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Honneth’s New Critical Theory of Recognition

“Axel Honneth’s The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts represents at once an intriguing and revealing turn in the post-Habermasian tradition of the Frankfurt School, an important and original development in critical social theory more generally understood, and an ambitious and stimulating, if still inadequate, . . .” read more

The Ecstasy of Philistinism

“Believing that philistinism was not mere vulgarity but ‘the antithesis par excellence of aesthetic behaviour’, Adorno expressed interest in studying the phenomenon as a via negativa to the aesthetic. But the project remained unrealized, and although he frequently made dismissive or insulting remarks about philistines, Adorno never bothered . . .” read more

Spectres of the Aesthetic

“Questions on art which were once seen as overloaded with liberal sentiment are now being taken seriously by the philosophical Left in the English-speaking world. At the heart of this swirl of revision and revival, art is being employed by aesthetic discourse to re-examine questions of subjectivity, judgement, . . .” read more

An Ecofeminist Bio-ethic and What Post-Humanism Really Means

“A holocaust goes on among us: tomorrow at dawn, another ancient plant or bird will be extinct; nine-hundred million people starve; dammed-up rivers run sour and parched soils crack open; continents swarm with environmental refugees; man-made viruses are unleashed; silently, an ozone hole and electro-magnetic radiation cull new . . .” read more

Anarchy in Academia

“In a period when Anglophone philosophy has been represented as isolated from the European mainland, philosophy in England, America, and Australia in the twentieth century has in fact been remarkably invigorated and decisively shaped by Continental émigrés, beginning with Wittgenstein and including Carnap and Popper. Most of these . . .” read more

Still Stirred by the Promise of Modernity

“Ariel Salleh’s comment is revealingly angry and abusive; she challenges my environmental credentials and my gender reflexivity; I am sexist, racist, masculinist and massaging ‘a defensive old-school socialist demeanour’. Unfortunately this leads her to a perverse reading of my paper, for example my statement that that not all . . .” read more

Myths and Realities: A Reply to Cecile Jackson

“The myths that Cecile Jackson identifies in her article in nlr 210 are that self-determination and freedom are better achieved through identification with ‘nature’ rather than separation from it; the utopian assertion of the superiority of subsistence economies and communal life; the rejection of scientific knowledge in . . .” read more

Fundamental Values for a Third Left

“Since 1988 I have been engaged in the launching of a new party of the Left in Finland. It was established in 1990 under the name of Vasemmistoliitto/ Vänsterförbundet (the Left-Wing Alliance). lwa continued the tradition of skdl/dfff (the People’s Democratic League) which included the Communist . . .” read more

Man Bad, Woman Good? Essentialisms and Ecofeminisms

“Can socialists, radical environmentalists and feminists from other traditions safely dismiss ecofeminism? In this paper I offer both a critique of ecofeminism and a modified defence. On the one hand, I argue, ecofeminism is riddled with essentialism, and open to all the philosophical critiques levelled at any position . . .” read more

Dialectics of Modernity: On Critical Theory and the Legacy of Twentieth-Century Marxism

“Students of parliamentary history are familiar with the idea of ‘Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’. Marxism, as a social-historical phenomenon, has been Her Modern Majesty’s Opposition to modernity. Always critical of and fighting against her predominant regimes, but never questioning the legitimate majesty of modernity and, when needed, explicitly . . .” read more

The Limits of Disenchantment

“In a passage from The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche affirms that ‘Hegel is a taste.—And not merely a German but a European taste.—A taste Wagner comprehended—to which he felt equal—which he immortalized—he invented a style for himself charged with “infinite meaning”—he became the heir of Hegel.—Music as “idea.”—’ . . .” read more

Human Nature and Progress

“In the same single issue early last year New Left Review carried two articles reminding anyone who might need reminding of some of the realities that disfigure the world we all inhabit. Colin Leys, commenting on a possible decline of the region towards ‘capitalism-induced barbarism’, wrote that ‘in . . .” read more

From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a 'Post-Socialist' Age

“The ‘struggle for recognition’ is fast becoming the paradigmatic form of political conflict in the late twentieth century. Demands for ‘recognition of difference’ fuel struggles of groups mobilized under the banners of nationality, ethnicity, ‘race’, gender, and sexuality. In these ‘post-socialist’ conflicts, group identity supplants class interest as . . .” read more

Philosophy for Philosophy’s Sake

“In the 1970s, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari produced three imposing books: Anti-Oedipus (1972), Kafka (1975) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980). With their raucous mockery of Hegelianism and Marxism, psychoanalysis and structuralism, these manifestoes for ‘delirium’ and ‘schizo-analysis’ were meant to be infuriating rather than ingratiating. They were . . .” read more

Radical Environmental Myths: A Gender Perpective

“Environmental activism has reached high levels of public visibility since late 1994 when protests over the transport of live animals at Coventry, Shoreham and Brightlingsea attracted new supporters to the animal-rights movement, revealing the growth of Green politics in unexpected social corners and the changing content of Green . . .” read more

