Marx’s vision of unalienated production is often thought to be subject to decisive objections. This article argues that these objections rely on a misinterpretation of Marx’s position. It provides a new interpretation of Marx’s vision of unalienated production. Unlike another well-known account, it suggests that unalienated production involves realizing oneself through providing others with the goods and services they need for their self-realization. It argues that this view is appealing and that it offers a more successful response to objections than (...) previous interpretations. In doing so, it hopes to put Marx’s concern with alienation and nonalienation back on the table. (shrink)

This paper presents a critique of left republican writings from a non-republican socialist standpoint. It examines three claims that have been advanced by left republican authors: that workers are dominated 1) by their lack of access to the means of production; 2) by the market; and 3) by their employer. With regard to 1) and 2), it argues that alternative conceptions of freedom can identify the unfreedom in question, and that there are good reasons for pressing these complaints on the (...) basis of these alternative conceptions. With regard to 3), it argues that, while alternative conceptions of freedom may be able to identify the unfreedom in question, republican freedom provides a more suitable basis for pressing this claim. It concludes that while left republicans have shown that socialists have reason to care about republican freedom, they have not shown that socialists should adopt republican freedom at the expense of other conceptions of freedom. (shrink)

I defend the proposal that certain forms of work—specifically forms that are socially necessary but involve the imposition of considerable burdens—be shared between citizens. I argue that sharing burdensome work would achieve several goals, including a more equal distribution of the benefits and burdens of work, a greater appreciation of each other's labour contributions, and an amelioration of problematic inequalities of status. I conclude by considering three objections: that sharing burdensome work would (1) involve morally unacceptable constraints on freedom, (2) (...) be prohibitively inefficient, and (3) forbid mutually advantageous trades. I argue that none of these objections succeed. (shrink)

In the Critique of Gotha Programme, Karl Marx famously argues that a communist society will be characterised by the principle, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’ I take up a question about this principle that was originally posed by G.A. Cohen, namely: what makes communism (so conceived) possible for Marx? In reply to this question, Cohen interprets Marx as saying that communism is possible because of limitless abundance, a view that Cohen takes to be (...) implausible for ecological reasons. I develop a new interpretation of Marx's position. On this interpretation, people in communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. Coupled with a reasonably high (but not immense) development of productive power, self-realisation generates conditions in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. I defend this view as an interpretation of Marx and I argue that it represents a more plausible account of what makes communism possible than Cohen's interpretation in which technological advance and limitless abundance play the predominant role. (shrink)

Should Marxists support universal basic income (UBI), i.e., a regular cash income paid to all without a means test or work requirement? This paper considers one important argument that they should, namely that UBI would be instrumentally effective in helping to bring about communism. It argues that previous answers to this question have paid insufficient attention to a logically prior question: what is Marx’s account of communism? In reply, it distinguishes two different accounts: a left-libertarian version that associates communism with (...) the freedom to live and work how one wants, and a perfectionist version that associates communism with the overcoming of alienated labour and self-realisation in work. It argues that UBI would make steps towards the left-libertarian account but not the perfectionist account. Ultimately, then, the question “should Marxists support basic income?” is shown to partly depend on which account of communism Marxists want to bring about. (shrink)

This paper considers whether Marx's views about communism change significantly during his lifetime. According to the ‘standard story’, as Marx got older he dropped the vision of self-realization in labour that he spoke of in his early writings, and adopted a more pessimistic account of labour, where real freedom is achieved outside the working-day, in leisure. Other commentators, however, have argued that there is no pessimistic shift in Marx's thought on this matter. This paper offers a different reading of this (...) debate. It argues that there are two visions of the good life in Marx. However, it suggests that these two visions cannot be understood in terms of a simple shift between a ‘young’ and ‘mature’ Marx. Rather, it claims that Marx moves between these two visions throughout his writings. In this way, it suggests that Marx's intellectual development on this issue is best understood as an oscillation rather than a shift. Once this interpretive claim is advanced, the paper then moves on to consider some potential causes and implications of Marx's life-long oscillation between two different conceptions of the good life. (shrink)

This book provides for the first time a complete history of the doctrine of the transcendentals and shows its importance for the understanding of philosophy in the Middle Ages.

