RATIONAL FREEDOM
My Writings on Rational Freedom, titles, links, abstracts, and tables of contents.
Abstract
Revaluing the insights of Hegel and Marx in light of the conservative critique of totalitarianism.
Abstract
An Auto-Bibliographical essay which establishes and links the basic themes of my work over the years. Contains links to my books, papers, and essays.
Contents
1 Rational Freedom; 2 Marx as the Realization of Rational Freedom; 3 I am Very Hegelian; 4 The Abolition/Realization of Philosophy and the Permanence of Transcendent Standards; 5 Transcendent Standards beyond the endlessness politics of Power/Resistance; 6 Being at Home; 7 Reconciling Nature and Will; 8 Mapping the Ecology of Good; 9 The Nihilistic Fragmentation of Modernity and the Threat of Universal Hatred; 10 The Politics of Love and Friendship; 11 The Overweening Hubris of Progress and Perfectibility; 12 Sophist Morality, Sophist Politics – Power trumps Love and Friendship (and vice versa); 13 The Moral Terrain and the Rational Tradition; 14 Rational Freedom: Environmental Implications and Applications; 15 Under the Shadow of Deicide; 16 Nihilism and the Irreducible Moral Game; 17 Rational Freedom, Transcendent Standards, and the Quest for the Good Life; 18 The Descent into a Fractured Public and Moral Life; 19 Cultivating the Virtues to achieve the Public Good; 20 The Necessity of Soul Care and Ethical Cultivation; 21 The Need for Rational Restraint; 22 Cultivating the Virtues: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville; 23 Overcoming the Crisis of Communication; 24 The Communicative Community of Jürgen Habermas; 25 Individualism as a Personal Self-Alienation from God; 26 Standards - Horizontalizing the Vertical – the immantisation and abolition of the transcendent as a self-abolition; 26 The Rehabilitation of Transcendent and Normative Discourse; 27 The Recognition and Contemplation of the Divine; 28 The Dangers of Disenchanting Analysis and Misplaced Concreteness; 29 Power and Humility: Beyond Possession; 30 The Merging of Blank Sheet Individualism and Darwinian Group- Level Collectivism; 31 Civic Republicanism and Council Republicanism; 32 The Moral Architectonic: Rehabilitating the Ethical Life; 33 Ethical Conflict and Toleration as Moral Failure; 34 The Rational Moral Science of the Human Order; 35 Disclosure and Imposition: Partners in Creation; 36 Proving the Truth: Bridging the Gap between Contemplation and Action; 37 The Synergy of Moral Motives, Metaphysical Ideals, and Material Interests; 38 The Quest for the Ultimate Good.
Abstract
A comprehensive introduction to the thought of Istvan Meszaros, structured around a reconstruction of Meszaros’ conceptual framework of humanity-labour/production and nature and his core concepts of capital system (as distinct from capitalism), social metabolic reproduction and social mediation vs the alien external mediation of the capital form. I show how, for Meszaros, the capital system is a fundamentally subjectless and anarchic system of alien control that demands, but is incapable of supplying from within, a form of social control and rational global governance. The structural crisis of capital is thus also the structural crisis of the state and politics. I conclude with Meszaros’ case for the necessity of social control.
Contents
1 Introduction: Existential Issues; Conceptual Framework; Beyond Capital: Mészâros’ Conceptual Framework
2 Core Concepts: 2 1 The Capital System: 2 2 Social Metabolic Reproduction; 2 3 Mediation
3 Ecological Value Form Analysis: Social And Ecological Construction; The Absolute Ecological Limits Of Capital.
4 The Structural Crisis Of Capital: The Structural Crisis Of Capital; The Critique Of Environmental Reformism.
5 Structural Crisis Of The State And Politics: Global Governance; The Crisis Of Politics And State; The Historical Moment And The Actualization Of Radical Politics; The State As Abstraction.