Truth, Science, and Growth of Knowledge

“What is the status of scientific truth-claims? Can they purport to hold good for all time across vastly differing contexts of language, culture, and society? That is to say: is science in the business of providing valid explanations of physical objects and events whose nature remains constant despite . . .” read more

Marx’s Purloined Letter

“Derrida’s new book is more than an intervention; it wishes to be a provocation, first and foremost of what he calls a new Holy Alliance whose attempt definitively to bury Marx is here answered by a call for a New International. Derrida reminds a younger generation of the . . .” read more

Language, Truth and Justice

“I shall be travelling in what follows a somewhat winding road, and so here is my central thesis. If there is no truth, there is no injustice. Stated less simplistically, if truth is wholly relativized or internalized to particular discourses or language games or social practices, there is . . .” read more

Reconciling Derrida: 'Spectres of Marx' and Deconstructive Politics

“‘Hamlet has put on the crown, but is now wondering why he exists.’ Régis Debray” read more

Killing a Chinese Mandarin: The Moral Implications of Distance

“The tension between natural law and history—the theme of this series of lectures—has come down to us, as so many other ideas, from the ancient Greeks. In a most famous passage of his Rhetoric (1373b) Aristotle put it in this way:” read more

Feminism and the 'Crisis of Rationality'

“There is a measure of consensus within feminist theory that rationalist values are in crisis—that the very arrival of women on the scene of intellectual activity necessitates a reappraisal of those values. Sometimes the claim is that conventional scientific research procedure reflects an objectifying, control-seeking attitude to its . . .” read more

Vision and Totality

“In the epilogue to Marxism and Totality, Martin Jay remarked that ‘if one had to find a common denominator among the major figures normally included in the post-structuralist category—Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, Philippe Sollers and their comrades avant . . .” read more

Barbarism: A User’s Guide

“I have called my lecture ‘Barbarism, A User’s Guide’, not because I wish to give you instructions in how to be barbarians. None of us, unfortunately, need it. Barbarism is not something like ice-dancing, a technique that has to be learned—at least not unless you wish to become . . .” read more

Spectres of Marx

“The time is out of joint” read more

Moral Values and Progress

“How does Marx criticize capitalism? On what basis does he advocate socialism? Marx’s own account of these matters seems puzzling. On the one hand, he claims to be putting forward an objective and ‘scientific’ theory of history, a fundamental tenet of which is that moral values—including those of . . .” read more

Folk Devils Fight Back

“The current set of moral panics being orchestrated by the Conservative government surfaced early in February 1993 with the death of two-year-old James Bulger. The flurry of debate which followed revolved around the breakdown of the family, the growth of crimes committed by children, and the powerlessness of . . .” read more

Amartya Sen’s Unequal World

“This short work exhibits (often, perforce, only in fleeting cameo) the current state of Amartya Sen’s decades-long engagement with problems of equality and its absence. The book provides not only an exhilarating tour d’horizon of ideas developed at greater ease elsewhere, but also fresh nuances that are designed . . .” read more

Shaping Ends: Reflections on Fukuyama

“Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man has been widely regarded as a celebration of the triumph of the West. Its message, on the accepted view, is that, with victory in the Cold War and the death of Communism, the Western way of life has . . .” read more

Nationalism and Richard Rorty: The Text as a Flag for Pax Americana

“Richard Rorty is in danger of attaining the sort of eminence which today is normally reserved for French philosophes. He is one of the few English-language thinkers whom defenders of postmodernism feel able to cite along-side the continental icons of Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. He has been described, . . .” read more

Thinking about Human Need

“The discourse of objective and universal human need has been abused to reinforce a wide variety of relationships of dominance. The word ‘need’ is one of the first to which self-proclaimed ‘authorities’ have traditionally turned to justify their power and the morality of inflicting it on others. If . . .” read more

Harold Laski: An Exemplary Public Intellectual

“Before proceeding with this review, I should, as they say, declare an interest. I came to know Harold Laski as a student at the London School of Economics (then evacuated in Cambridge) between 1941 and 1943; and I was fairly close to him after I came back to . . .” read more

Harsh Times

“Waves of male chauvinism roll along in history, one after the other, sometimes they resemble one another, sometimes not. The most insidious of these at the moment is in the form of what I have called the denial of mixity: the adoption of a language that symbolically ignores . . .” read more

A Theory of Human Need

“The higher the level of abstraction at which any argument for universal needs is cast, the less controversial it is likely to prove, but the more open it becomes to the charge of being vacuously uninformative as a guide to specific welfare provision. Not even the most committed . . .” read more

The Western Path to Freedom

“‘The smallest division of a household into parts gives three pairs,’ says Aristotle in the Politics, ‘master and slave, husband and wife, father and children’. It is obvious that a modern sociology textbook would not endorse such analytical presuppositions. But it is equally clear that modern readers would . . .” read more

