Download or read book Dialectical Social Theory and Its Critics written by Tony Smith and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That there is a "Hegelian legacy" in Marx's writings is not in dispute. There is great controversy, however, over the extent to which this legacy should be affirmed or rejected. In fact, the Hegelian orientation toward Marx and toward social theory in general has been largely rejected for at least a decade. In Dialectical Social Theory and Its Critics, Tony Smith challenges this position and thereby reopens a debate of critical importance to Marx-Hegel studies that has significant implications for the nature of social theory in general. In Part I, Smith explores a number of aspects of the Hegelian legacy by means of a systematic dialectical reading, limiting himself to themes that have either been overlooked or dealt with unsatisfactorily in recent scholarship. In Part II, he examines a number of recent arguments against the Hegelian legacy in Marxism formulated from the neo-Kantian, analytical-Marxist, and postmodernist perspectives advanced by Lucio Colletti, Jon Elster and John Roemer, and Jean Baudrillard, respectively. Dialectical Social Theory and Its Critics is more than an exercise in the history of ideas. Its main aim and most significant accomplishment is to establish that dialectical social theory retains practical importance today and is, in fact, crucial to interdisciplinary attempts to construct a viable theory of the social world.
Download or read book Critique as Social Practice written by Robin Celikates and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can critical theory diagnose ideological delusion and false consciousness from above, or does it have to follow the practices of critique ordinary agents engage in? This book argues that we have to move beyond this dichotomy, which has led to a theoretical impasse. Whilst ordinary agents engage in complex forms of everyday critique, it must remain the task of critical theory to provide analysis and critique of social conditions that obstruct the development of reflexive capacities and of their realization in corresponding practices of critique. Only an approach that is at the same time non-paternalistic, pragmatist, and dialogical as well as critical will be able to realize the emancipatory potential of the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory in radically changing social circumstances. The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publisher & Booksellers Association)
Download or read book Critical Theory written by Max Horkheimer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1972-01-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays, written in the 1930s and 1940s, represent a first selection in English from the major work of the founder of the famous Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Horkheimer's writings are essential to an understanding of the intellectual background of the New Left and the to much current social-philosophical thought, including the work of Herbert Marcuse. Apart from their historical significance and even from their scholarly eminence, these essays contain an immediate relevance only now becoming fully recognized.
Download or read book DIALECTICS OF REVOLUTION written by Anderson Kevin B Anderson and published by Daraja Press. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book collects four decades of writings on dialectics, a number of them published here for the first time, by Kevin B. Anderson, a well-known scholar-activist in the Marxist-Humanist tradition. The essays cover the dialectics of revolution in a variety of settings, from Hegel and the French Revolution to dialectics today and its poststructuralist and pragmatist critics. In these essays, particular attention is given to Lenin's encounter with Hegel and its impact on the critique of imperialism, the rejection of crude materialism, and more generally, on world revolutionary developments. Major but neglected works on Hegel and dialectics written under the impact of the struggle against fascism like Lukács's The Young Hegel and Marcuse's Reason and Revolution are given full critical treatment. Dunayevskaya's intersectional revolutionary dialectics is also treated extensively, especially its focus on a dialectics of revolution that avoids class reductionism, placing gender, race, and colonialism at the center alongside class. In addition, key critics of Hegel and dialectics like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, Pierre Bourdieu, and Richard Rorty, are themselves analysed and critiqued from a twenty-first century dialectical perspective. The book also takes up the dialectic in global, intersectional settings via a reconsideration of the themes of Anderson's Marx at the Margins, where nationalism, race, and colonialism were theorized alongside capital and class as key elements in Marxist dialectical thought. As a whole, the book offers a discussion of major themes in the dialectics of revolution that still speak to us today at a time of radical transformation in all spheres of society and of everyday life.