6 Social Control, The Restitution Of Social Power And Communistindividuality: The Necessity Of Social Control; Elementary Triangles: A Sustainable System Of Social Metabolic Reproduction; Association Versus The State - The Two Socialisms
7 Social Mediation Vs Capital's Alien Mediation: The Realm Of Freedom; Self-Governing Socialism
8 Revolutionary Subjectivity – Self-Activity And Self-Organisation
Volume 1 of Socialism from Within
Abstract
Volume One of Marx's Socialism from Within. In this work I recover the ecological dimension of Marx's critique of political economy. Within the triadic framework of humanity-labour/production-nature, I demonstrate that Marx goes beyond the abstractions of 'Man,' 'Reason,' and 'Nature' to place the emphasis upon mediation. Focusing upon the alienated character of capital's second order mediations, Marx reveals the forces behind the disturbance in the 'metabolic interaction' between humanity and nature. Arguing for regulating this interchange in a 'rational way,' Marx shows what is required for the restoration of healthy growth in the relation between the social metabolism and the universal metabolism of nature.
Contents
1 Introduction of Themes – Marx and Ecology; 2 The Critique of Political Economy; 3 Labour, Need and Production; 4 Praxis: The Democratisation of Philosophy, Power and Politics; 5 Recovering the Dialectics of Nature; 6 Marx and Metabolism; 7 Natural-Scientific Influences on Marx; 8 The Necessity of Mediation; 9 The State, Community and Individuality; 10 Rational Control; 11 Theory and Practice. Appendix: Culturalism, Naturalism and Social Metabolism
Volume 1 of Socialism from Within
Abstract
Volume Two of Marx's Socialism from Within. Here I locate Marx within a concept of rational freedom which holds that the freedom of each individual is conditional upon and co-existent with the freedom of all individuals. I, in turn, ground that concept in Marx's normative essentialist anthropology. I show that an essentialist metaphysics is central to Marx's presentation of socialism as a vision of the immanent society, giving ethics a particular character in Marx's practical critique.
Contents
Part 1 RATIONAL FREEDOM
1 The Dialectic of Enlightenment; 2 The Principle of Rational Freedom; 3 The Influence of Hegel’s Rational Freedom on Marx ; 4 Marx and Hegel; 5 The Abolition of the State; 6 Marx’s Unified Science of Man
PART 2 MARX’S ESSENTIALIST ANTHROPOLOGY
7 Essentialism and Atomism; 8 Essentialism, Purpose, and Human Agency; 9 Aristotle and Essentialism; 10 Hegel and the Telos of History; 11 Marx’s Essentialist Metaphysics; 12 The Metaphysical (Re)construction of Economic Life; 13 The Transcendence of the Immanent Contradictions of Capital.
Part 3 MARX AND MORALITY
14 Marx’s Normative Essentialism; 15 Marx, Morality and Moral Theory; 16 Ancients and Moderns; 17 The Impasse of Modern Moral Theory; 18 Marx and the Morality of Practical Life; 19 Libertarian Freedom and Common Purpose; 20 Marx’s Implicit Practical Morality
Abstract
This paper examines Kant’s philosophy in three parts. Part I concerns knowledge and looks at reason, its limits and extent. This part shows how Kant went beyond the empiricism and rationalism debate by incorporating the key elements of both in his transcendental idealism. I proceed to examine the constructive and critical theories contained in the critiques, arguing that these establish adequate foundations for both scientific knowledge and moral truth. In Part II I show how Kant makes good his promise to bring the worlds of Newton and Rousseau together, combining the mechanistic conception of a causally ordered nature with the belief in the free will. Kant is thus able to secure the basis of objective knowledge with respect to the external world whilst at the same time affirming freedom as the moral responsibility of human beings. This part looks at the moral law and happiness in terms of the highest good, emphasizing that Kant shows how human beings can transcend their natural and egoistic inclinations to create a moral society of cooperation with a view to the common good. In Part III the implications of this ethic is developed with respect to the practical world of politics. There are sections on peace and freedom under law and the republican constitution. As the paper draws to a conclusion it takes a critical look at Kantian rationalism as pertaining to a culture established in too sharp an abstraction from nature. To correct this dualism I identify the basis of a natural teleology in Kant which emphasizes the centrality of moral praxis in realizing the highest good as the morally necessary end of rational nature. The argument is that Kant presents a social and a practical ethics which enjoins us to realize the moral community. In order to realize their rational/moral nature and thus become free beings, empirical individuals must bring about the moral order which embodies the highest good. The primacy of pure practical reason therefore affirms that the world is created by human praxis as a moral praxis and defines Kant’s philosophy as both praxis-orientated and future-oriented.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
PART I KNOWLEDGE
Reason – Its Limits And Extent; The Limits Of Reason; Rationalism And Empiricism; The Constructive Theory; The Critical Theory.
