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Authors:Silvio Cristiano Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Confronted by answering a complex question such as ‘What are the Limit(s) of Compromise'’ when ‘unpacking State-Society Relations in the Urban Space’, some problematising thoughts are offered to further elaborate urban studies by resorting to systems thinking and its leverage points concept. Both social and ecological issues are addressed, and specific references to Venice, Italy, are offered, including recent grassroot experiences. The dissertation includes some epistemological dilemmas and some initial projections to start to measure ourselves with a new epoch, able to interact with all of the above: social, ecological, urban, and power/governance dimensions. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-03-21T01:46:09Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231164626
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Authors:Katie Ebner-Landy Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Chibber’s The Class Matrix and Confronting Capitalism aim to rescue class from the cultural turn. Rather than thinking that mass media mollified the working class, he suggests we re-investigate capitalism itself. We can then see how hard capitalism makes it to take risks for the collective. Chibber’s solution is to shift people from ‘individualistic to solidaristic’ ways of thinking through lived practices, rather than the arts. This review argues, however, that by excluding the culture industry from encouraging solidaristic ways of thinking, Chibber removes a crucial tool in the socialist armory: the way in which artistic representations can help us see ourselves and the world differently. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-03-18T07:31:27Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231160798
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Authors:Andrew Feenberg Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Marcuse was the face of the Frankfurt School during the 1960s and '70s. His eclipse led, among other unfortunate consequences, to the disappearance of his critique of science and technology. That critique is based on an experiential ontology that derives in part from Marcuse’s background in phenomenology. In this paper I trace the roots of that ontology in his early interpretation of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. One-Dimensional Man takes up the phenomenological critique in a Marxist vein. This critique is newly relevant now that we face impending environmental catastrophe due to climate change. Thus the study of Marcuse today is not simply academic, but once again politically significant. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-03-18T06:05:30Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231164657
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Authors:Prashan Ranasinghe Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article casts its attention on acts of supplication in institutional settings. The article focuses upon institutions geared towards the provision of care, that is, sites that are designed to provide services to those in need. The article claims that every act of supplication is an act of violence deployed upon the supplicant by his/her interlocutor and the institution more broadly. This is not violence of an overt type; it is tacit and subtle and takes root at the very essence of the supplicant, that is, his/her being. The article draws on Jacques Derrida’s provocative reading of the impossibility of the gift, an analysis that is indebted to Marcel Mauss’ exposition of the gift as obligatory and, thus, an existential nullity. Drawing upon both theorists, the article theorizes the violence of the gift and proceeds to read the violence in/of care/caring. The article explicates the grounding of this violence and how it is written into each request for care. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-23T09:54:05Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231157381
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Authors:Justin Neville Kaushall Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno argues that, in modernity, art and philosophy are reciprocally dependent upon each other for legitimation and critical force. This claim has puzzled scholars and provoked controversy. I argue that Adorno’s thesis may be comprehended in the following manner: art requires philosophy because, without the latter, art would lack the power to critique social and historical reality (in particular, the ideological elements that often remain invisible as second nature), and to rationally interpret the material particularity expressed by such reality; and, conversely, philosophy requires art because the latter expresses historical experience to reason. Such material historical experience is necessary in order to prevent philosophy from falling into ideological convention; idle speculation; or abstract and reified instrumentality. Thus, the constellation of history, art, and philosophy is essential to Adorno’s aesthetics. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-23T01:12:27Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231158150
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Authors:Javier Toscano Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article locates Ernesto Laclau’s populist reason as a point of departure to understand the contemporary democratic logic and its so-called ‘excesses’. It argues that, even if resourceful, Laclau’s findings can be supplemented with a theory of the imaginary as developed by Cornelius Castoriadis, as well as with key remarks from a discussion of the theologico-political as this was characterized by Claude Lefort. The aim is to construct an understanding on the political as it is structured by language and the symbolic, presenting thus democracy and populism as two opposing sides of a foundational political myth. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-20T01:54:22Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231157375
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Authors:Senem Saner Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. The concept of negative liberty as non-interference is operative in the concept of a free market and stipulates that market relations remain outside the purview of social control. As a purported self-regulating system, however, the market functions as a system of necessity that facilitates and rules social life. I argue that Isaiah Berlin’s defense of negative liberty leads to a paradox as it entails subjection to the external necessity of a self-regulating market. The argument for the self-defeating nature of negative liberty relies on two philosophical insights that have their roots in G. W. F. Hegel’s theory of self-determination. First, negative liberty fails to account for the inner and outer conditions of freedom and thus reduces to mere whim or arbitrariness, subject to heteronomous forces but masquerading as license. Second, individual freedom is intersubjectively mediated in its deliberative process and framed by social and political institutions in its exercise; thus, free agency must be theorized as embedded agency. I challenge the association of freedom and the market and the automatic and unchallenged implication of deregulation and freedom. Deregulation, rather, leaves the community’s future development to the whims of economic players using a rhetoric of freedom as both lure and principle. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-17T12:42:15Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231157439
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Authors:Lorenzo Buti Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article uncovers an internal tension within theories of agonistic democracy. On the one hand, as radical pluralists, agonistic democrats want to institute a ‘symmetrical’ political scene where different identities can struggle on an equally legitimate basis. On the other hand, they often normatively prioritize the struggles of oppressed groups against domination. In response, this article proposes to collapse any strict distinction between pluralism and social relations of domination. The result is a move from agonistic to insurgent democracy, where insurgent struggles against domination give the central impetus to any democracy. To do so, it turns to the writings of Étienne Balibar, who argues that most, if not all, symmetrical political conflict is built on asymmetrical forms of domination or oppression. This leads us to develop an account of democratic conflict that is incessantly asymmetrical. Finally, this article suggests an alternative way of rescuing the political principle of pluralism cherished by agonistic democrats. Balibar’s writings on the ‘ideology of the dominated’ show that every insurgent struggle expresses itself ideologically, which harbours the risk of obscuring other forms of domination. Therefore, democracy is not only kept alive by insurgent movements, it requires that the latter democratize themselves by maintaining a permanent openness to alternative calls against domination or oppression. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-15T11:17:52Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231157383
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Authors:Subrata Mitra Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. The welfare state, once seen as the best institutional response to people in need, has steadily come under pressure, as much from shrinking state capacities as from neo-liberal advocates of individual responsibility. Still, despite decline of the post-war consensus on the efficacy of the welfare state, social ‘vulnerability’ still remains the key focus of public policy. However, though much in use in contemporary political discourse, the logical and practical implications of social vulnerability remain unclear. Its essential subjectivity – it is the ‘feeling of vulnerability’ which makes one vulnerable – turns the concept into a catch-all variable, impeding rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis. I respond to this problem with a ‘vulnerability-responsibility’, model. Its parameters include a ‘responsive’ state, an active civil society and a participatory political environment, bolstered by the assertion of agency of the vulnerable. With India as an empirical exemplar, the essay shows how ‘nested’ vulnerability – a community of pro-active citizens in need of urgent and vital assistance - in the backdrop of a responsive state and competitive, robust and resilient political participation, can generate a sustainable, context-relevant process to cope with the problem of social vulnerability. The model, currently aimed at vulnerable citizens in a democratic state, has the potential of being extended to non-democracies as well as vulnerable non-citizens into its domain. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-11T05:06:52Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231154946
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Authors:Patrick Nitzschner Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article critically reconstructs militant democracy’s ‘institutional conservatism’, a theoretical preference for institutions that restrain transformation. It offers two arguments, one historical and one normative. Firstly, it traces a historical development from a substantive to a procedural version of institutional conservatism from the traditional militant democratic thought of Schmitt, Loewenstein and Popper to the contemporary militant democratic theories of Kirshner and Rijpkema. Substantive institutional conservatisms theorize institutions that hinder transformation of the existing order; procedural conservatisms encourage transformation but contain and limit it within the boundaries of existing institutions. Secondly, the article uses resources internal to this historical reconstruction to make the normative case that even the procedural version of institutional conservatism, which characterizes contemporary theories of militant democracy, is problematic from a democratic perspective. The reason for this is that it unjustifiably restricts fundamental democratic change to existing institutions. In conclusion, the article calls for further engagement with modes of democratic defence that do not limit the possibility of radical democratic change but nevertheless enable the protection of democratic institutions against authoritarian regression. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-09T10:11:47Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150462