In a recent paper, David James argues for a new understanding of the compatibility of freedom and necessity in Marx's idea of a communist society. According to James, such compatibility has less to do with anything distinctive about the nature of labour and more to do with how communist producers organize the sphere of material production. In this paper, I argue that James provides a nuanced and plausible account of one part of Marx's story of the compatibility of freedom and (...) necessity in communist society but that his account misses another, and, in my view, more fundamental part of the story. The part I have in mind centres on Marx's claim that communist producers achieve their freedom through the performance of necessary labour—by helping others to satisfy their needs. I argue that Marx is committed to a stronger claim than James wishes to make, namely, that freedom and necessity are not merely compatible but that participation in the realm of necessity is required for human freedom. (shrink)

It is a contradictory argument to say on the one hand that social systems are always open and that there is nothing between closed and open systems, and on the other that there are pseudo-closed systems. Further, Petter Næss has shown that multivariate regression analysis can be used to help uncover mechanisms, something that should be impossible if social systems were always open. He has in addition found that the meaningful activity of urban planning requires for its existence the possibility (...) to make crude, qualitative predictions, which should also be impossible for the same reason. Critical realists therefore need to rethink the whole question of closed and open social systems. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the philosophical side of Karl Marx's thought as well as some of the major debates about it in the secondary literature. It first examines Marx's early writings, focusing, in particular, on his views on religion, the limitations of political emancipation and the dehumanizing conditions of work under capitalism. Marx and Engels considered the theory of history to be one of Marx's most important theoretical achievements. In an autobiographical note Marx described it as the “guiding thread of his (...) studies,” and in a speech delivered at Marx's graveside Engels compared Marx's discovery of “the law of development of human history” with Darwin's discovery of the law of nature. The chapter examines Marx's materialist theory of history, the view that history is characterized by the development of productive power to free people from material scarcity. It also examines the problematic area of Marx's ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In The Longing for Total Revolution, Bernard Yack argued that Marx’s thought is plagued by a recurring contradiction. On the one hand, Marx criticized his Idealist predecessors for failing to get beyond the dichotomy between human freedom and natural necessity; and he identified labor, activity determined by the necessity of having to satisfy material needs, as the primary activity of human freedom. On the other hand, Marx’s account of what makes us distinctively human, as well as his view that (...) capitalism dehumanizes workers, implicitly rely on the same dichotomy. However, while Yack identified a real tension in Marx’s writings, he overlooked the resources Marx has to escape it. (shrink)

Cancers often express hundreds of genes otherwise specific to germ cells, the germline/cancer (GC) genes. Here, we present and discuss the hypothesis that activation of a “germline program” promotes cancer cell malignancy. We do so by proposing four hallmark processes of the germline: meiosis, epigenetic plasticity, migration, and metabolic plasticity. Together, these hallmarks enable replicative immortality of germ cells as well as cancer cells. Especially meiotic genes are frequently expressed in cancer, implying that genes unique to meiosis may play a (...) role in oncogenesis. Because GC genes are not expressed in healthy somatic tissues, they form an appealing source of specific treatment targets with limited side effects besides infertility. Although it is still unclear why germ cell specific genes are so abundantly expressed in cancer, from our hypothesis it follows that the germline's reproductive program is intrinsic to cancer development. (shrink)

Wprowadzenie -- Roman ingarden -- Antoni kępiński -- Karol wojtyła -- Władysław stróżewski -- Józef tischner.

This paper examines the work of Michael Novak, a prominent American philosopher and theologian with roots in Central Europe. The study focuses on Novak’s understanding of democratic capitalism and its role in promoting economic growth and human flourishing. Novak argues that when properly understood and practiced, capitalism can lead to a more just and prosperous society, as it is based on the human desire for freedom, creativity, and self-expression. However, he emphasizes that the success of capitalism depends on the presence (...) of moral and spiritual values, which he believes are necessary for it to function properly. This paper explores Novak’s arguments and evaluates them in the light of current knowledge. It also examines which values Novak deems important and why. The paper concludes that while Novak’s understanding of capitalism has some limitations, it offers valuable insights into the relationship between economics and morality. Novak’s framework provides a starting point for future discussions on how to ensure that capitalism operates ethically and promotes the common good. (shrink)

What follows is a modest example of theorizing an existent theory (Karlsson and Bergman 2017; Swedberg 2014). The theory in question is Margaret S. Archer’s (1995, 2000a) Morphogenesis/Morphostasis...