PART II ETHICS
The Dialectic Of Reason; The Moral Law And The Highest Good; Happiness And The Highest Good.
PART III POLITICS
Kant And Politics; Peace And Freedom Under Law; The Republican Constitution; Kantian Rationalism; Natural Teleology And Moral Praxis.
Abstract
This book divides into four sections. Section one examines Kant's Copernican revolution in philosophy, showing how Kant altered the basis of cognition. Kant is shown to affirm creative human agency in the shaping and understanding of the world. The implications of this emphasis on human agency for ethics and politics are examined in the second and third parts. The fourth part examines how successful Kant was in realising rational nature as an end in itself in the empirical world. The principal argument of this book is that whilst Kant failed to realise his ideal noumenological society, avoiding an active politics to rely on evolution, history and a general process of public education, Kant's ethics can be developed as a transformatory politics.
Contents
1 Kant – The Limits Of Reason; 2 Reason And Freedom; 3 Conceptual Apparatus; 4 The Morality Of Ends; 5 The Moral Law As The Universal; 6 Theory And Practice; 6 Political Peace - Peace And Freedom Under Law; 7 Natural Teleology And Human Praxis; 8 The Ideal Civic Constitution; 9 The Republican Constitution; 10 Kantian Rationalism; 11 Left Kantianism; 12 The Democratisation Of Authority And Morality; 13 The Critique Of Kantian Morality; 14 Order, Freedom And Law: Legal Fetishism; 15 Public-Private Dualism As Impersonal/Personal Split; 16 Conclusion
Abstract
Spinoza is the rationalist philosopher par excellence, making every conceivable emancipatory claim for reason in delineating the connection of reason to freedom and power. Spinoza develops a philosophy which affirms the emancipatory function of reason. This kind of philosophy has been challenged in recent times by postmodernist modes of thought. Whereas Spinoza affirms knowledge as power in a positive sense, the likes of Michel Foucault argue a knowledge/power nexus that savours more of an Hobbesian ceaseless conflict. Foucault’s equation of all forms of knowledge with the endless exercise of a power, the effects of which may be discursively placed but whose authority cannot be subject to rational criticism, explicitly denies the emancipatory function that Spinoza assigned to reason. Free of such rational critique, discourse inspired by Foucault lacks political and ethical import. Not surprisingly, Foucault’s work has proved itself to be compatible with a wide range of political platforms, spanning the spectrum from New Left to New Right. This political ambivalence directly follows from the loss of an ethical position owing to the denial of rational critique. The distinguishing characteristic of ‘the Left’ in both politics and ethics has been the commitment not just to challenge existing power structures in favour of the poor, the marginalized and the suppressed but to associate this challenge with a commitment to distinguish truth from ideological mystification and obfuscation. In connecting his rational philosophy with democratic politics, Spinoza is a ‘Left’ thinker in this grand tradition. This thesis highlights the ‘radical’ aspects of Spinoza’s rationalist philosophy, finding inspiration in his God-Nature relation, his democratic politics and his commitment to free rational thinking as subversive of all forms of coercive or state-sanctioned religious doctrine.
Content
1 Philosophical Background; 2 Outline Of Metaphysics; 3 On The Attributes: Extension And Its Modes; 4 Knowledge And Intellect; 5 Freedom And Morality; 6 Wisdom And The Life Of The Free Man; 7 Politics And Religion: Natural Law And Natural Right; Justice; The Nature Of The State; Prophecy And Politics.