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Authors:Seán Golden Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Who protects individual liberties and human dignity from domination by the State, by Civil Society or by individuals is a question under debate in China as well as the West, not from the point of view of Liberalism, but from the point of view of ‘Relationality’. Liberalism posits the individual as the measure of these matters but the ‘individual’ in question is an abstraction. Relationality posits social relations as the measure of these matters. Persons are not abstractions. They combine several different social ‘roles’, and each role includes obligations as well as rights. These roles limit the individual’s freedom of action. There are no unipersonal societies. Liberalism also posits rights as an abstraction: ‘All men are created equal’. Relationality posits rights in a context of mutual recognition of rights and responsibilities. Rights only exist if they can in fact be exercised. From the point of view of Relationality, therefore, a person’s ability to exercise her or his rights must be seen in the light of a concept of Justice and there must be an agency that can guarantee this Justice, the exercise of these rights, while it guarantees the fulfilment of social obligations. Is this the role of the State' of Civil Society' of the Market' To truly discuss these matters in a transcultural context, we would need to look for common ground, not take as ‘self-evident’ the classical Liberal perception of the individual. Understanding the underlying political philosophy of China’s concept of ‘responsive authoritarianism’ does not mean endorsing it. But understanding this idea and its ramifications does provide room for amplifying the basic question of who protects individual liberties and human dignity. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-07T06:10:33Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231156466
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Authors:David Jenkins Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Populism describes those strategies which actors endorsing populist ideas must use in order to be considered populist. Typical populist strategies include the hijacking of state institutions; the development of clientelistic relationships with constituencies labelled the people, or employing certain rhetorical moves in which enmity between the people and a corrupt elite looms large. In this paper, I argue against tendencies to define populism according to a specific set of tactics that are supposed to flow directly from populist ideas. Instead, populism should be understood in terms of a particular orientation, which grounds and justifies a range of strategies, all of which – nefarious or otherwise – should be considered populist. This orientation posits that enmity between ‘the people’ and an elite is a defining feature of political life, in part because it is responsible for serious failures in a country’s ostensibly democratic institutions. These failures create a degree of ambivalence with respect to these institutions’ claims to authority and obedience, and generate the perception that political actors thereby enjoy an expanded set of moral permissions. Finally, populists argue that elites prosecute revanchist projects aimed at resisting populist pathways to power and undermining them once in office. Populist strategies then are simply whatever range of tactics political actors use who accept the validity of that above orientation. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-02-07T06:03:09Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537231155171
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Authors:Pablo Gilabert Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This paper explores the relations between self-esteem and competition. Self-esteem is a very important good and competition is a widespread phenomenon. They are commonly linked, as people often seek self-esteem through success in competition. Although competition in fact generates valuable consequences and can to some extent foster self-esteem, empirical research suggests that competition has a strong tendency to undermine self-esteem. To be sure, competition is not the source of all problematic deficits in self-esteem, and it can arise for, or undercut goods other than self-esteem. But the relation between competition and access to self-esteem is still significant, and it is worth asking how we might foster a desirable distribution of the latter in the face of difficulties created by the former. That is the question addressed in this paper. The approach I propose neither recommends self-denial nor the uncritical celebration of the rat race. It charts instead a solidaristic path to support the social conditions of the self-esteem of each individual. The paper proceeds as follows. I start, in section 2, by clarifying key concepts involved in the discussion. In section 3, I identify ten mechanisms that support individuals’ self-esteem and impose limits on competition. I focus, in particular, on the challenges faced by people in their practices of work. In section 4, I outline prudential and moral arguments to justify the use of the proposed mechanisms. Section 5 concludes with remarks on the role of social criticism in the processes of change implementing the mechanisms. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-01-21T10:17:00Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150464
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Authors:Tim Heyssse Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. According to Rainer Forst, a critical theory of power must break with the tendency of political theorists to conceive of power in opposition to normativity. Appropriately, Forst proposes a noumenal definition according to which power is normative: It works through recognition of reasons and is thereby open to critical assessment. In this discussion note, I first clarify the normativity of power in Forst’s noumenal theory by means of Donald Davidson’s theory of action and then explain how theory of action leads to a different understanding of force and violence from Forst’s noumenal theory. In doing this, I find reason to endorse a non-normative definition of power on the lines proposed by Robert Dahl and endorsed by most authors in analytical political theory. This definition nevertheless remains faithful to Forst’s methodological guideline that a theory of power must keep in view the relations between power and normativity. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-01-18T07:17:25Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150460
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Authors:Giovanni Maria Mascaretti Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article offers a comparative exploration of the practices of resistance Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault champion against the structures of modern power their enquiries have the merit to illuminate and contest. After a preliminary examination of their views about the relationship between theory and praxis, I shall pursue two goals: first, I shall illustrate the limitations of Adorno’s negativist portrait of an ethics of resistance and contrast it with Foucault’s more promising notion of resistance as strategic counter-conduct, which in his late ethico-political writings becomes the heart of a distinctive politics of the governed. Second, despite their dissimilarities, I shall argue that their ideas can be brought together to elaborate a ‘compounded’ account of resistance, where Adorno’s politics of suffering figures as the necessary pre-condition for the creative practices of freedom Foucault seeks to encourage. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-01-13T12:49:33Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150497
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Authors:Michael Räber Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This essay argues that an alternative conception of time to that underlying the ideology of productivism and growth is not only possible, but desirable. The creation of this time requires what I refer to as the practice of refusal via taking time: the self-determined arrangement of the nexus of time, action and utility that begins with the a-synchronous insertion of unproductive time into the synchronous horizontal time of productivism. The essay is divided into three sections. The first offers the reader a discussion of Jacques Rancière’s notion of time as a social and political medium that partitions and distributes actions and utility. The subsequent section of the essay elaborates in aesthetic terms an account of unproductive time that is indifferent to the time of productivism. In the final section, I discuss examples that show how taking time to do ‘nothing’ can elicit an emancipatory politics that seeks to liberate us from the hegemony of productivism. I conclude that political theory should attend to time as a political medium and to the possibilities of its occupation, and that picturing the taking of time in terms of stopping the force of productivism’s normalized horizontal time by entering the unproductive time of reverie and aesthetic experience, provides a promising perspective from which to apprehend a time for thriftless refusals, deliberate dis-identifications, and the forging of cooperation among people(s) and with nature. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-01-13T12:43:13Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150457
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Authors:Zlatan Filipovic Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Departing from what Levey and Sznaider (2002) in their seminal work ‘Memory Unbound’ refer to as ‘cosmopolitan memory’ that emerges as one of the fundamental forms ‘collective memories take in the age of globalization’, this article will consider the underlying ethical implications of global memory formation that have yet to be adequately theorized. Since global disseminations of local memory cultures and the implicit canonization of its traumas are intimately related to the concept of archive, I will first focus on what Derrida (1996) in Archive Fever calls ‘archival violence’ and will show its inherent relation to the formation of cosmopolitan memory. Another related concept that I will use and that will problematize the transformation of living, embodied memory into archival, cultural memory upon which the formation of cosmopolitan memory depends is the witness. Using Agamben’s writing (2002) in this context that in Remnants of Auschwitz focuses on the foundational (im)possibilities of bearing witness, I will show that this transformation that determines the very possibility of cosmopolitan memory is far from unproblematic and readily accessible as Levy and Sznaider seem to assume. What will emerge as the most distinctive concern of global memory formation is the ethical material of difference as that which both makes its imperatives historically and politically exigent and that which signifies the difficulties of its unified articulation. Solidarity with the suffering of the other that mobilizes the very formation of cosmopolitan memory is also what should solicit vigilance against the universalistic ritualizations of its prerogatives. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-01-13T11:06:04Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150519
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Authors:Mariano Croce, Andrea Salvatore Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article problematizes the recent comeback of the exceptionalist jargon as it is conjured by both critics and sympathizers. While in the last decades governments across the globe had recourse to emergency measures to cope with far-reaching emergencies, from terrorism to the COVID-19 pandemic, the received view has it that political power takes advantage of states of emergency as they put themselves in the position to circumvent constitutional limitations. Carl Schmitt is claimed to be the major advocate of this conception of emergency politics in that he elaborated on the concept of the state of exception as the heart of the state political power. This article contends that the received view is doubly wrong. First, soon after his espousal of exceptionalism, Schmitt realized that emergency legislation is an ineffective and costly governmental device that should be transitory and is as unstable as the crisis it is meant to overcome. Second, the received view neglects how Schmitt came to his model of ultraconservative substantive constitutionalism as he maintained that the main task of politics is to protect the normative life of a limited set of state-sponsored institutions as well as the substantive contents they produce. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-01-12T10:00:03Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150459
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Authors:Greta Favara Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Political realists have devoted much effort to clarifying the methodological specificity of realist theorising and defending its consistency as an approach to political reasoning. Yet the question of how to justify the realist approach has not received the same attention. In this article, I offer a prudential justification of political realism. To do so, I first characterise realism as anti-moralism. I then outline three possible arguments for the realist approach by availing myself of recent inquiries into the metatheoretical basis of realism: The metaethical, the ethical and the prudential arguments. I explain that the prudential argument offers the most solid basis for political realism because it relies on the least controversial premises. Still, I delve into the metaethical and ethical arguments for two reasons: The prudential argument takes advantage of the theses defended by the rival arguments and elaborating the other arguments shows the comparative strengths of the prudential argument. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-01-10T09:28:37Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221145547
