Tom Bottomore, 1920-1992

problems. Nothing new or constructive was being said: criticisms of the idea [hat history has ended are attacks on an easy target. The last item on the list was the ‘world-wide power of the “phantom states” of the mafia and of the drug groups’. But Derrida was not moved to expand on the subject of […]

George Rude, 1910-1993

NEWS George Rude, 191 0-1993 George Rude belonged to that remarkable florescence of post -war British Marxist historiography which has played a major part in shaping the methodological and substantive agendas of contemporary historiography. The intellectual and political formation of that generation, whose prominent figures include Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, E. P. Thompson and E. […]

Henri Lefebvre, 1901-1991

NEWS Heori Lefebvre, 1901-1991 Henri Lefebvre, the most prolific of French Marxist intellectuals, died during the night of 28-29 June 1991, less than a fortnight after his ninetieth birthday. During his long career, his work has gone in and out of fashion several times, and has influenced the development not only of philosophy but also […]

Louis Pierre Althusser, 1918-1990

The Lonely Hour of the Last Instance LOUIS PIERRE ALTHUSSER, 1918-1990 Against what common sense, the common sense of financiers and lawyers, tell us, there are many writings that blow away, but a few words that remain. No doubt because they have been inscribed in life and history. Louis Althusser on Jean Hyppolite, 1968 The […]

Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989

NEWS SAMUEL BECKETT (1906-1989) “,,:,.,.; ~ ,•. . “‘. “‘… . W ~~ ~:’~..’ .”‘~””:.’ < ~ ,.~ The last days and months of the 1980s were a time of astonishing social and political upheaval. In the midst of these events, news came from Paris, discreetly and quietly, of the death of Samuel Beckett. No […]

Raymond Williams, 1921-1988

tially pragmatic form. However, he does insist that normative assent is often surprisingly widespread, and that a shared belief in reciprocal service between dominant and dominated lies at the heart of symbolic consensus. It is not clear whether Godelier holds this to be true transhistorically, or whether he thinks that there must always be some […]

Simone de Beauvoir, 1908-1986

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) In place of our usual editorial, in this issue we publish differing responses to Simone de Beauvoir’s death from two French newspapers. Rob,ert Maggiori (from Liberation, 15 April 1986) In 1929 two young people, like many others before and after them, must have rushed across to the rue de Grenelle to […]

Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980

Sartre is Dead In place of our usual editorial, in this issue we publish differing responses to Sar.tre’s death by two members of the Editorial Collective. Sartre’s productive career was at a close some time ago. Death formally completed what had always been a career of incompleteness – unpublished works, projects announced but never undertaken, […]

Herbert Marcuse, 1898-1979

NEWS & COMMENT HERBERT MARCUSE: A PIECE OF THE PAST DISLODGED Russell Jacoby Herbert Marcuse is dead. At the age of 81, he succumbed to a world he always resisted. His list of credits or crimes is long, and includes inciting the student revolts of the 1960s. For those who collect evidence that the ’60s […]

Thomas Kuhn, 1922-1996

Symposium Thomas Kuhn, 1922–1996Paradigms as soft structures Kuhnʼs The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was, despite the modesty of its author, a revolutionary work. Like Darwinʼs Origin of Species (with which it shares many other likenesses), its wider cultural and political resonances far exceeded the intentions and expectations of its author – both in scope and […]

Raphael Samuel, 1934–1996

OBITUARYRaphael Samuel, 1934–1996 Raphael Samuel was born in London, to a Jewish Communist family, and died of cancer in the city of his birth, on 9 December 1996. Education at the progressive King Alfredʼs School (Hampstead Garden Suburb) and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was taught by Christopher Hill, contributed to his intellectual formation, […]

Wal Suchting, 1931–1997

Obituary WalSuchting, 1931–1997 In March of this year, I received the sad news of the passing of Wal Suchting the previous January. I never met Wal in person. But, from a correspondence of some hundreds of pages stretching over five or six years, I felt I had come to know him and I thought of […]

Jean-François Lyotard, 1924–1998

Obituary Jean-François Lyotard, 1924–1998As a boy, he wanted to be a Dominican monk, a painter, or perhaps a historian. Whilst he was not afraid of poverty, chastity was not for him. He had no artistic talent, and his poor memory made him an unlikely historian. And so he became the philosopher who died of cancer […]

Niklas Luhmann, 1927–1998

Obituary Systemic supertheorist of the social Niklas Luhmann, 1927–1998 Openly dreaming of eternal life, Gaston Bachelard conceived of paradise as one huge library with miles of stacks, crammed with books. For Niklas Luhmann, the great German sociologist and metaphysician who recently died at the age of 70, after a protracted period of sickness, paradise probably […]

Roy Edgley, 1925–1999

Obituary Roy Edgley, 1925–1999In the early 1970s the Guardian reported that Professor Roy Edgley of Sussex University had gathered around him a group of younger, like-minded thinkers and founded a movement of radical philosophy with a journal. This report lay oblique to the actual facts of the case. Roy Edgley was not one of the […]

Compendium Bookshop, 1968–2000

Obituary Compendium Bookshop, 1968–2000Londonʼs Compendium Bookshop, a landmark in a certain sort of vanguard bookselling, finally closed its doors in early October. Born in that fabled annus mirabilis, Compendium opened a window into the stuffy predictability of English bookshops, importing literature from the States and Europe, and providing a connection to the most advanced currents […]

W.V.O. Quine, 1908–2000

Obituary W.V.O. Quine, 1908–2000 Over Christmas, Quine died: the sad but proper occasion to revisit his huge contribution to philosophy – in particular its relation to those currents of thought which most preoccupy RPʼs readers and contributors. ʻNot much of a relationʼ will say those who only acknowledge Quine as the doyen of the ʻAnalyticʼ […]

John Fauvel, 1947–2001

Obituary John Fauvel, 1947–2001 Radical Philosophy is still too young to have published many obituaries of members of its Editorial Collective. But, at fifty-three, John Fauvel, who died suddenly on 12 May, was too young to die. I knew him first and foremost as a friend, who between 1982 and 1990 was also on the […]