“I will begin by saying that I call myself a Communist, and have no wish to qualify that word by joining any other to it.” (William Morris).
Contents
1 The Art Of The People: Thomas Carlyle And John Ruskin; The Art Of The People; 2 Art And Commerce; 3 Communism; 4 Eco-Community; 5 The Marxism Of William Morris; 6 Synopsis Of News From Nowhere; 7 Organic Architecture; 8 Socialist Politics.
Abstract
This book argues that what makes Rousseau’s philosophy so vibrant and meaningful is its grounding in the most profound questions of being. Although Rousseau valued rational understanding as much as any philosopher, he was aware that reason was thin and misleading if it was concerned solely with pure intellect detached from human being. Hence Rousseau’s view that true philosophy rests upon an inner determination which makes it clear that the philosopher loves the truth rather than merely wants to identify it. Philosophy needs to rest on something more profound than the abstracted intellect; this is the human ontology. For Rousseau, the philosophical enterprise is inextricably connected with the consideration of being as a whole. Limited to intellectual activity alone, philosophy is not a genuine search for truth and is certain to leave the most important questions unanswered to the extent that it fails to engage with humanity’s whole existence.
Philosophers need to penetrate beyond the intellect to identify the principles which were ‘engraved in the human heart in indelible characters’ and thus find truth in the comprehension of the depths of being. This book shows that Rousseau's great achievement is to have embodied this true philosophy in a viable social and political order, uniting the inner landscape and the outer landscape. In coming to understand essential being, Rousseau makes it possible to comprehend the fundamental features of human society, thus enabling us to reach the level of universal principle. The moral "ought-to-be" of philosophy is thus grounded in something real, in human nature and its potentialities, rather than in something impossibly ideal, some abstract standard. Rousseau thus gives individuals a vision of the ideal human society that they would, by nature, create and flourish in in order to become truly human beings. With Rousseau, politics and ethics are united in a social order that enables the creative realization of the human ontology. For this reason, this book argues that Rousseau remains a contemporary figure.
Contents
1 The Unity Of Rousseau’s Thought; 2 The Discourse On The Arts And Sciences; 3 On The Origin And Foundation Of The Inequality Of Mankind; 4 A Discourse On Political Economy; 5 Religion; 6 Autonomy And Authority; 7 Rational Authority; 8 Force And Legality; 9 Alienation And Sovereignty; 10 The Limits To Sovereignty; 11 The Law; 12 Forms Of Government; 13 How The Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself; 14 Representation; 15 The General Will; 16 The Politics Of Authenticity; 17 Political Masks; 18 The Ideal Public Community; Conclusion
Abstract
This thesis approaches 'Marx's politics' from its 'rational' origins in ancient Greek thought. Stated briefly, ‘rational freedom’ affirms a socio-relational and ethical conception of freedom in which individual liberty depends upon and is constituted by the quality of relations with other individuals. Marx only used the term 'rational freedom' the once, in his early journalism, articulating an explicitly Hegelian view. However, the concept remains implicit in Marx’s critical perspectives throughout his later work. This thesis argues that Marx retained Hegel's principle of the state as ethical agency whilst rejecting the actual institution of the state.
The argument of this thesis is that Marx both transforms and incorporates the 'rational' themes and values developed by Plato and Aristotle, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel. Whereas the contemporary trend is to go 'beyond marxism' (Schecter 1994), the approach that this thesis takes is to go before Marx in order to locate communism as a 'true' public within a normative philosophical concern with the appropriate regimen for the human good. This reconstructs a tradition and a concept of 'rational freedom' around principles of reciprocity, mutual respect, communication, communality, solidarity. The 'rational' here comprehends subjectivity as an intersubjectivity which secures the unity of the freedom of each and the freedom of all. This tradition rejects the atomistic model of freedom as self-cancelling in equating freedom with unrestricted individual choice and the unregulated pursuit of self-interest (Marx Gr 1973:163/6). The 'rational’ conception defines freedom as conceivable only by locating individual interactions within a network of relationships. The failure of marxism to generate a true public life is part of a wider problematic - the failure to actualise 'rational freedom'. This failure is considered not to be a problem of the universal values and ideals – which traditional conservative and contemporary postmodern thought target – but existing relations, institutions and practices. Marx certainly realised that the automatic connection between reason and freedom under law could no longer be assumed in class society. But this led him less to abandon the 'rational' conception of freedom than to seek its material foundation in a classless society which has dissolved the abstracted legal-institutional form of reason into a self-organising democratic society. This thesis argues that Marx radicalised the 'rational' principle of collective and reciprocal freedom beyond the state in a new associational public. In transcending the legalistic and moralistic framework of the 'rational' tradition, this thesis demonstrates how Marx actualises rational unity of each individual with all individuals within the social world of everyday exchange, reciprocity and solidarity.