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Authors:Verena Frick Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Looking at current theoretical approaches to democracy and the city, this article deepens our understanding of the democratic relevance of cities. It suggests four ideals of the democratic city which are labelled the city as a school of democracy, the urban cosmopolis, the city as a commons and the sustainable city. Tracing commonalities between the ideals, while avoiding their pitfalls, the article develops an argument for understanding the democratic promise of the city by linking John Dewey’s concept of democratic action as experimental problem-solving to the spatiality of the city. Building on Dewey, the article introduces the concept of urban experimentalism and points out prospects for a spatialized understanding of democracy and pathways for democratizing urban space. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2023-01-07T08:04:33Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150456
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Authors:Steven L. Winter Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Truth is an ethical relation. Facts, whether descriptions of the physical world or of historical events, are necessarily mediated by our frames of reference. This contingency opens a space for disagreement that cannot be adjudicated by an absolute standard of truth. For those seeking power or profit, the temptation to exploit this state of undecidability is strong. When many question the institutions that broker meaning – science, the professions, the media – rumors, misinformation, deliberate distortions and falsehoods all proliferate. In the digital age, the ‘made’ is swiftly supplanted by the made-up. The remedy for this predicament is not technological or factual, but ethical and social. The normative resources for this project lie in our everyday ethic of communication and in the ideal of democracy as shared authority. Whether we can address this predicament effectively is uncertain. But the nature of the problem is clear: It is not that we live in a ‘post-truth’ age, but rather that we are facing a crisis of democratic society as such. It is not so much that we lost sight of truth, as that we have lost sight of one another. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-12-30T08:00:23Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221145581
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Authors:Gavin Rae Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Despite Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornelius Castoriadis placing the imagination centre stage in their respective conceptual theories, little work has been done to bring them into conversation on this issue or, indeed, any other. This is perhaps not surprising given Sartre’s early work on this topic has tended to be downplayed in favour of his affirmation of freedom, while Castoriadis not only denigrates Sartre’s thinking generally and his account of the imagination specifically but also posits their relationship as one of opposition. In contrast, this article brings them into conversation on the question of the imagination to call into question Castoriadis assessment of their relation. To do so, I outline Sartre’s position in The Imaginary, showing that Castoriadis assessment of Sartre’s notion is based on a problematic, if common, misunderstanding of Sartre’s notion of nothingness and its relationship to creativity. Having overcome the opposition that Castoriadis affirms between their respective positions, I argue that, while there certainly are differences between their positions, there are also important points of agreement and overlap between them, especially regarding the constitutive role that the imagination plays for consciousness, and the relationships between the imagination and freedom and the imagination and creativity, that point to a shared and original approach. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-12-20T10:03:19Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221145665
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Authors:William Levine Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. What role do normative ideals play in politics' Since Rawls, many political philosophers have advocated what they take to be a Kantian answer to this question. Normative ideals organize and guide political decision-making and action, and a major task of political philosophy is to generate them. Recently, this position has come under renewed scrutiny among political thinkers identifying as realists and nonideal theorists. These critics argue that ideal theory is too remote from empirical politics. This article turns to Kant for an alternative conception of ideals that is both distinct from the Rawlsian account and better withstands the critiques of realists and nonideal theorists. It argues that, for Kant, ideals are aids to freedom; their aim is to guide us towards forms of autonomy we have yet to fully realize. This leaves us with a much stronger view of ideals than does ideal theory. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-12-19T03:17:31Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221146181
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Authors:Ejvind Hansen Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article argues that late Heidegger’s analyses of the Fourfold can be used as a methodological starting point for discourse analyses. It argues that the Fourfold points out elements or foundations of discursive structures that orient us to differing, and to some extent opposing, directions that are at the same time mutually interdependent. A discursive analysis of how the Fourfold is at play in prevailing discursive exchanges and structures will thus be a matter of situating ourselves in a conceptual space beyond existing practices and structures, from which we get a picture of their inadequacies. As such, the article contributes to a critical understanding of discourse analysis. It will be argued that through understanding the Fourfold, we can better understand the problems with various aspects of ‘measuring’, which are founded upon the (concealed) instability of elements of the Fourfold – which shapes practical discursive engagements. By foregrounding this structural instability we can approach it critically. I demonstrate how this approach might be used in an analysis of a debate between Greta Thunberg and Bjørn Lomborg. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-12-14T06:22:02Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221145577
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Authors:Gloria Mähringer Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article enriches discussions about the metaphysics of normative facts with conceptual resources from social ontology that metaethics has neglected so far: the resources of Haslanger’s critical realism as social constructionism. By pointing out the viability of understanding reasons as socially constructed facts, the article shows how normative facts can be understood as features of mind-independent reality that are, however, not features of the universe independently of social practices. The move into social ontology allows us to understand normative facts as mind-independent in a more substantial sense than deflationists do, by stressing individual mind-independence, while denying collective mind-independence – the subsistence independently of established human cultures. The new position can fruitfully mediate between realism, error theory and constructivism. Finally, the metaphysical nuances provided by social ontology pave the way for novel approaches to normative change and progress – thereby indicating pathways to normative theorising that many traditional metaethical positions lack. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-12-13T04:19:00Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221145626
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Authors:Ingeborg M. Bergem Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article theorizes the connection between political distrust and conspiracy theories through a post-political framework. Following Luc Boltanski’s focus on the critical capacities of ordinary actors, it builds on interviews with participants of the Yellow Vest Movement in France who hold conspiratorial views of Covid-19 and the vaccine. The article explores how the interviewees’ critique mirrors that of post-political theorists. In particular, I use Rancière’s notion of subjectification and politics to theorize how conspiracy theories function as a means of dissent in the interviewees’ understanding of their experiences as well as in their own critique of and disillusionment with politics in France. As such, this article explores how political trust affected reactions to the pandemic, how political trust is interconnected with conspiracy theories and finally how such conspiracy theories can be viewed as biproducts of the post-political order. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-11-28T12:42:43Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221141462
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Authors:Henrik Friberg-Fernros, Johan Karlsson Schaffer Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. How should the state justify its coercive rules' Public reason liberalism endorses a public justification requirement: Justifications offered for authoritative regulations must be acceptable to all members of the relevant public. However, as a criterion of legitimacy, the public justification requirement is epistemically unreliable: It prioritizes neither the exclusion of false beliefs nor the inclusion of true beliefs in justifications of political rules. This article presents an epistemic alternative to the public justification requirement. Employing epistemological theories of argumentation, we demonstrate how this approach enables assessing the epistemic quality of justifications of political rules, even when the truth is difficult to establish. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-11-11T02:25:56Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221137855
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Authors:Anke Devyver Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article examines the relation between the critical theory of Moishe Postone and the philosophy of Theodor Adorno. While the former is clearly influenced by the latter, these influences mostly stay implicit. When explicit, he does not so easily put his own thought in line with Adorno’s and is highly critical of him. I will investigate the ways in which ideas from Adorno made their way into Postone’s work, but also where the latter diverts from them. As will be shown, Postone’s critical theory runs into a problem when one examines the immanent ground of his critical norm, freedom. Adorno, on the contrary, does succeed in employing the same norm in his own immanent critique. I will conclude that the problem Postone encounters can be avoided by being more of an ‘Adornian’, and that his theory allows this. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-11-05T06:11:14Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221137842
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Authors:Joseph Tanke Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-10-19T07:20:41Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221133139
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Authors:Otávio Daros Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Douglas Kellner emerged in the late 1980s as a media theorist. This article reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, analyzing the developments and problems of his media theory. His path was influenced by so-called Western Marxism, notably by the Frankfurt School and, later, by British cultural studies. Kellner made both currents of European thought dialogue and incorporated them into French postmodernism, in a context configured by the ‘culture wars’ in the United States. All of this shaped the analysis of what he called ‘media culture’ and, a few years later, ‘media spectacle’, as well as his proposal for critical media literacy. It is argued that Kellner proposes an innovative synthesis in theoretical and methodological terms, outlined with Cultural Marxism. On the other hand, his proposition is not exempt from conceptual contradictions that generate analytical simplifications during the practice of research, as it moves between immanent to transcendent critique. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-10-17T09:07:50Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221133852