Download or read book Axel Honneth written by Christopher Zurn and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his insightful and wide-ranging theory of recognition, AxelHonneth has decisively reshaped the Frankfurt School tradition ofcritical social theory. Combining insights from philosophy,sociology, psychology, history, political economy, and culturalcritique, Honneth’s work proposes nothing less than anaccount of the moral infrastructure of human sociality and itsrelation to the perils and promise of contemporary sociallife. This book provides an accessible overview of Honneth’s maincontributions across a variety of fields, assessing the strengthsand weaknesses of his thought. Christopher Zurn clearly explainsHonneth’s multi-faceted theory of recognition and itsrelation to diverse topics: individual identity, morality, activistmovements, progress, social pathologies, capitalism, justice,freedom, and critique. In so doing, he places Honneth’stheory in a broad intellectual context, encompassing classic socialtheorists such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Dewey, Adorno andHabermas, as well as contemporary trends in social theory andpolitical philosophy. Treating the full range of Honneth’scorpus, including his major new work on social freedom anddemocratic ethical life, this book is the most up-to-date guideavailable. Axel Honneth will be invaluable to students and scholarsworking across the humanities and social sciences, as well asanyone seeking a clear guide to the work of one of the mostinfluential theorists writing today.
Download or read book Dialectical Passions written by Gail Day and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing a new generation of theorists reaffirming the radical dimensions of art, Gail Day launches a bold critique of late twentieth-century art theory and its often reductive analysis of cultural objects. Exploring core debates in discourses on art, from the New Left to theories of "critical postmodernism" and beyond, Day counters the belief that recent tendencies in art fail to be adequately critical. She also challenges the political inertia that results from these conclusions. Day organizes her defense around critics who have engaged substantively with emancipatory thought and social process: T. J. Clark, Manfredo Tafuri, Fredric Jameson, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, and Hal Foster, among others. She maps the tension between radical dialectics and left nihilism and assesses the interpretation and internalization of negation in art theory. Chapters confront the claim that exchange and equivalence have subsumed the use value of cultural objects and with it critical distance and interrogate the proposition of completed nihilism and the metropolis put forward in the politics of Italian operaismo. Day covers the debates on symbol and allegory waged within the context of 1980s art and their relation to the writings of Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man. She also examines common conceptions of mediation, totality, negation, and the politics of anticipation. A necessary unsettling of received wisdoms, Dialectical Passions recasts emancipatory reflection in aesthetics, art, and architecture.
Download or read book Political Economy and Global Capitalism written by Robert Albritton and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together original and timely writings by internationally renowned scholars that reflect on the current trajectories of global capitalism and, in the light of these, consider likely, possible or desirable futures. It offers theory-informed writing that contextualizes empirical research on current world-historic events and trends with an eye towards realizing a future of human, social and economic betterment.
Download or read book An Introduction to Dialectics written by Theodor W. Adorno and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume comprises Adorno's first lectures specifically dedicated to the subject of the dialectic, a concept which has been key to philosophical debate since classical times. While discussing connections with Plato and Kant, Adorno concentrates on the most systematic development of the dialectic in Hegel's philosophy, and its relationship to Marx, as well as elaborating his own conception of dialectical thinking as a critical response to this tradition. Delivered in the summer semester of 1958, these lectures allow Adorno to explore and probe the significant difficulties and challenges this way of thinking posed within the cultural and intellectual context of the post-war period. In this connection he develops the thesis of a complementary relationship between positivist or functionalist approaches, particularly in the social sciences, as well as calling for the renewal of ontological and metaphysical modes of thought which attempt to transcend the abstractness of modern social experience by appeal to regressive philosophical categories. While providing an account of many central themes of Hegelian thought, he also alludes to a whole range of other philosophical, literary and artistic figures of central importance to his conception of critical theory, notably Walter Benjamin and the idea of a constellation of concepts as the model for an 'open or fractured dialectic' beyond the constraints of method and system. These lectures are seasoned with lively anecdotes and personal recollections which allow the reader to glimpse what has been described as the 'workshop' of Adorno's thought. As such, they provide an ideal entry point for all students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in Adorno's work as well as those seeking to understand the nature of dialectical thinking.
Download or read book The Algebra of Revolution written by John Rees and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-06-23 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Algebra of Revolution is the first book to study Marxist method as it has been developed by the main representatives of the classical Marxist tradition, namely Marx and Engels, Luxembourg, Lenin, Lukacs, Gramsci and Trotsky. This book provides the only single volume study of major Marxist thinkers' views on the crucial question of the dialectic, connecting them with pressing contemporary, political and theoretical questions. John Rees's The Algebra of Revolution is vital reading for anyone interested in gaining a new and fresh perspective on Marxist thought and on the notion of the dialectic.
Download or read book The End of Progress written by Amy Allen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School—Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst—have defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resource we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future.