Ch 1 The Conception of Rational Freedom
Philosophy as the Rational Utopia – Ancient Greek Origins – Plato and Aristotle – The Good Life and the Common Good - Rousseau’s Democratic Social Contract - The General Will – Autonomy and Rational Authority – Sovereignty and Representation.
Ch 2 Kant’s Community of Ends
The Categorical Imperative – the Universal Law – the Realm of Ends – Political Peace – The Critique of Kantian Rationalism.
Ch 3 Hegel’s Embodied Freedom
The Grounding of Kant’s Morality and Rousseau’s Democracy – the Philosophy of Right – the Associative Civil Public.
Ch 4 Marx’s Normative Democratic Community
The Critique of Hegel’s State – the Critique of Atomistic Society – the Ontology of the Good Community.
Ch 5 The Ontology of Reason – the Concept of Active Materialism
Social Citizenship – Michel Foucault: Reason and Repression – the Realisation of Philosophy – Ontology: Praxis, Power and Nature – the Democratisation of Politics, Power and Philosophy.
Ch 6 Reason and Rationalisation
Weber: Modernity and Morality – Alienation and Separation as Key Figures – the Dialectic of Alien and Common Control – Individuality and Communality.
Ch 7 Human Organisation - The Cooperative Commonwealth
The Cooperative Mode of Production – The Political and the Public – The Democratic Transformation of ‘the Political’ – Commune Democracy as Social Self-Government.
Ch 8 Reason and the Communicative Community
Habermas: Autonomy and Solidarity - The communicative Reformulation of the Graeco-Germanic Conception of Rational Freedom – System World and Life World – the Ideal Communication Community – the Discursive Public Sphere
Ch 9 Rational Freedom and Contemporary Political Theory
Double-Democratisation and the Recovery of Liberalism (Held and Keane) – ‘Liberal Socialism’ (Norberto Bobbio) – Liberalism and Communitarianism – (Rawls, Sandel, Raz, Walzer, Finnis, Galston) – the Relational Turn of Feminism – Radical Democracy (Laclau and Mouffe, Hirst, Heller).
Abstract
This thesis examines the idea of freedom in the thought of Karl Marx in relation to a philosophical tradition concerning the appropriate regimen for creative human self-realisation dating from Plato and Aristotle.
The thesis consists of nine parts.
Part One examines the work of a number of postmarxist democratic theorists in order to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Marx’s conception of democratisation as a singular process that overcomes the dualism of the state and civil society. The common theme uniting contemporary radical, democratic and liberal thinkers is the need to ensure the institutional separation of the state from civil society. Contemporary liberal and democratic works are characterised by an emphasis upon pluralism, the necessity for the state, the delimitation of the state power in the interests of individual liberty, and an overall hostility towards attempts to replace representative democracy by direct democracy. The overemphasis upon institutional separation as a condition of democracy is shown to be mistaken. Instead, democracy is shown to be capable of being achieved only as the result of a singular process in which the power of control alienated to the state and capital is practically reappropriated and reorganised by society as a social power subject to conscious democratic control within everyday life. Power is restored to human proportion and dimension. The faith that democratic theorists place in the state codification of rights is thereby shown to be misplaced. Individuals capable of exercising power in their everyday life no longer require the protection of rights by the abstract state.