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Authors:Maite Rodríguez Apólito Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. An ongoing debate between ‘procedural’ and ‘substantive’ theorists of personal autonomy addresses the following question: should agents have the final say on their own autonomy or should the objective circumstances in which agents live take prevalence when assessing their autonomy' Proceduralists favour the first strategy and substantive theorists restrict more explicitly the conditions under which autonomy is possible. I focus on forms of heteronomy which derive from oppressive circumstances and accept that substantive theorists are correct in contending that (i) forms of oppression common in contemporary liberal societies (e.g. gender or racial oppression) tend to increase heteronomy; and (ii) the heteronomy which derives from social oppression tends to fly below the radar of procedural accounts. Still, I argue that a revised procedural strategy could limit these forms of heteronomy as long as it avoids the injunctions to ‘authenticity’ common in procedural models. I proceed by reconstructing John Christman’s model which, I argue, constitutes the most promising procedural account to assess autonomy under oppression. Christman’s theory, however, needs to be reinforced to ensure self-problematisation in light of a social perspective. I show that the latter is necessary to experience the forms of alienation which are markers of heteronomy according to Christman. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-10-13T05:32:00Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221133485
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Authors:Marco Piasentier Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Foucault and Sellars are representatives of conflicting philosophical traditions: whereas Foucault famously insisted that “power is everywhere,” Sellars proposed the well-known scientia mensura dictum. The tension between the two perspectives seems to be so strong that each of them ends up reducing the other to an epiphenomenal illusion. In this article, I shall attempt to show that the works of Sellars and Foucault are not necessarily irreconcilable. The common ground for this dialogue is what I shall define as a historico-practical conception of science. I will build this concept by tracing a connection between the Foucauldian notion of “conditions of possibility” of science and Sellars’s thesis about the “indispensability” of the manifest image. Finally, I will argue that this conception of science problematizes the clash between the scientific and manifest images of the world, paving the way for a different relationship between naturalism and critical theory. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-10-13T05:29:10Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221131944
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Authors:Matteo Bianchin Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Alienation has been recently revived as a central concept in critical theory. Current debates, however, tend to focus on normative rather than on explanatory issues. In this paper, I confront the latter and advance an account of alienation that bears on the mechanisms that bring it about in order to locate alienation as a distinctive social and psychological fact and to dissolve a paradox it seems to involve. In particular, I argue that alienation can be explained as a disruption induced by social factors in the sense of mental ownership that comes with the first personal awareness of being a subject of attitudes, emotions, and actions, and outline how social factors can play a structuring causal role in the process that brings it about. In the first section, I introduce the theme and explain why it is important to focus on the mechanisms that underlie alienation. In the second section, I maintain that understanding how alienation works is crucial to make sense of false consciousness. In the third section, I consider the relevance of mental ownership to explaining alienation and discuss existing evidence about whether and how it can fail. In the final section, I argue that disturbances in the simulation routines that support social cognition might underpin alienation, and outline how social factors might play a structuring causal role in this connection. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-10-10T12:10:23Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221131578
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Authors:Keunchang Oh Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In what follows, I will argue that racist ideology should be understood in terms of racist social norms that constitute certain incentive structures. To this end, I will motivate my position by examining two existing accounts of ideology: those of Tommie Shelby and Sally Haslanger. First, I will begin by reconstructing Shelby’s account of racism as ideology. After analysing three dimensions of ideology (epistemic, genetic and functional), I will argue that his view is too cognitivist. In this regard, Shelby’s view is doxastic in viewing that racist ideologies consist in misguided beliefs. Rather, what is essential in ideology is its functional dimension. Here, ideologies persist because they function to stabilize and reinforce the unjust status quo of subordination and oppression. Then, I will turn to Haslanger’s account of ideology as cultural technēs. Her view is more functional than Shelby’s since the former is based on the account of social practice and culture. While Haslanger is right about her critique of Shelby’s cognitivist view of ideology, I argue that what she calls nonideal moral epistemology weakens her overall insight. The problem is that without considering how to intervene in concrete social mechanisms, merely knowing certain moral truths may not practically motivate subjects under ideologies. Taken together, both Shelby and Haslanger narrowly understand ideology in terms of epistemic deficiency. Even though Shelby and Haslanger deal with the discursive superstructure of ideology, both underestimate the functional substructure of ideology such as social and psychological motives, desires and needs. Ultimately, I will argue that ideology is better understood in terms of a racist social norm. This account is explanatorily superior to Shelby and Haslanger’s views in its stress on the nonepistemic, nonmoral and functional aspects of ideology. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-10-07T12:33:12Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221131499
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Authors:Madeleine Shield Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Despite signifying a negative self-appraisal, shame has traditionally been thought by philosophers to entail the presence of self-respect in the individual. On this account, shame is occasioned by one’s failure to live up to certain self-standards—in displaying less worth than one thought one had—and this moves one to hide or otherwise inhibit oneself in an effort to protect one’s self-worth. In this paper, I argue against the notion that only self-respecting individuals can experience shame. Contrary to the idea that shame presupposes the presence of self-worth, I contend that shame merely requires that one have the desire, rather than the expectation, that one is worthy. Furthermore, I suggest that the desire for concealment fueled by shame is not an inherently self-protective mechanism but can alternatively be understood as an effort to safeguard one’s connection with others. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-10-04T01:08:19Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221131490
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Authors:Eun Jung Kang Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. By probing into how desire is involved in fashion phenomena, this article illuminates Willkür in tandem with desire. It first analyzes how the higher and lower faculties of desire, spelled out by Immanuel Kant, play a role in fashion, unveiling how fashion as a form of social relations exists in concert with the higher faculty of desire, which has a close connection with Willkür. This article maintains that the arbitrary choice manifested in and through fashion is illustrative of Willkür, on the grounds that it results from a self-conscious deliberation, demonstrating the ‘reflective distance’ from our incentives. Christine M. Korsgaard’s elucidation of the relationship between ‘reflective distance’ and self-consciousness helps formulate this argument. However, this article also discusses the foibles of Korsgaard’s reading of Kant, in particular in the area of theory of action. By doing so, this article argues that reason is not the only factor with which we make choices and take actions within the bounds of which freedom is secured, and that fashion allows us to comprehend not only how the power of choice, independent from necessitation by sensible impulses, exercises its freedom, but also how personal autonomy is related to Kant’s negative concept of freedom. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-10-01T03:11:35Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221093737
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Authors:Ben Suriano Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. If critical theory is to challenge capitalism’s corrosive commodification of labor and nature, then it should renew a sense of labor as a real bodily power with an internal telos, along the lines of an Aristotelian normativity of praxis. Recent thought however either rejects normativity altogether, or pits normative praxis against labor uncritically reduced to its commodification. Habermas’s work provides an exemplary case of the latter. While he rightly found the ‘production paradigm’ of normativity problematic, his acceptance of the reified form of labor as total led to a severe divorce of praxis from the emerging contents of the body and nature. Although Aristotle also separated praxis from poiesis, his thought nevertheless harbors views of their dialectical integration without falling into the problematic production paradigm. Here the normativity of praxis emerges from poiesis understood non-reductively as the form of the self-organizing body already transforming nature and itself toward higher interactions. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-09-01T03:50:08Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221122370
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Authors:Ana Marta González, Alejandro Néstor García Martínez Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Populism’s Challenges to Political Reason can be seen as a consequence of social and cultural trends, the so called ‘emotional culture’, that have been accentuated in recent decades. By considering those trends, this article aims at shedding light on some distinctive marks of contemporary populism in order to argue for a reconfiguration of the public sphere that, without ignoring emotion, recovers argumentation and persuasion based on facts and reason. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-09-01T01:00:06Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221122323
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Authors:Johannes Schulz Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Social movements like BLM and Rhodes Must Fall have recently re-emphasized the need for “working through” our collective past. I argue that we must be careful to distinguish two distinct and sometimes conflicting understandings of what it means to work through the past. An “idealist” understanding which sees “working through” as a process of self-enlightenment and moral learning through uncovering and acknowledging past moral failures and incorporating them into our collective self-image. The “materialist paradigm”, in contrast, understands “working through” as a process of uncovering the ways in which the structural causes of past moral catastrophe have endured into the present. It rejects idealist calls for reconciliation with the past and present and aims at the negative goal of preventing future moral catastrophe through changing tainted social structures. I argue, finally, that effective processes of working through the past have to engage in both idealist myth-building and materialist deconstruction. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-08-19T01:23:42Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221117562
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Authors:D. C. Matthew Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This paper argues that the concept and role of ‘institutional racism’ in contemporary discussions of race should be reconsidered. It starts by distinguishing between ‘intrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their constitutive features, and ‘extrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their negative effects. It accepts intrinsic institutional racism, but argues that a ‘disparate impact’ conception of extrinsic conception faces a number of objections, the most serious being that it has no plausible account of what it is that makes extrinsically racist institutions racist. It also argues that claims about the explanatory indispensability of institutional racism are overstated (individual racism is at least as important), critiques structural approaches to racial inequality, and suggests that there is reason to doubt whether institutional reform can provide us with all that morality may require in the racial domain. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-08-09T03:27:48Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221114910
