The racial regime of aesthetics: On David Lloyd’s Under Representation

One of the persistent difficulties of attending to race in the history of philosophy is the equivocal nature of this object. Long ignored by philosophers, ‘race’ has no clear status or obvious place in the history of philosophy, cutting across different areas of philosophical inquiry. Although in recent years historians of philosophy have been increasingly […]

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 […]

Spontaneous generation: The fantasy of the birth of concepts in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Spontaneous generation The fantasy of the birth of concepts in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason Stella sandford In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, at the end of the transcendental deduction of the categories, Kant distinguishes the doctrine of transcendental idealism from competing theories of knowledge – or, more specifically, theories of […]

Also Sprach Zapata: Philosophy and resistance

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 […]

Romanticism and technology

Romanticism and technology Andrew Bowie Romanticism and technology are often regarded as inherently at odds with each other, one supposedly relying upon a desire to get in touch with a nature in us and outside us which the modern ‘technologized’ world risks losing sight of altogether, the other upon the domination of external nature for […]

Feminism and the Enlightenment

• Feminism and the Enlightenment Pauline Johnson The recent turn taken by feminist theory towards a critique of the spirit of humanism would have surprised de Beauvoir and the early delineators of the concerns of ‘second wave’ feminism. According to The Second Sex, feminism is an expression of humanism in a quite straightforward sense.! Indeed, […]

Feminism and Pragmatism

Feminism and Pragmatism Richard Rorty When two women ascended to the Supreme Court of Minnesota, Catherine MacKinnon asked: ‘Will they use the tools of law as women, for all women?’ She continued as follows: I think that the real feminist issue is not whether biological males or biological females hold positions of power, although it […]

Revealing the Truth of Art

Revealing the Truth of Art Andrew Bowie Philosophical discussion of art in English tends not to aim its sights particularly high, and some Anglo-Saxon philosophy has effectively denied art any serious philosophical significance at all. In this light a contemporary German book* which wishes to argue for the truth of art over that of the […]

Cornelius Castoriadis

Cornelius Castoriadis An Interview The following interview with Cornelius Castoriadis took place at the University of Essex, in late Feburary 1990. Castoriadis is a leading figure in the thought and politics of the postwar period in France. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s he was a member of the now almost legendary political organization, Socialisme […]

Nietzsche: The Subject of Morality

Nietzsche: The Subject of Morality Ross Poole It is to be inferred that there exist countless dark bodies close to the sun – such as we shall never see. This is, between ourselves, a parable; and a moral psychologist reads the whole starry script only as a parable and signlanguage by means of which many […]

Socialism, Feminism and Men

Socialism, Feminism and Men Peter Middleton Feminism has been both welcomed and resisted by socialist men in the past twenty years. As a critique of exploitation and inequality, feminism has been easily recognisable to socialism. Women can be added on to its emancipatory project as another oppressed class to be liberated. In practice this has […]

The Politics of Fulfilment and Transfiguration

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 […]

Materialism, Realism and the Reflection Theory

Materialism, Realism and the Reflection Theory* Sean Savers I The reflection theory is the traditional theory of knowledge of Marxism. It is this theory which is put forward by Engels and which is developed and defended at length by Lenin in MateriaZism and EmpirioCriticism [1]. The basic principles of this theory are simply stated and […]

Philosophy and Social Work

15 with considerably more historical precision than Heidegger, who is more concerned with proving that reification is the permanent structure of the human mind. That not only this question but the whole book was largely conceived as a response to Luk§cs has been convincingly demonstrated by Goldmann, in Lukacs and Heidegger. But, as Lukacs has […]

Kant as a problem for Marxism

Kall. as a JRoblelD to.. Ma..xislD Martin Barker ,The relation between the thought of Immanuel Kant and the Marxist movement has been a distinctly problematic one. Kant, as the founder of the German idealist school, was recognised by Marx as one important precursor of his own theory in a general sense. But his understanding of […]

Marxism and Morality

Ma..xism and mo..alily Tony Skillen You just about need a pass to piss. Tha t a.in’ t no joke. You raise your little hand i f you want to go wee-wee. Then wait maybe half an hour ’till they find a relief-man. And they write it down every time too – cause you’re supposed to […]