Aquinas presents his most complete exposition of the transcendentals inDe veritate 1, 1, that deals with the question What is truth?. The thesis of this paper is that the question of truth is essential for the understanding of his doctrine of the transcendentals.The first part of the paper (sections 1–4) analyzes Thomas''s conception of truth. Two approaches to truth can be found in his work. The first approach, based on Aristotle''s claim that truth is not in things but in the (...) mind, leads to the idea that the proper place of truth is in the intellect. The second approach is ontological: Thomas also acknowledges that there is truth in every being. The famous definition of truth as adequation of thing and intellect enables him to integrate the two approaches. Truth is a relation between two terms, both of which can be called true because both are essential for the conformity between thing and intellect. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 103-104 [Access article in PDF] Robert Boyle. Correspondence of Robert Boyle. 6 vols. Edited by Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001. Cloth, $795.00. A complete edition of Boyle's correspondence has long been needed. Up until now, scholars who have attempted to incorporate Boyle's correspondence into their work have been thwarted by (inter alia) illegible (...) handwriting, foreign languages in the seventeenth-century versions, and scattered correspondence across a number of different countries on at least two continents. Michael Hunter and his co-editors, Antonio Clericuzio and Lawrence Principe, along with help from a staff of translators and editorial assistants, have succeeded brilliantly in creating order out of chaos.Given the length of time that Hunter et al. have been working on this edition and the extent to which cooperation has been sought and given by Boyle scholars worldwide, this Correspondence is as complete as is humanly possible. It is likely that in coming years stray letters will be found (most likely in private collections), but such finds will not be due to these editors' having failed to search assiduously for all extant correspondence. Next to completeness, the editorial methods and scholarly apparatus determine the usefulness of such an edition, and here again, Hunter and his co-editors have performed faultlessly. Hunter's introduction explains fully the decisions that were made concerning editorial choices (such as the choice of copy texts, etc.). In the letters themselves, the editorial annotations are easy to follow and arranged in such a way as to present a relatively uncluttered text (with textual variants being consigned to a section at the end of each volume). Editorial footnotes have been clearly distinguished from authorial footnotes. The editors have been quite successful in identifying correspondents and have provided useful cross-references in the footnotes to other relevant materials. In addition, each volume contains a section of brief biographical entries for those correspondents whose letters occur frequently in that volume.The editors' annotations are detailed and helpful and reflect years of dedication to the search for relevant information concerning Boyle's interests and his contemporaries. Throughout the entire Boyle Project, Hunter has elicited input from Boyle scholars on various people, topics, and references, and (as is the case with Boyle's Works) the result is an amazing amount of complementary information.Correspondence in a foreign language appears in both the original and in translation. This makes it possible for a scholar without competence in, for example, early modern Latin to have access to the content of the correspondence while allowing other scholars to check the accuracy of translations for themselves.Perhaps most useful of all the scholarly apparati is the glossary that appears at the end of each volume. Here one may find the meanings of the many seventeenth-century terms that are opaque to the typical twenty-first-century reader. Given the extent of Boyle's involvement in alchemy, without this glossary and its identification of the many alchemical terms it would be virtually impossible for a modern reader (even one who has studied chemistry) to make sense of many of the letters. Credit in this case goes to Lawrence Principe, who has contributed the fruit of his years devoted to the study of medieval and early modern alchemy. [End Page 103]A personal note from the reviewer may help to emphasize the significance of the contribution that Michael Hunter and his associates have made to Boyle studies. When I first began dealing with the (at that time) unpublished sources available to Boyle scholars, the situation was one of almost complete chaos. I was fortunate enough to have access at that time (1990-91) to Hunter's "Finding List" to the sources available at the Royal Society of London. This was surely an advantage over previous scholars, who could only pick their way through the many volumes looking for information that might be relevant to their studies; even so, progress in pursuing a particular aspect of Boyle scholarship was tedious. Cross-references to related... (shrink)

Completing the translation of Derrida's monumental work _Right to Philosophy_, _Eyes of the University_ brings together many of the philosopher's most important texts on the university and, more broadly, on the languages and institutions of philosophy. In addition to considerations of the implications for literature and philosophy of French becoming a state language, of Descartes' writing of the _Discourse on Method_ in French, and of Kant's and Schelling's philosophies of the university, the volume reflects on the current state of research (...) and teaching in philosophy and on the question of what Derrida calls a "university responsibility." Examining the political and institutional conditions of philosophy, the essays collected here question the growing tendency to orient research and teaching towards a programmable and profitable end. The volume is therefore invaluable for the light it throws upon an underappreciated aspect of Derrida's own engagement, both philosophical and political, in struggles against the stifling of philosophical research and teaching. As a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy and as one of the conveners of the Estates General of Philosophy, Derrida was at the forefront of the struggle to preserve and extend the teaching of philosophy as a distinct discipline, in secondary education and beyond, in the face of conservative government education reforms in France. As one of the founders of the Collège International de Philosophie, he worked to provide a space for research in and around philosophy that was not accepted or legitimated in other institutions. Documenting and reflecting upon these engagements, _Eyes of the University_ brings together some of the most important and incisive of Derrida's works. (shrink)