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Authors:Fidèle Ingiyimbere Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Public reason is central to John Rawls’s political liberalism, as a mechanism for citizens to discuss about matters of common interest. Although free and equal, reasonable and rational, citizens of a democratic society disagree on their understanding of truth and right, giving rise to the fact of reasonable pluralism. Thus, Rawls works out an idea of public reason which allows citizens to argue about political matters and yet remaining divided in their comprehensive doctrines. On the other hand, African culture has developed the practice of palaver as way of dealing with social and political questions of the community. Usually held under a tree, scholars believe that the palaver is the African version of deliberative democracy. In this article, I elaborate the two ideas and compare them in order to see whether they are completely opposite or whether they can enrich each other. Thus, the first section focuses on Rawls’s idea of public reason, the second explores the palaver practice and the last section compares them. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-08-07T06:30:46Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221117254
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Authors:Cillian Ó Fathaigh Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article argues that Jacques Derrida’s Politics of Friendship presents an implicit but significant critique of Maurice Blanchot’s The Unavowable Community. In Blanchot’s text, the Other disrupts any sense of fusional or essentialist community. But Derrida criticises Blanchot for neglecting the need to negotiate my responsibility to infinite others. Derrida proposes a logic of the plus un, playing on this double meaning in French, where a need to count singularities (‘plus one’) disrupts the unity of community (‘no longer one’). For Derrida, this offers a greater emphasis on those outside the boundaries of constituted communities, something he finds lacking in Blanchot. I demonstrate that Derrida’s position is a challenge to an emerging xenophobic discourse in 1980s French politics. I propose, therefore, that Derrida’s difference with Blanchot is motivated as much by a political difference as a philosophical one, with Derrida judging Blanchot’s account inadequate for contemporary political concerns. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-08-03T01:59:10Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221114909
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Authors:Adam Burgos Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This essay argues for the conceptual connection of legitimacy, resistance and ‘the people’ within liberal theories of public justification by making two primary claims: that legitimacy and resistance are mutually constitutive of one another and that together legitimacy and resistance are constitutive of an aspirational conception of ‘the people’. These claims revolve around the idea that the legitimacy of democratic regimes necessarily entails the questioning of that legitimacy through resistance, which concerns demands that say something about the makeup of ‘the people’. The concern is conceptual, examples of resistance showing how the conceptual connection manifests itself. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-30T02:37:55Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221110899
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Authors:Bennett Gilbert Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Neither of the seemingly straightforward approaches of retaining the human at the top of the hierarchy of beings and of flattening human personhood solves the question of non-human personhood. But the concept of personhood does have the resources to address this issue, if we take it as a kind of moral agency. The way that humans develop moral agency through their temporality, historicity and community must be mapped onto the personhood of animals, but this is extremely difficult and must await more scientific knowledge and wiser and more empathetic human understanding. It is in our hands, rather than the commandment of a non-human reality. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-30T02:31:32Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221110900
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Authors:Eric Cheng Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This paper reconsiders liberal nationalism in light of the current autocratic nationalist threat. I argue that liberal nationalism cannot redress the social ailments which acclimatize people to the sorts of no-holds-barred political contestation favoured by autocratic nationalists – excessive polarization. I then argue that liberal nationalists do not recognize the degree to which ‘in-group’ racial solidarity motivates members of the racial/ethnic majority to preserve their status, and that the liberal nationalist approach to defending minorities’ rights therefore risks either emboldening the majority to embrace autocracy or consolidating social hierarchies between the majority and minorities. On these bases, I show that democrats must seek to not only detach race/ethnicity from nationality but also redress those problematic racial/ethnic hierarchies. This suggests the need to develop liberal nationalism into multiculturalist nationalism. Multiculturalist nationalism, however, promises a sort of bounded solidarity that does not include all citizens: it makes use of targeted political antagonism against anti-democrats like White supremacists and Identitarians to help diffuse any social antagonism that might exist among minorities, inclusive members of the majority, and cultural conservatives. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-21T07:27:33Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221107406
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Authors:James Muldoon, Dougie Booth Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Contemporary democratic theorists have tended to assume that democracy is compatible with and even requires a capitalist economic system. Rosa Luxemburg offers a democratic criticism of this view, arguing that the dominating effects of a capitalist economy undermine the ability of liberal democracy to actualise its ideals of freedom and equality. Drawing on Luxemburg’s writings, this article theorises a model of socialist democracy which combines support for public ownership and control of the means of production with a plural multi-party electoral system and a defence of civil liberties. It recovers Luxemburg’s conceptualisation of a socialist democracy as the extension of democratic principles to major social and economic institutions currently governed by nondemocratic authority structures. It defends this version of socialist democracy from the liberal objection that it violates citizens’ property rights and the Marxist objection that it retains the dominating structures of the state and a coercive legal system. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-17T03:49:26Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221107403
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Authors:Jovy Chan Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Coordinated inauthentic behaviours online are becoming a more serious problem throughout the world. One common type of manipulative behaviour is astroturfing. It happens when an entity artificially creates an impression of widespread support for a product, policy, or concept, when in reality only limited support exists. Online astroturfing is often considered to be just like any other coordinated inauthentic behaviour; with considerable discussion focusing on how it aggravates the spread of fake news and disinformation. This paper shows that astroturfing creates additional problems for social media platforms and the online environment in general. The practice of astroturfing exploits our natural tendency to conform to what the crowd does; and because of the importance of conformity in our decision-making process, the negative consequences brought about by astroturfing can be much more far-reaching and alarming than just the spread of disinformation. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-17T03:04:33Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221108467
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Authors:Eoin Daly Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In this paper, I consider what it might mean to approach boredom as a problem of post-history, rather than of modernity as such. Post-history, or ‘end of history’, in this sense, is linked with the impossibility or unlikelihood of political-systemic change, and thus with the disappearance of the contingency or temporal flux that had been understood as the context or prerequisite of political action and political freedom. I will, argue, firstly, that both Rousseau and Fukuyama depict societies that are ‘post-historical’, in this sense, and which are marked by ‘boredom’ of this specifically post-historical kind. Secondly, I will argue that both thinkers link post-historical boredom with the disappearance or diminution of the ‘drive for recognition’ that both understood as both an agent and effect of ‘history’. Thirdly, I will argue that while Fukuyama understands post-historical boredom as an ‘irritant’ that threatens to restart history without quite succeeding in doing so, Rousseau understands it as an essentially stabilising (and happy) condition that maintains post-historical man in an equilibrium modelled on the order of nature itself. And fourthly, I consider certain ways in which this ‘post-historical’ boredom might coexist and overlap with the ‘promise of intensity’ experienced in post-Fordist neoliberal society. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-13T01:00:20Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221107405
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Authors:Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Two of the dominant frameworks for criticizing capitalism and liberal democracy in contemporary political theory is Socialist republicanism, on the one hand, and radical democracy, on other hand. Whereas radical democratic thinkers have for decades criticized liberal democracy for being elitist, hierarchical and outright anti-popular, socialist republicans have for the last 10 years developed critiques of capitalism centred on the neo-republican idea of freedom as non-domination and proposed various arguments for workplace democracy and cooperative forms of ownership. Despite the common ambition of uncovering hierarchical relations of economic, political and social power, and creating new egalitarian and participatory modes of political organization, no systematic comparison of socialist republicanism and radical democracy exists. This paper fills this gap by comparing the different understandings of (a) institutions and (b) political action and (c) their diverging historical and political relations to socialism. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-08T04:11:22Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221107401
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Authors:Nicole Yokum Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Frantz Fanon’s analysis of white negrophobic women’s masochistic sexuality and sexual fantasies in Black Skin, White Masks, is, as T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting notes, among his most contentious work for feminists. Susan Brownmiller, in her 1975 classic Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, charges Fanon not only with hating women but also with being personally confused and anguished, on account of this portion of the text. In this essay, I examine Fanon’s approach to theorizing white female negrophobia in light of his sociogenic project and the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition with which he was working; I also take a close look at his potentially most problematic remarks, from a feminist angle. I argue against Brownmiller's interpretation of Fanon as condoning rape or expressing personal attitudes through these lines, maintaining instead that he is ultimately calling for psycho-affective change. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-06T11:31:31Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221103897
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Authors:Ronald Stade, Nigel Rapport Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In liberal political philosophy, from Michel de Montaigne to Judith Shklar, cruelty – the wilful inflicting of pain on another in order to cause anguish and fear – has been singled out as ‘the most evil of all evils’ and as unjustifiable: the ultimate vice. An unconditional rejection and negation of cruelty is taken to be programmatic within a liberal paradigm. In this contribution, two anthropologists triangulate cruelty as a concept with torture (Stade) and with love (Rapport). Treating the capability to practise cruelty and the liability to suffer from cruelty as universal aspects of a human condition, Stade and Rapport aim to instantiate the precise enactment of cruelty, firstly, and secondly, to propose a process of its social negation. CIA training manuals and quotidian practice within the British National Health Service are employed as illustrative materials. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-06-06T04:10:35Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221101319
