli politics, Levinas was nevertheless forthright in making […]

Letters Levinas and the Right Itʼs amazing what can pass for a ʻradicalʼ philosophy nowadays. Howard Caygillʼs article, ʻLevinasʼs Political Judgement: The Esprit Articles 1934–1983ʼ in RP 104 raises a number of questions about Caygillʼs own political judgement, and, indeed, about the judgement of the RP collective. Caygill tells us that ʻit is necessary first […]

In 1784 Kant published an essay for a journal that represented the public face of an Enlightenment secret society of senior officials in the administration of Frederick II. In the forty-fourth year of Frederickʼs reign it was necessary to plan for the succession and to ensure as far as possible the irreversibility of the achievements […]

Reviews Our images, their humanityCharles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, Duke University Press, Durham NC, 2004. 232 pp., £57.00 hb., £10.99 pb., 0 8223 3255 8 hb., 0 8223 3293 0 pb. Ted Honderich, Terrorism for Humanity: Inquiries in Political Philosophy, Pluto Press, London, 2003. 232 pp., £50.00 hb., £15.99 pb., 0 74532 134 8 hb., […]

The promise of justice Howard caygill Breaking the promise of justice is an act peculiarly repugnant to reason. It implies a double betrayal: not only of the promised justice but also of the justice of the promise. Nevertheless, how is it possible to do justice to the promise of justice? Especially when this very promise […]

It is perhaps appropriate that this collection of political writings by Maurice Blanchot is marked by a troubling absence. Yet it is hard to join the editor and publisher of this translation in respecting the decision of the editors of the French collections to begin their coverage in the 1950s: the first edition published in […]

In June 1940 the French 10th Army was surrounded by invading German forces at Rennes. Among those captured was Emmanuel Levinas, mobilized as an officer/interpreter in 1939 and now imprisoned as an enemy combatant under the terms of the Geneva Conventions. Levinas passed five years in captivity, first at Frontstalags in Rennes and Laval, then […]

Reviews He preferred not to…Rob Chapman, Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head, Faber & Faber, London 2010. 441 pp., £14.99 pb., 978 0 571 23854 5. ^ Julian Palacios, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus Publishing, London 2010. 448 pp., £14.99 pb., 13 978 085965 431 9. ^ Michele Mari, Rosso Floyd, Giulio […]