Download or read book Social Theory of Modern Societies written by David Held and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-12-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past decade, Anthony Giddens has published a series of substantial volumes that have defined a distinctive and original theoretical approach. The twin focal points of his research are the "theory of structuration" and the analysis of "modernity." Giddens' writing on these and related themes are widely recognized as among the most important contributions to theoretical debate in the social sciences. This is the first book to provide a systematic and critical assessment of Giddens' work. It includes eleven critical essays specially commissioned from contributors who are well known in their own fields. In a concluding essay, Giddens responds to the criticisms raised by these and other authors, and clarifies and elaborates on his current views.
Download or read book Globalisation written by Tony Smith and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces a dialectical ordering of positions in the globalisation debate, with later positions interpreted as responses to “immanent contradictions” implicit in earlier ones. The progression culminates in a Marxian framework addressing the contradictions implicit in all forms of capitalist globalisation.
Download or read book Dialectics in World Politics written by Shannon Brincat and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the conceptual, methodological and praxeological aspects of dialectical analysis in world politics. As dialectics has remained an under-theorised analytical tool in international relations, this volume provides a critical resource for those seeking to deploy dialectics in their own research by showcasing its effectiveness for understanding and transforming world politics. Contributions demonstrate a number of innovative ways in which dialectical thinking can be of benefit to the study of world politics by covering three thematic concerns: (i) conceptual or meta-theoretical dimensions of dialectics; (ii) methodological features and general principles of dialectical approaches; and (iii) applications and/or case studies that deploy a dialectical approach to world politics. Canvassing a diverse range of dialectical approaches on key issues in world politics – from global security to postcolonial resistances, from the theoretical problems of reification and complexity, to the study of the global futures and the intercultural historical expressions of dialectics – Dialectics and World Politics offers key insights into the social forces and contradictions that are generative of transformation in world politics and yet routinely downplayed in orthodox approaches to international relations. Each chapter demonstrates how dialectics can be utilized more broadly in the discipline and deployed in a critical fashion as part of an emancipatory project. This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.
Download or read book Grounding Critique written by Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-10-24 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grounding Critique: Marxism, Concept Formation, and Embodied Social Relations argues that marxism must have a robust understanding of embodied social relations, such as race, gender, and sexuality, in order to produce the knowledge necessary for transformative social change. Tanyildiz subjects two important strands of marxist social theory —marxist-feminism and social reproduction theory— to a methodological examination and demonstrates their shortcomings. Focusing on these strands’ critiques of intersectionality as a moment of crystallization in concept formation, Grounding Critique explores alternative ways of using Marx’s method to understand contemporary human praxis.
Download or read book The Frankfurt School and Its Critics written by T. B. Bottomore and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controversial look at the School's contribution to modern sociology, examining issues previously not discussed, such as the neglect of history and political economy by the critical theorists, and the relationship of the School to radical movements.
Download or read book Disintegration Bad Love Collective Suicide and the Idols of Imperial Twilight written by Mark P. Worrell and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Together again for the first time, Marx and Durkheim join forces in the pages of Disintegration: Bad Love, Collective Suicide, and the Idols of Imperial Twilight for a dialectical exploration of the moral economy of neoliberalism, animated, as it is not only by the capitalist chase for surplus value, but also by an immortal vortex of sacred powers. Classical sociology and psychoanalysis are reconstituted within Hegelian social ontology and dialectical method that differentiates between the ephemeral and free and the eternal and fixed aspects of modern life.
Download or read book Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals written by Robert X. Ware and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-14 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book responds to the need for a retrieval and renewal of the work of Karl Marx through close philosophical analysis of his publications, manuscripts, and letters — especially those relevant to politics, morality, and the future. This philosophical study stands out because of its two principal features. First, it reviews and develops ideas about the future, though often only briefly discussed by Marx and his commentators, drawn from Marx's work. Second, it focuses on collective matters that are critical for Marx's ideas but rarely investigated and still problematic. Part One introduces Marx with a discussion of emancipation and freedom in community. It then discusses the importance of retrieval and the methodology for promoting it. Part Two is about misunderstandings of Marx's ideas about productive development, division of labour, and organisations. Part Three discusses nations, morality, and democracy, all of which Marx supported. Part Four takes up Marx's significant, but misunderstood, ideas about the future and his relation to the anarchists.
