Three recently published books, by Stavros Tombazos, Jonathan Martineau, and Harry Harootunian, join a now established body of literature that highlights the temporal aspects of Marx’s work. Their differences notwithstanding, these books are united by the conviction that, at its core, capitalism is an immense and complex organisation of time, and thus that the importance of Marx’s work is realised by its singular contribution to our understanding of this. Each book is centrally concerned with the historically specific character of capital’s (...) temporal order, such that each presents a new reading of the relationship between capitalism and historical time. (shrink)

This chapter picks up on what Heidegger in his 1949 ‘Letter on ‘Humanism’’ calls ‘the historical in being’, that dimension of being within which, for Heidegger, a ‘productive dialogue’ between phenomenology and existentialism, on the one hand, and Marxism, on the other, ‘first becomes possible.’ It introduces the possibility of this dialogue through a particular, and particularly revealing, problem with The German Ideology: namely, Marx and Engels offer no analysis of the relationship between time, temporality and their materialist concept of (...) history. (shrink)

The guiding premise of this thesis is that the concept of historical time constitutes a distinct philosophical problem for Karl Marx’s work. Marx does not examine the relationship between time and history in his work, rendering the historicist framework of linear, progressive time the overriding framework through which he understands this relationship. However, the larger problem is that, despite this lack, the philosophical originality and critical function of Marx’s work is in no small measure defined by the contribution it makes (...) towards our understanding of this relationship. Therefore, this thesis argues that it is necessary to construct a concept of historical time out of Marx’s work. Methodologically, this begins with an outline of the broad contours of the materialist concept of history in 'The German Ideology', and a temporal reading of the historical act – the creation of the means of human life – on which this concept is based. This reading is then ontologically grounded, first by Martin Heidegger’s 'Being and Time', in order to establish how the act as such temporalises, and then by Jean-Paul Sartre’s 'Critique of Dialectical Reason', in order to grasp how this temporalisation can be thought in relation to the movement of historical totalisation, which is to say the ongoing totalisation of the time of all human lives. In short, Heidegger and Sartre enable us to secure labour and need – the two concepts upon which the materialist concept of history depends – as the two basic forces upon which historical temporalisation depends. Yet if, as Marx’s 'Capital' reveals, the specifically capitalist category of ‘abstract labour’ is the condition of thinking the transhistorical category of ‘labour in general’, and if abstract labour exists to satisfy capital’s need to self-expand, not the human’s need to live, then capital – not the human – is the condition of thinking history. Capital and its times give history its intelligibility, such that capitalism is the only standpoint from which ‘history as such’, ‘history itself’, can be conceived. However, the concept of historical time cannot simply register that capital makes the category of history possible. It must also account for the historically changing character of the relationship between time and history, and hence the possibility of social and historical time after capitalism. (shrink)

This chapter reviews three of the most consequential works in modern European philosophy published in 2017: Étienne Balibar’s Citizen Subject, Nick Nesbitt’s edited volume The Concept in Crisis, and William Clare Roberts’s Marx’s Inferno. These works reflect the fact that 2017 witnessed an upsurge of philosophical publications on Marx and Marxism. On one level, this is because 2017 was simultaneously the 150-year anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marx’s Capital and the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution. (...) Yet on another, more substantial, level, these works point to the enduring question of the meaning of ‘Marxist philosophy’ in its dual, and disputed, relationship to transformative political practice, on the one hand, and to the history of philosophy on the other. There are different threads that tie these works together, but two concepts, coming out of Louis Althusser’s work, stand out: those of ‘conjuncture’ and ‘symptomatic reading’. In short, this chapter suggests that the importance of modern European philosophy is in large part attributable to the theoretical and political problems that Marxism constitutes for it, problems which, at the same time, Marxism cannot articulate without this philosophy. The chapter is divided into five sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Writing and Conjuncture: Citizen Subject; 3. A Symptomatic Reading: The Concept in Crisis; 4. A Symptomatic Reading? Marx’s Inferno; 5. Conclusion. (shrink)

Review Essay of G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (1978, 2000).

Review of Kostas Axelos, 'Introduction to a Future Way of Thought: On Marx and Heidegger' Translated by Kenneth Mills, Edited and Introduced by Stuart Elden Meson Press, Luneburg, 2015. 180 pp., £10.60 / $16.70 pb. 9783957960054.

Review of Frank Ruda, 'For Badiou: Idealism without Idealism', Northwestern University Press, Evanston IL, 2015. xxiv + 200pp., £32.50 pb., 9780810130975.

Review of Fred Moseley and Tony Smith, eds, Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Logic: A Reexamination, Brill, Leiden and Boston MA, 2014. vii + 336 pp., £98.00 hb., 9789004209527.