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Authors:Annabel Herzog Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This paper focuses on Lefort’s and Rancière’s conceptions of democracy as a set of conflictual processes through which the composition of the public sphere is reassessed. Reading their works together and sometimes in opposition to each other, the paper extracts elements of a theory of inessential sovereignty that avoids the pitfalls of populist antagonism and of neoliberal diffuse domination. It analyses Lefort’s and Rancière’s understandings of democracy as rule of the people, which are based on ontological and aesthetical distinctions between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’. It argues that in the structural situation of dissensus described by both Lefort and Rancière, popular sovereignty could be conceptualized as lying in an ability to shape and transform the public sphere. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-21T07:34:17Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221101322
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Authors:Antonio A. R. Ioris Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. The article deals with the ontological configuration and political appropriation of difference in modern, capitalist societies. Against fragmented accounts of difference, it is examined the evolution from situations of wide socio-spatial diversity to the gradual instrumentalisation and selective hierarchisation of those elements of difference that can be inserted in market-based relations, whilst the majority of differences are ignored and disregarded. The instrumentalisation of difference under capitalism – the reduction of extended socio-spatial difference to the interests and priorities of the stronger segments of society who emphasise their distinctive features in the attempt to exert power and control over those considered inferior and subordinate – has more than just an impact on social or interpersonal relations but constitutes an active worldmaking force that operates, primarily, via the promotion of indifference. The analysis is informed by the Hegelian framework of consciousness and reason that is based on what the German philosopher calls the laws of experience accumulated through social interaction. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit can, therefore, move social theory forward to a critical interrogation of lived and contested differences. The instrumentalised metabolism of difference, following Hegelian metaphysics, is basically the result of self-estrangement and externalisation of the self, not because of self-serving interests but exactly because of its incompleteness and the need to be actualised in the other, who is also incomplete. Likewise, all particulars are moments actualised in the universal, which is also a changeable moment of itself. Thought the negation of otherness, followed by a negation of the negation, difference can be then embraced in its entirety, as it remains a central explanatory concept for social criticism. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-19T06:23:09Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221101316
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Authors:Hossein Dabbagh Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Abdolkarim Soroush’s theory of ‘The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religious Knowledge’ is arguably one of the most controversial theories of religion in post-revolutionary Iran. Soroush’s theory paves the way for recognising a pluralist interpretation of religion (Islam) by merging the epistemological and hermeneutical theory of religion. However, he later adds another approach to his reformist framework to explain the phenomenon of revelation. In this paper, after carefully laying out Soroush’s contraction and expansion theory, I will discuss his three approaches, that is, epistemological, hermeneutical and phenomenological approaches to religion, through presenting Kantian and Quinian interpretations of contraction and expansion of religious knowledge, addressing the epistemology of contraction and expansion and the phenomenology of revelation, and pointing out some issues about error recognition within contraction and expansion of religious knowledge. I argue that the role of error recognition is crucial in understanding Soroush’s reformist project since it links his epistemology and hermeneutics of religious knowledge to the way he theorises about revelation phenomenologically. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-19T04:44:20Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221101318
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Authors:Kolja Möller Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article outlines a critical systems theory approach to the study of populism by arguing that populism is an avenue of contestation which assumes a distinct role and function in the existing constitution of the political system. Most notably, it is characterised by the re-entry of a popular sovereignty dimension within regular political procedures. By taking up a critical systems theory perspective, it becomes possible to more precisely distinguish populism from other forms of politics, such as oppositional politics, social movement politics or procedural constitutional politics. Further, populism’s oscillation between democratic and authoritarian dynamics can be elucidated as an inversion which operates from within its political form. Finally, it is argued that the critical systems theory approach provides a more nuanced understanding of populism’s inherent problems and, consequently, moves beyond a blunt defence or rejection of populism as such. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-10T02:42:23Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221084003
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Authors:Drucilla Cornell, Stephen D Seely Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In light of the rising anti-racist and decolonial struggles breaking out in the world, this essay seeks to displace the theoretical dichotomy between ‘violence’ and ‘non-violence’. We begin by revisiting Arendt and Fanon to argue that within the conditions of colonial-racial capitalism, ‘non-violence’ is merely a theoretical abstraction. Building on Fanon, who understands decolonial struggle as setting the ‘atmospheric violence’ of colonization into motion toward a new humanity, we develop our own vocabulary of revolutionary anti-violence that replaces a static dichotomy with a spectrum of spontaneous insurrectional activity, non-retaliatory anti-violence, self-defense, and offensive armed struggle. From these, we reinterpret various struggles and distinguish them from terrorism. By centralizing anti-violence as an ethical ideal and political struggle, we aim to overcome the unproductive pitting of ‘good’ (non-violent) movements from ‘bad’ (violent or terrorist) ones and offer a political theory of violence more appropriate to our times. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-09T11:44:56Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221093725
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Authors:J. Reese Faust Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article argues that, despite their distance across the colonial divide, a creolizing reading of Frantz Fanon and Paul Ricœur can yield valuable insights into decoloniality. Tracing their shared philosophical concerns with embodied phenomenology, social ontology and recognition, I argue that their respective accounts of sociogeny and hermeneutics can be productively read together as describing a shared end of mutual recognition untainted by racism or coloniality – a ‘new skin’ for humanity, as Fanon describes it. More specifically, Fanon contributes to Ricœur an understanding of how divergences in social location can be overcome through liberatory action that posits a new logic of sociality; likewise, Ricœur provides Fanon with an account of how liberatory horizons are produced through this praxis, based on the imaginative connection between ideology and utopia. This article concludes by arguing that these congruent methodological and normative concerns can be read together to concretize – and potentially actualize – the utopic end of liberatory struggle in mutual recognition through fashioning this new skin. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-08T10:54:45Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221090617
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Authors:Sarah Drews Lucas Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Work on Stanley Cavell in contemporary political theory tends to foreground Cavell’s reading of Emersonian moral perfectionism, but this aspect of Cavell’s thought is often left out of feminist readings of his work. In this paper, I give an overview of Cavell’s importance to political theory, and I also trace two Cavellian-inspired feminisms: Sandra Laugier’s ordinary language inflected ethics of care and Toril Moi’s understanding of feminist theory as the close and careful reading of examples. I argue that Cavellian-Emersonian moral perfectionism enhances these feminist readings of Cavell because it helps us explain certain practices in feminist activism, such as resisting conformity, acknowledging the limits of our understanding and being receptive to other members of our feminist community. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-06T10:27:40Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221093718
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Authors:Jacopo Marchetti Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Ignorance about political related issues has long been considered a threat to democracy. This paper revolves around the concept of political ignorance, focusing especially on Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance and going beyond his standpoint in two ways. First of all, it moves away from the notion of factual knowledge by showing that political ignorance cannot be limited to a matter of information quality. On the contrary, it shows that ignorance concerns the formation of opinions about political facts, which are the bricks with which disagreement is built. Then, using the insights of the Moral Foundation Theory by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues, the paper argues that moral intuitions represent an additional source of bias that current research on the problem of voters’ ignorance should address. While Somin argues that biased moral values are the outcome of ignorance, Moral Foundation Theory suggests that moral intuitions are a robust determinant of people’s political views as they make factual knowledge partially irrelevant and also make people with different moral minds unable to understand the basis of reciprocal factual argumentations. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-06T03:39:56Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221093742
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Authors:Martin Breaugh, Dean Caivano Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Building on recent developments in radical democratic theory, in this article we articulate and explore a fresh perspective for theorists and activists of radical democracy: a ‘living critique of domination’. Characterized by a two-fold analytical effort, a ‘living critique of domination’ calls for a radical critique of contemporary forms of power and control coupled with a reappraisal of emancipatory political experiences created by the political action of the Many. We demonstrate that this project responds to the theoretical and practical challenges faced by a politics of emancipation today. Our article offers a first articulation of this living critique through a discussion of three recent political experiences, namely, the 2016 French uprising, Nuit Debout, as well as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-05T01:23:59Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221093726
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Authors:Naveh Frumer Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Adorno’s social theory is enjoying renewed attention, as is the debate to what extent is it Marxist. A central issue remains Adorno’s concept of social totality: capitalism as a fully integrated society in which every difference is levelled. One problem this raises is why is he still committed to the Marxist concept of class. And second, how to understand his critique of the idea of proletarian class-consciousness, which seems to leave his critical theory without an addressee. The article suggests that, for Adorno, capitalist society exhibits what is termed here “differential integration.” It is predicated both on the labor/capital distinction and, at the same time, on sufficient homology between the two, such that the qualitative class divide is experienced as mere quantitative variance. This efficacious gap between social structure and social experience is at the center of his concept of ideology. Ideology-critique for Adorno is mainly the critique of symptomatic misconceptions of how ideology functions, due to lack of attention to how the class structure is in fact not experienced as such. Adorno’s alternative to proletarian class consciousness is “differential solidarity”: consciousness of social domination that is on the one hand found across class divides yet is experienced differentially between them. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-05-05T01:15:48Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221093720