Part Two challenges the limited, ‘protective’ character of freedom and democracy in liberal political theory by developing the philosophical conception of ‘rational freedom’. This part examines the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hegel and Kant in order to emphasise the social and communal character of freedom, locating the individual in a rich social-institutional fabric. The concept of 'rational freedom' is developed to challenge liberal-individualist conceptions of freedom. This ‘rational’ concept is shown to embody and articulate a principle of political authority that is democratic, communal and legitimate in the sense that it entails a unity and an obligation that is self-assumed.
Part Three examines Marx’s critical relation to Hegel. Marx’s critique of Hegel’s political philosophy is shown to reveal the state to be an alienated social power arising from the contradictions of civil society. These contradictions work to prevent the emergence of a genuine common good as constituted by the demos, something that Marx calls ‘true democracy’. The fact that the state cannot abolish these contradictions without putting an end to itself exposes the limitations of contemporary proposals for democratisation as a double-sided process that preserves the dualism of the state and civil society. Marx shows that Hegel could not deliver on his promise of a political structure combining individual freedom, citizenship and social identity precisely because of the institutional separation of state and civil society which characterises liberal thought and politics. In condemning Hegel for his idea of the state as an hypostatized abstraction, Marx is shown to turn the critical focus upon the abstracting tendencies of modern society. We are dealing with a world of abstraction which has obtained an independence of human agency. This part therefore establishes the basis for transcoding the process of abstraction into a fetishism of politics and production which runs through the whole capitalist social metabolic order. Marx's materialist problematic of reification is thus opposed to an idealist discourse on 'rationalisation' and the 'realisation of reason in history', given that the contradictions are located not in reason but in an alienated system of production.
Part Four focuses upon the subversion of the universal and communal character of the principle of ‘rational freedom’ by a capitalistically structured civil society. Having dealt with the political implications of reason taking repressive form, suggesting how the future social order is to be organised, this part examines the moral questions raised by the 'bourgeois' character of capitalist modernity. The critical focus will, therefore, fall on Marx's critique of rights-based liberalism. Human emancipation as the practical reappropriation of social power is considered as asserting the priority of the good over the right, thus inverting contemporary Rawlsian liberalism.
The final section of this part considers the political implications of Marx's approach to morality with regard to the contemporary debate between liberals and communitarians. In changing the register from rights to needs and capacities within a conception of community and the good, Marx exposes the liberal emphasis upon individual liberty to be misplaced. At the same time, the communitarian conception of 'community' and common interest is shown to be similarly vitiated by its failure to escape the abstract dualisms of individual and society characterising liberal thought. The argument presents Marx as arguing for a modern polis democracy, repudiating the liberal antithesis of individual and community. By such means, Marx incorporates individuality and sociality, rupturing the liberal framework of rights and justice, and exposing the state as an antagonistic and alienated social form which imposes an abstract moral and legal code in the process of regulating and rationalising capitalist class relations.
Part Five provides the ontological and socio-structural framework sustaining the conception of communism as the good society. Marx's praxis is defined as an affirmative materialism which forms the basis for asserting a democratic social control dissolving the institutional-systemic apparatus raised over the life world. One encounters here a materialism which is less concerned with causal explanation than with sensuous practicality in human experience. Praxis as the core of Marx's ontology provides the basis for an analysis which comprehends a dynamic, multifaceted reality. The argument underlines the centrality of the notion of conscious, practical, creative and sensuous activity in Marx's affirmative and active materialism. And this notion entails a conception of human and social embodiment in which powers which have been alienated and institutionalised in an artificial world raised above society are reabsorbed into society. Marx will be understood as seeking the restitution of human powers at the level of the reciprocal relations between individuals within the everyday world. His materialism is affirmative in the way that it asserts the sensuous, active, direct and rooted aspects of life over abstraction, dualism, rationality, system. The everyday life world of real individuals is the terrain for the embodied experience which provides the basis for dissolving that abstracted rationalism divorced from human life which Marx discerned in Hegel's doctrine of the state. Marx's life-affirming materialism is aimed at overcoming the way in which human-social power has become disembodied, invested in an institutional-systemic world raised above real society, disempowering individuals in the process.