Politics and Space/Time

“‘Space’ is very much on the agenda these days. On the one hand, from a wide variety of sources come proclamations of the significance of the spatial in these times: ‘It is space not time that hides consequences from us’ (Berger); ‘The difference that space makes’ (Sayer); ‘That . . .” read more

Bringing Marx to Justice: An Addendum and Rejoinder

“The question is here taken up—yet again—of whether Marx did or did not characterize capitalism as unjust and condemn it as such. What follows is in the nature of a postscript to the case I argued seven years ago in ‘The Controversy About Marx and Justice’, a critical . . .” read more

Everythingism, or Better Still, Overdetermination

“While pleased to be associated with Ellen Meiksins Wood’s position against Alan Carling and ‘Rational Choice’ or ‘Analytical’ Marxism, we believe that Carling’s caricature of Wood’s Marxism and ours as ‘everythingism’ requires a rebuttal. Wood’s own reply to Carling does not confront all that is at stake here, . . .” read more

Marx and Justice Again

“Norman Geras’s essay ‘The Controversy about Marx and Justice’ is an authoritative guide to recent debates in the area indicated by its title. Analytically rigorous and wholly assured in its use of both original and secondary sources, it is in its way a definitive achievement. No one will . . .” read more

Hegel Naturalized

“Philosophical history, or speculative philosophy of history as it has also been called (usually pejoratively, by critics), is suddenly back in the mainstream, as the claimed ‘end of history’ is debated on every side. It essentially starts with the work of the isolated Neapolitan enlightenment philosopher Giambattista Vico . . .” read more

Feminism and Pragmatism: A Reply to Richard Rorty

“In a recent Tanner Lecture delivered at the University of Michigan, Richard Rorty responds to some comments of mine about the significance of his work for feminism. He reports that he was ‘a bit startled’ to find himself identified in my discussion—along with Jean-François Lyotard and Alasdair MacIntyre—as . . .” read more

The Royal Road: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science

“What is a consequent Marxist view of the history and philosophy of science? Reference to the work of Marx and Engels (or even of Lenin) will not yield a satisfactory answer, although certain signposts are evident. For example, there is the famous observation on method in the Introduction . . .” read more

Doxa and Common Life

“Terry Eagleton Hello and welcome. Pierre Bourdieu and I will discuss some of the themes in our new books—primarily his book, Language and Symbolic Power, but also my book, Ideology. And then we will invite questions and comments.” read more

Marx and the Undiscovered Country

“Religion has always had a twofold nature, public and private, and its two selves reinforce each other. On the one hand it is a social cement, joining together multifarious human beings as the mortar of an old castle wall holds together bits of stone of all shapes and . . .” read more

The True Realm of Freedom: Marxist Philosophy after Communism

“This article is an attempt to consider the implications for Marxist philosophy of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It would be well to start by saying what Marxist philosophy is taken to be here. A convenient map of the field is provided . . .” read more

Postmodernism, Subjectivity and the Question of Value

“Within the circles influenced by and sympathetic to postmodernism there has of late been discussion as to how long an engagement with traditional criteria of truth and value can be deferred. It has been suggested that the eclecticism and relativist logic of postmodernism is inherently self-stultifying—or at least . . .” read more

In Defence of Rational Choice: A Reply to Ellen Meiksins Wood

“Ellen Meiksins Wood has delivered a sweeping broadside against the idea that Rational Choice Marxism (rcm) might hoist a standard around which the intellectual forces of the left could rally. Many of her arguments regarding the limitations of rcm I accept (indeed, some of them I . . .” read more

The Limits of 'Political Marxism'

“It was hard to read Ellen Wood’s article ‘Rational Choice Marxism: Is the Game Worth the Candle?’ without mixed feelings. The general thrust of her critique is undoubtedly correct: in the hands of Jon Elster, John Roemer, Adam Przeworski et al., the attempt to reinterpret historical materialism along . . .” read more

Explaining Everything or Nothing?

“Alan Carling accuses me of ‘everythingism’—that is, of believing that ‘you need a complete explanation of something before you can have any explanation of something.’ Do I really? I thought I was stating a rather more modest requirement, namely that a ‘paradigm’ like rcm, which claims to . . .” read more

International Competition in Historical Materialism

“Classical expositions of historical materialism have presented the process of transition from one social form to another as endogenously generated. But Marxists have not been unaware of the facts of the diffusion of both technical and scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and political institutions and social structures . . .” read more

A Reply to Elizabeth Wilson

“Sabina Lovibond replies: Perhaps I should have confined myself more strictly to the ‘specific bit of textual exploration’ which I announced at the beginning of my paper. I ventured further afield out of a sense of alarm at the growing tendency for postmodernist views of subjectivity to . . .” read more