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Authors:Christopher Holman Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article suggests that the philosophical contributions of the French democratic theorist Miguel Abensour offer a unique model for the practice of the history of political thought. Under the influence of the first generation of Frankfurt School critical theory, Abensour can be seen as applying a method of thinking in constellations to the study of historical texts, the critical rearrangement of conceptual elements drawn from the latter generating new dialectical images that reveal something previously obscured about the object of investigation. The history of political thought on this model is less about the recuperation of a definite textual intelligibility than the revelation of social and political alterity. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-04-23T08:19:24Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221088343
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Authors:James S. Pearson Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. The ethics of immigration is currently marked by a division between realists and idealists. The idealists generally focus on formulating morally ideal immigration policies. The realists, however, tend to dismiss these ideals as far-fetched and infeasible. In contrast to the idealists, the realists seek to resolve pressing practical issues relating to immigration, principally by advancing what they consider to be actionable policy recommendations. In this article, I take issue with this conception of realism. I begin by surveying the way in which it exemplifies what certain political theorists have recently called ‘problem-solving’ realism – a species of realism which they reject as incoherent. These theorists demonstrate that what counts as a ‘feasible’ solution is far harder to establish than most problem-solving realists would have us believe. Applying this general critique to the specific domain of immigration ethics turns out to radically undermine the notion of realism that prevails in this sphere of applied ethics. I conclude that we should therefore revise our conception of what constitutes a genuinely realist approach to the problem of immigration. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-04-22T02:53:26Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221079676
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Authors:Simon Lambek Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article considers the normative and critical value of popular comedy. I begin by assembling and evaluating a range of political theory literature on comedy. I argue that popular comedy can be conducive to both critical and transformative democratic effects, but that these effects are contingent on the way comedic performances are received by audiences. I illustrate this by means of a case study of a comedic climate change ‘debate’ from the television show, Last Week Tonight. Drawing from recent scholarship on deliberation, judgment and rhetoric, I highlight both critical and transformative dimensions of the performance. I attribute these to the vignette’s likely reception, which I describe as ‘dissonant’ – unresolved, affectively turbulent and aesthetically attuned. I argue that comedy is uniquely positioned to spur such ‘dissonant’ modes of engagement and, in so doing, to promote acknowledgement and reflective judgment. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-04-22T02:45:27Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221079677
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Authors:Michael Williams Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article focuses on the French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s thought in the 1960s. Though the discourse of the ‘death of man’ was regnant among French avant-garde intellectuals, this article argues that Derrida himself has to be described as a humanist at this stage in his career, even if a reluctant one. The case is made through close textual analysis of three of Derrida’s early and seminal works: ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’ (1963), ‘Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas’ (1964) and ‘The Ends of Man’ (1968). In these texts, Derrida grapples with issues of the subject and the other. They collectively reveal that the Derrida of the 1960s held fast to the view that philosophical thought could neither dispense with the subject nor escape the horizon of humanism. However, Derrida reconceived the human subject with reference to his core concepts of différance and arche-writing, making for an aporetic humanism that deconstructs the binary of humanism–antihumanism. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-30T11:52:10Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221079678
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Authors:Gianfranco Casuso Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. The immanent approach adopted by most contemporary representatives of the Critical Theory tradition has generally the purpose of offering a foundation for social criticism that, without relying exclusively on explicit or factually accepted principles, avoids both the potential arbitrariness of subjective judgment and the appeal to transcendent criteria. However, this project has not yet paid much attention to the socio-epistemic elements related to the intersubjective praxis of criticism. Based on this concern, I intend to explore the possibility of immanent criticism by using the epistemic category of dissonance. I will begin by showing how Davidson’s notion of irrationality can overcome the problematic separation between healthy and pathological behavior found in Festinger’s classical theory of cognitive dissonance and serve as an indicator of epistemic contradictions that can lead to social change. Thereafter, I will explain the link between these approaches and both Brandom’s inferential semantics and Honneth’s normative reconstruction. At the end of the first part, I expect to show an articulated picture of how dissonance can serve as a key for the analysis of inconsistencies present both in the belief systems and in the institutions and practices that constitute forms of life. In the second part, I will reconstruct three possible objections to this comprehensive approach in relation to the role of the individual in processes of social criticism and to the notions of progress and rationality that the approach adopts. I will analyze here what kind of meta-criterion is necessary to overcome the discomfort generated by the experience of dissonance so that it leads to social change. Taking up the Hegelian-Pragmatist idea of accumulation of experiences, I will argue that such a meta-criterion refers to the possibility of gathering and using available and non-endogenous socio-epistemic resources that allow reconfiguring the foundations of the questioned form of life. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-23T10:07:25Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211040571
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Authors:Thomas Hainscho Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article deals with the question about the conditions for someone to call something ‘fake news’. It examines cases in which something is called fake news and analyses these cases from an ordinary language point of view as speech acts. Doing so, the analysis explains fake news as the expression of a dissent. The analysis avoids problems of recent attempts to provide a definition of fake news and argues against the view that fake news belong to a so-called post-truth era. The conclusion of the article is that it is not possible to call something fake news without having unyielding convictions about the truth. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-18T08:30:07Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211066854
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Authors:Raf Geenens, Helder De Schutter Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. The classical account of federalism is bipartite. Federal systems are understood to have a dual nature: on the one hand, there is the central government, and on the other hand, there are the constituent units. We argue instead for a tripartite model of federalism. In this model, a third institutional pillar is added to federal systems. This third pillar deals exclusively with matters related to the institutional architecture of the system. We argue for tripartite federalism on three grounds: a tripartite structure would be better suited to accommodate political communities where citizens might currently feel misrecognized by the central government, it would provide a more efficient way to adjust the federal architecture and it would be able to do so in a more democratic manner. We conclude our article with a reflection on the distance between our ideal-typical tripartite model and actual reality. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-18T08:20:54Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211066850
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Authors:Timothy Deane-Freeman Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In this paper, I defend a conception of Deleuze’s two volumes dedicated to film – Cinema I: The Movement-Image, and Cinema II: The Time-Image – as protracted expressions of his political philosophy. In this context, I will elaborate the difficult and entwined political claims Deleuze makes on behalf of cinema: that it is capable of engendering a tentative ‘belief in the world’, such as is the necessary correlate of political action; that it captures the contemporary political fact that ‘the people are missing’, as a unified or coherent political agent; and finally that it might reveal those ‘impossible’ or ‘intolerable’ situations which would provoke such a people into being. In advancing this conceptual triumvirate, I will argue that the claims made here on behalf of cinema overspill the art form itself, linking up with Deleuze’s broader political ontology of thought and constituting a generalised political philosophy proper to so-called ‘late-capitalism’. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-16T11:35:02Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211072879
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Authors:Andrew J. Pierce Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article revisits the Frankfurt School’s reflections on race, anti-Semitism and fascism, focusing especially on the theory of race implicit in Dialectic of Enlightenment. It argues that this theory has the potential to be developed into a critical functionalist theory of race that avoids both class and race reductionism, offering a thoroughly intersectional competitor to currently dominant philosophies of race. The key to such a theory is the view that racialization plays a functional role in sustaining capitalist exploitation. While Horkheimer and Adorno focus on the scapegoat function of racialization, I argue that this function, while important, does not exhaust the possible functionalities of racialization and neglects an especially crucial function: the maintenance of a specifically racial form of exploitation. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-16T10:30:41Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211066861
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Authors:Danelle Fourie Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In this article, I will argue that early post-Apartheid South Africa adopted certain neoliberal principles which compromised the efforts to combat economic inequality. In particular, I will show that the economic policies that South Africa adopted during its early democracy reflect core neoliberal principles which promote a neoliberal political rationality. These economic policies indicate a pivotal approach from the African National Congress government in addressing economic inequality in South Africa. The dramatic shift from traditional Marxist policies to neoliberal policies reveals the significant influence of a neoliberal global market system during South Africa’s early democracy. However, the neoliberal policies failed to address the problem of economic inequality in South Africa. Instead, these policies seem to have deepened the existing economic inequality in contemporary South African society. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-14T04:30:25Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221079674
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Authors:Suzanne Whitten Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. A growing body of literature in feminist philosophy exposes the way in which occupying a particular group identity inhibits an affected agent’s ability to engage in communicative exchange effectively. These accounts reveal a fault in standard liberal defences of free speech, showing how, if free speech is a goal worth pursuing, then it must involve both a concern about the legitimate limits of state interference and of the effect of social norms on an agent’s communicative capacities. Building on the emergence of a ‘critical’ branch of neo-republicanism, this article argues that such speech-related injustices are best understood as a feature of structural domination that threatens the agency of those affected. Recalibrating our understanding of free speech along critical republican lines thus secures discursive agency in our communicative exchanges in a way that both ensures democratic legitimacy and realises equal status for all. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-04T06:01:59Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211040565
