Article archive

Feminism and Images of Autonomy Pauline Johnson It is by now widely accepted that feminist politics has meant the expansion of our understanding of the nature of the political. Feminism’s powerful critique of the oppressive character of traditionall y structured relations between the sexes is seen to have added new depth and meaning to the […]

The Modern Family Therapy Movement: Is Systematic Edification Possible? Graham Tuson SYSTEMS, EDIFICATION AND CHANGE The modem family therapy movement involves significantly novel behavioural technologies for bringing about change in patterns of human relationships. As a professional discipline it is characterised by a central tension which can usefully be understood in terms of the relationship […]

John Rawls and Human Welfare John Watt INTRODUCTION John Rawls has been a dominant figure over the last generation of Western social philosophy. I know of four book-length studies of his thought – Barry (1973), WoIff (1977), Schaefer (1979) and Martin (1985) – and two volumes of collected essays: Daniels (1975) and Blocker and Smith […]

Dull Compulsion of the Economic The Dominant Ideology and Social Reproduction Conrad Lodziak One of the most influential ideas amongst many Marxists, the Left and social theorists is what Abercrombie, Hill and Turner refer to as ‘the dominant ideology thesis’.1 This thesis has it ‘that modem capitalist society … maintains and reproduces itself through the […]

Is Bhaskar’s Realism Realistic? A/an Chalmers In this paper I begin by briefly outlining what I consider to be the key features of Roy Bhaskar’s realist account of laws of nature. l I regard his account to be the best available. However, I do not think his case can be established as conclusively as is […]

‘Pure Lust’ The Elemental Feminist Philosophy of Mary Daly Jean Grimshaw … Pure Lust names the high humor, hope and cosmic accord/harmony of those women who choose to escape, to follow our heart’s deepest desire and bound out of the State of Bondage, Wanderlusting and Wonderlusting with the elements, connecting with auras of animals and […]

‘Svelte Discourse’ and the Philosophy of Caution Stuart Sim Recently, Radical Philosophy was offered a piece by JeanFrancois Lyotard, one of the leading lights of the postmodernist movement, entitled ‘Svelte Discourse and the Posunodern Question’. The piece came not from Lyotard himself but from his translator, Mark S. Roberts. So odd did this particular piece […]

The Eupsychian Impulse Psychoanalysis and Left politics since ’68 Barry Richards My purpose here is to offer some reflections on the part flayed by psychoanalysis in Left politics in Britain since 1968. I will attempt a broad and critical characterisation of the major uses to which psychoanalytic theory has been put in political discourse during […]

Women, Humanity and Nature Val Plum wood There is now a growing awareness that the Western philosophical tradition which has identified, on the one hand, maleness with the sphere of rationality, and on the other hand, femaleness with the sphere of nature, has provided one of the main intellectual bases for the domination of women […]

Nietzsche’s Woman The Poststructuralist Attempt To Do Away with Women Kelly Oliver Since Derrida’s Spurs, Nietzsche has been posed as woman. With his recent Postponements, David Farrell Krell pushes Nietzsche further into Derrida’s ‘feminine operation’. Krell claims that Derrida and Nietzsche save real women from dogmatic philosophy by writing with ‘the hand of woman’: It […]

Interest in the role of Hegelian philosophy in Marxism seems to have waned considerably since the ’70s. Fashions come and go in philosophy as elsewhere, of course, but the stark force of Lenin’s dictum remains: ‘It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital… without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic.1 In […]

Feminism and the Logic of Morality A Consideration of Alternatives Susan F. Parsons As a feminist and a moral philosopher, I have for some time been interested in the understanding of morality which emerges from the great variety of feminist writing. It has, fIrst of all, been intriguing that the shift from liberal to radical […]

Beyond Objectivism and Relativism Ingvar Johansson One very important line of division in todayt s philosophy is between those who want to go beyond the dualism between objectivism and relativism and those who still think this dualism is a live option. On this issue t I side with Richard Rortyts view in Philosophy and the […]

The Politics of Fulfilment and Transfiguration J. M. Bernstein- SeylaBenhabib’ s Critique, Norm, and Utopia* is, without doubt, the most philosophically acute and learned history of the critical theory of society yet to be written. Because the intentions of Benhabib’s work are systematic rather than historical, her history is equally a major contribution to critical […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]