This paper proceeds from the premise that time and temporality constitute a distinct philosophical problem for Marx and Engels’s materialist concept of history in 'The German Ideology'. It is thus necessary to 'temporalize' this concept of history: to situate it in relation to the active production of a dynamic difference between the past, the present, and the future. After revisiting the philosophical dimensions of Marx’s concepts of materialism, the human, and need, this article uncovers a temporality within the materialist concept (...) of history that is irreducible to a historicist framework of linear, progressive time. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Is it possible to redress a wrong specifically in one’s capacity as a knower? Epistemic justice has largely been conceived of as either an ideal goal guiding present and future societal endeavours, or a set of ameliorative character virtues. Yet there is also a backward-looking component of epistemic justice, which has so far been neglected. I argue that exercises of our cognitive and epistemic capacities can constitute moral redress for wrong actions and wrongful harms for which we are responsible. Epistemic (...) redress can take non-doxastic forms, but can also involve the formation of new beliefs. Acts of epistemic redress can redress not only epistemic but also non-epistemic wrongs. In the practice of natural science, epistemic redress can play legitimate and necessary roles both within and outside the core procedures of scientific reasoning, without compromising science’s truth-orientated epistemic credentials. When it plays these roles, it can contribute to generating restitutive knowledge. (shrink)

When laypersons are presented with scientific information which seeks to modify their way of life, they are expected to believe, suspend belief, or reject it. Second-order assessment of scientific experts helps laypersons to make an informed decision in such situations. This is an assessment of the trustworthiness of the person making the scientific claim. In this paper I challenge the optimistic view of Anderson (2011), regarding the ease with which laypersons can perform second-order assessment of experts, by pointing out some (...) of the obstacles that may prevent laypersons from arriving at an informed decision through this means. By showing that laypersons cannot easily perform second-order assessment of experts, I make a case for sharing epistemic burdens in science communication by using Lackey's (2006) concept of dualism in the epistemology of testimony and Irzik and Kurtulmus’ (2019) work on public epistemic trust in science, as a guide. I invite experts to bear a greater share of the epistemic burden when communicating with laypersons because of their privileged epistemic condition vis-à-vis laypersons. (shrink)

From a celebrated scholar on race, a book on ways of seeing, and seeing through, whiteness.

The Fifth Element (1997) is a French science-fiction film in English, directed and co-written by Luc Besson. The title and the plot of the film refer to a central notion of Greek philosophy, that is, pemptousia, or quintessence. Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and others, were convinced that all natural beings – in fact, nature itself – consist in four primary imperishable elements or essences (ousiai), i.e., fire, earth, water, and air. To these four, Aristotle added aether, a (...) fifth essence (pemptousia). The introduction of aether gave birth to a great tradition in late Antique and Medieval philosophy, and eventually it came to signify not an additional primary element, but the core-essence of all beings, their fundamental ontological structure. Besson’s film draws its inspiration on this philosophical tradition but its cinematographic rendering of the concept of Quintessence is typical of the contemporaneous views on the core characteristics of matters. The modernity that stimulates the film is equally anti-transcendentalist and anti-essentialist. Thus, the fifth element of the film is existentially personified and genderized making the traditional philosophical significance of the term to be adjusted by modernity in an immanent and temporal context where in addition aesthetics plays a crucial role. (shrink)

Contrairement à une tendance majoritaire de l’exégèse du vocabulaire de la douleur dans le Corpus hippocratique (CH), qui le réduit à trois familles de mots et qui conçoit la douleur chez les médecins hippocratiques comme un phénomène exclusivement physique, nous avons des raisons de penser qu’on peut trouver plusieurs manières de signifier la douleur dans le CH et que les médecins hippocratiques ont thématisé des éléments émotionnels dans leurs diagnostics de la douleur.

"22. Looking for a Global Ethic? Try International Law" published on 01 Jan 2004 by Brill | Nijhoff.

Reflections by leading Latin American and African American philosophers on their identity within the field of philosophy.

By demonstrating the uniformity and universality of the principles of valid interpretation of verbal texts of any sort, this closely reasoned examination provides a theoretical foundation for a discipline that is fundamental to virtually all humanistic studies. It defines the grounds on which textual interpretation can claim to establish objective knowledge, defends that claim against such skeptical attitudes as historicism and psychologism, and shows that many confusions can be avoided if the distinctions between meaning and significance, interpretation and criticism are (...) correctly understood. It provides perhaps the first genuinely comprehensive account of hermeneutic theory to appear in English and the first systematic presentation of the principles of valid interpretation in any language. Mr. Hirsch, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of _Wordsworth and Schelling _and _Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake._ “Here is a book that brings logic to the most unruly of disciplines, literary interpretation. Viewing this subject within the tradition of hermeneutics, Mr. Hirsch is able to trace its origins and development with brilliant insight. The result is a lucidly systemic and authoritative account of the premises and procedures applicable to the interpretation of a literary text. Mr. Hirsch has performed a monumental service thereby that of reinstating the credentials of objectivism and defining the limits of the aesthetics of truth. This study is a necessary took for anyone who wants to talk sense about literature.”—_Virginia Quarterly Review_ “Professor Hirsch demonstrates convincingly that objectivity is attainable in humane studies, and that it is not identified with the subject but with the evidence. A valid interpretation is not necessarily a correct one, but one which is more probably than any other on the basis of existing evidence. He makes a subtle and important distinction between a text’s ‘meaning’ and its ‘significance’, and brilliantly relates meaning to understanding and interpretation to explanation…” In short, this is a work which future students of literary theory cannot afford to neglect.”—_Notes and Queries_ E.D. Hirsch, Jr., is professor of English at the University of Virginia. (shrink)

Reproduction of the original: Mental Evolution in Man by George John Romanes.