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Authors:Jana Cattien, Richard John Stopford Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. What is cultural ‘appropriation’' What is cultural ‘appreciation’' Whatever the complex answer to this question, cultural appropriation is commonly defined as ‘the taking of something produced by members of one culture by members of another’ (Young 2005: 136), whilst appreciation is typically understood as mere ‘exploration’: ‘Appreciation explores whatever is there’. (Gracyk 2007: 112). These provisional definitions suggest that there is an in-principle distinction between the two concepts that presupposes the following: what is appreciated is already available; what is appropriated was, prior to its being taken, not already there or available. Moreover, perhaps appreciation, when contrasted to appropriation, is unproblematic precisely due to this basic difference.In this paper, we argue that the exclusive disjunction – appropriation or appreciation – rests on a false distinction between the two. We also show that this distinction presupposes a false normative principle that to the extent that x is appreciation rather than appropriation, then x is not – relevant to this issue – a wrong. Against these presuppositions, we defend the view that appropriation is already built into appreciation. This does not mean that we cannot ask questions of appreciation, but that questions of appreciation do not preclude the problematics of appropriation. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-02T05:11:20Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211059515
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Authors:Eli B. Lichtenstein Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article reconstructs and defends Theodor Adorno’s social theory by motivating the central role of abstract domination within it. Whereas critics such as Axel Honneth have charged Adorno with adhering to a reductive model of personal domination, I argue that the latter rather understands domination as a structural and de-individualized feature of capitalist society. If Adorno’s social theory is to be explanatory, however, it must account for the source of the abstractions that dominate modern individuals and, in particular, that of value. While such an account remains undeveloped in Adorno, Marx provides resources for its development, in positing the constitution of value neither in production nor exchange alone, but in the social totality. This article argues that Marx’s account is compatible with Adorno’s, and that it may be used to render Adorno’s theory of domination more credible on explanatory grounds. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-01T01:11:13Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211059508
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Authors:Michelle Chun Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article aims to shed light on the so-called post-truth moment and the responses of Walter Lippmann, Carl Schmitt, and John Dewey to the unstable basis and implications of truth—empirical or scientific, moral and axiological—in politics. At stake historically and today is an attempt to find political authority grounded in truth so as to preserve an autonomous sphere of freedom for the individual against the potentially irrational subjectivism backed by coercive force. Lippmann and Schmitt mirror the contemporary distrust (or insistence as inescapable fact) of subjectivism and the rejection of pluralism as offering truth as an ordering principle for politics. I argue that Dewey’s turn to inquiry and his conception of truth and politics provides a timely defense of participatory democracy and a democratic ethos necessary to commit to acting on verifiable truth claims. I conclude by applying Dewey’s insights to current scholarship on truth, inquiry, and polarization today. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-02-21T06:30:02Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211059510
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Authors:Daniel Neofetou Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Theodor Adorno’s 1960–1961 lecture course Ontology and Dialectics, recently translated into English, provides the most systematic articulation of his critique of Martin Heidegger. When Adorno delivered three of the lectures at the Collège de France, Maurice Merleau-Ponty was reportedly scandalised as he was at that time developing his own ontology, informed by Heidegger. However, this article problematises the assumption that Adorno’s negative dialectic and Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology are incompatible. First, Adorno’s criticism of Heidegger’s ontology is delineated, with particular focus on how Adorno argues that Heidegger’s subordination of the human being to being is homologous with the logic of capitalism. Then, we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s own engagement with Heidegger, with particular focus on how Merleau-Ponty cannot be accused of denigrating ontic beings. Finally, it is argued that Merleau-Ponty’s indirect ontology has the same implications as those which allow Adorno to position his dialectical method as politically opposed to Heidegger’s ontology. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-01-29T10:04:55Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211066852
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Authors:Kirk Turner, Caitlyn Lesiuk Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. In Alain Badiou’s most recent work, L’immanence des vérités (The Immanence of Truths), psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once again figures peripherally but saliently. What is their specific relation in this text, however' We argue that Badiou responds here to the problem raised precisely by the Lacanian subject, situated as it is between the radical subjectivity of the symptom and the possibility of formalization. In L’immanence, he introduces the term ‘absoluteness’ to secure truths against both relativism and transcendental construction. We show that in drawing on Lacan to establish an understanding of the absolute, Badiou highlights the implicit tension between psychoanalysis and philosophy. We treat central cross-currents – truths, knowledge, the event and love – to help reveal the specific character of their confluence in this third book of Badiou’s trilogy. Although he stresses the unity of his and Lacan’s efforts, the impossible Real marking their divisions also invariably emerges the closer one investigates. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-01-13T06:01:23Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211066858
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Authors:Justin Evans First page: 385 Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. I argue that the problem of normative foundations is insoluble. I discuss how and why the apparent problem arose, particularly within the Frankfurt School. Then, I describe various theories of normative foundations and the criticisms that such theories have faced, such as ethno- and andro-centrism, imperialism, and the failure to fulfill their own aims. I make my main argument by way of an analogy: theories of knowledge have wrestled with the question of whether a “given”’ could act as a certain foundation for knowledge. The conclusion is often that no given can function in that way, because the given, which supposedly does not require justification, is therefore necessarily unable to justify knowledge. For similar reasons, I argue, nothing can function as a normative foundation for a critical social theory, because any such normative foundation would have to both stand in no need of normative justification but also justify normative social criticism. I conclude by suggesting that more recent critical theory that does not focus on normative foundations can be understood as justifying their critique by appeal to what people do actually want, rather than what they should rationally want. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-02T07:57:26Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211059512
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Authors:Kristupas Ceilutka First page: 409 Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Individuals frequently utilize social media platforms (SMPs) to express their positive features and receive recognition. Axel Honneth proposes that recognition plays an essential role in social life, explaining both social conflicts and guiding normative social development. While SMPs appear as a perfect tool for the pursuit of recognition, they often fail to achieve the intended results. This paper argues that the failure to achieve recognition through SMPs occurs because SMPs operate according to the neoliberal principle of competition. Competition arises because several structural affordances (quantification, homogeneity, and availability of information) allow for comparing different expressions of recognition. I argue that the competitive pursuit of recognition on SMPs results in several problematic developments, causing the manifestation of perfectionism, ressentiment, and collective narcissism. I conclude that the normative potential of Honneth’s theory is compromised if recognition is pursued competitively. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-02-15T04:45:45Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211072883
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Authors:Jacob Blumenfeld First page: 431 Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. The ‘expropriation of the expropriators’ is a delicious turn of phrase, one that Marx even compares to Hegel’s infamous ‘negation of the negation’. But what does it mean, and is it still relevant today' Before I analyse the content of Marx’s expression, I briefly consider contemporary legal understandings of expropriation, as well as some examples of it. In the remainder of the essay, I spell out different kinds of expropriation in Marx and focus on an ambiguity at the core of the notion of ‘expropriating the expropriators’, namely, whether it describes an immanent and objective tendency within the development of the capitalist mode of production or else actively prescribes a form of revolutionary political praxis for the working class. My answer is that it does both, though not without tension. Finally, I develop some implications of these reflections by showing how the concept of expropriation can be put to use today, in struggles around housing, climate and work. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-01T07:11:32Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211059513
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Authors:Wulf Loh First page: 448 Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Making use of the liberal concept of civil disobedience, this paper assesses, under which circumstances instances of illegal digital protest—called “hacktivism”—can be justified vis-à-vis the pro tanto political obligation to obey the law. For this, the paper draws on the three main criteria for liberal civil disobedience—publicity, nonviolence, and fidelity to law—and examines how these can be transferred to the realm of the digital. One of the main disanalogies between street and cyberspace protests is the tendency of hacktivists to remain anonymous, which in turn calls into question their fidelity to law (the third criterion). The paper argues that there are functionally equivalent alternatives to what can be called the “acceptance-of-legal-consequences-condition” (ALCC) associated with the fidelity to law. As a result, the ALCC is not a necessary condition for hacktivists to showcase their fidelity to law, thereby resolving the apparent disanalogy. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-03-01T03:12:34Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537211072886
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Authors:Soo Jin Kim First page: 492 Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Supporters of paternalistic policies argue that interference with risky or dangerous choices for citizens’ own good is permissible, as long as those choices are caused by cognitive irrationality or ignorance. Yet, some liberal thinkers argue that despite human irrationality, paternalistic policies are still wrong because they fail to respect citizens as moral equals. I argue that actually both views are mistaken about what respect for citizens requires, because they conceptualize the citizens’ interests from the wrong standpoint. In order for citizens to be respected as equals, I argue that citizens’ interests must be defined from a joint (second-person) standpoint which is constructed through a dialogical process between policymakers and citizens oriented towards mutual understanding. Furthermore, I argue that engaging citizens in such a dialogue is a distinctive paternalistic intervention in its own right, which unlike other kinds of paternalistic intervention, is compatible with respect for citizens as equals. Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism PubDate: 2022-04-23T09:37:28Z DOI: 10.1177/01914537221088342
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