It is an undeniable reality that workplace spirituality has received growing attention during the last decade. This fact is attributable to many factors, socioeconomic, cultural and others [Hicks, D.A. 2003: Religion and the Workplace. Pluralism, Sprtituality, Leadership (Cambridge University press, Cambridge)]. However the field is full of obscurity and imprecision for the researcher, the practitioner, the organisational analyst and whoever attempts to systematically approach this relatively new inquiry field. This article attempts to provide a critical review of the literature on (...) workplace spirituality by examining the underlying rationale of the main trends regarding spirit at Work and by negotiating their strengths and weaknesses. Current approaches to workplace spirituality are distinguished to the exploratory, contextual and the consequential, acontextual ones. Particular attention is given to ‚Respectful Pluralism’ proposed by Douglas Hicks, as it is suggested that this theoretical framework is the most well-founded, elaborated and systematic up to date. However, it is proposed that even ‚Respectful Pluralism’ fails to fully capture the complexity of such a multidimensional phenomenon as spirituality. Drawing on mainstream ethical and philosophical traditions (deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics) supporting alternative value-systems, it is suggested that a more inclusive and philosophically affluent framework needs to be developed. Finally, some propositions and thoughts are made towards this direction. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

In this study, George Rudebusch addresses whether Socrates was a hedonist--whether he believed pleasure to be the good. In attempting to locate Socrates' position on hedonism, Rudebusch examines the passages in Plato's early dialogues that are the most disputed on the topic. He maintains that Socrates identifies pleasant activity with virtuous activity, describing Socrates' hedonism as one of activity, not sensation. This analysis allows for Socrates to find both virtue and pleasure to be the good, thus solving the textual (...) puzzle and showing the power of Socratic argument in leading human beings toward the good. (shrink)

Most of the revolutionaries who turned toward anarchism as a consequence of 1848 did so by virtue of hindsight, but one man at least, independently of Proudhon, made his defense of the libertarian attitude during the Year of Revolutions itself. “Anarchy is order; government is civil war.” It was under this slogan, as willfully paradoxical as any of Proudhon’s, that Anselme Bellegarrigue made his brief, obscure appearance in anarchist history. Bellegarrigue appears to have been a man of some education, but (...) little is known of his life before the very eve of 1848; he arrived back in Paris on February 23 from a journey in the United States, where he had met President Polk on a Mississippi steamer and had developed an admiration for the more individualistic aspects of American democracy. According to his own account, he was as little impressed as Proudhon by the revolution that broke out on his first morning back in Paris. A young National Guardsman outside the Hôtel de Ville boasted to him that this time the workers would not be robbed of their victory. “They have robbed you already of your victory,” replied Bellegarrigue. “Have you not named a government?”. (shrink)

With theories of political obligation based on consent now generally discredited because most people have not actually consented, certain theorists attempt to rescue consent by proposing mechanisms through which individuals could consent to government. Various mechanisms are examined, including ‘consent-or-leave’ and Michael Walzer's proposal that citizens who refuse to consent be allowed a lesser status, analogous to that of ‘resident aliens at home’. All these mechanisms confront insuperable difficulties concerning essential public goods. Because resident aliens at home will continue to (...) receive public goods, the alternatives are that they be allowed to receive them cost-free or that they incur obligations, even though they explicitly refused to consent. (shrink)

This piece offers a retrospective review of a plenary speech at the 1969 Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association by the leading environmentalist of the Nixon administration, attorney and judge Russell Train. Train's talk, titled “Prescription for a Planet,” can be seen as an early argument for uniting environmental health and public health as the two main determinants of both individual and population health and for the inclusion of these fields in the then‐new field of “bioethics.”.

Th is paper considers the relation between Harold Garfinkel and Alfred Schutz. Reference will be made to their correspondence as well as to some of Garfinkel’s writing. Garfinkel, who was a graduate student at Harvard at the time, first met Schutz at the recommendation of Aron Gurwitsch. Their meeting led to further exchanges including papers that Garfinkel sent to Schutz. When his book, titled Studies in Ethnomethodology, appeared in 1967 he specifically cited Schutz as one to whom he was “heavily (...) … indebted” in his work. In later writings he no longer made such citations and moved away from his earlier position. (shrink)