Part Six addresses the question of mediation, arguing for a conception of social control as a form of self-determination and social self-mediation. In arguing for Marx as a materialist thinker who sought to dissolve an abstracted institutional-systemic apparatus raised over society into the everyday lifeworld of individuals, there is a danger of committing Marx to an unmediated, spontaneous form of existence. This thesis addresses the question of mediation at a number of levels, from relating Marx to Hegel's differentiated system of representation to arguments for the cooperative mode of production in a condition of commune democracy. This part focuses specifically upon the definition of social control and self-mediation. In formulating the question in terms of the alienation of control within what Marx, calls a 'system of general social metabolism' (Grundrisse 1973:158/9), this part apprehends capital as a mode of alien control which is fundamentally uncontrollable. The basic problem with which Marx deals is that social interaction proceeds within a reified framework of control that has become independent of the individuals involved. The commitment to abolish reified social relations directs Marx's project back to its premise of rooting society and social powers in the interaction of real individuals, establishing a new framework for free individuality and for addressing the problems of organisation and administration of post-capitalist society. In opposing social control to the alien control of capital and the state, Marx's emancipatory commitment is shown to be not simplistically democratic, implying an unmediated existence, but as opposing social self-mediation to the alienated mediation of the capital system.
Part Seven develops a conception of communist individuality. Whilst individualist liberals have accused Marx of attempting to foist an 'artificial unity' upon humanity, this part demonstrates that this is precisely what Marx considered the ‘objective dependency’ of the capital system to do. Marx argued against liberal notions of individual freedom precisely because he appreciated the extent to which individuals have come to be enslaved to their own powers under the capital system. This part shows that Marx's demand for communal control was designed to achieve individual freedom in a supra-individual world. The social control of individuals is opposed to the objective control of 'things'.
The final two parts (Eight and Nine) seek to tie together the themes of true democracy, social control and self-mediation, affirmative materialism, community and communist individuality within a conception of commune democracy.
Part Eight defends Marx’s early definition of ‘true democracy’ as entailing the dissolution of the state and of (capitalistically organised, inegalitarian, unpluralist) civil society as a single process. The argument delineates Marx's definition of democratisation, seeking its realisation outside of and against the abstract form of the state. This is where the conception of the proletarian public sphere (or spheres) becomes important and where its absence in socialist theory and practice becomes evident. Such a notion is shown to entail not the end of politics but its realisation in the everyday affairs of the demos, expressing a conception of self-government. Making a distinction between state and government, it is possible to develop the anti-statist character of democracy without thereby being committed to an anti-political stance. By recognising plural identities and enabling participation, the notion of the communist public sphere comes into its own as a political society.
Part Nine recognises that the need for constructive models of the socialist society has tended to be overlooked in marxist analyses in favour of the critique of the capitalist mode of production. Marx himself expressed an hostility towards blueprintism, giving as much creative freedom as possible to actual agents as they come to act in specific social relations. However, the crisis tendencies and contradictory dynamics of capitalism demand a vision of an economic alternative. This part shows that whilst Marx may be weak with respect to the institutional means of the socialist economy, he is strong at the level of principle. Taking an Aristotelian view that first principles are a strong foundation for any architecture, this part sets about filling in the details of a viable socialist economic order.
PART 1 CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRATIC THEORY
1 POSTMARXIST DEMOCRATIC THEORY:
Why Marx? - Postmarxist Democracy or The Recovery of Liberalism; Democratisation versus Double Democratisation; The Rediscovery of Liberal Politics; Liberal Democracy in the Socialist Movement; A Socialist and Pluralist Civil Society; Liberal Socialism
2 INSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION AND COMPLEXITY:
John Keane; Elitist Democratic Theory; Bobbio's Criticism; The Subversive Character of Democracy; The Ascending Theme of Power
3 THE THEORISATION AND NATURALISATION OF COMPLEXITY:
Socialism and Weberian Determinism; Beyond Marxism and Liberalism?; Concluding Remarks; A Weberian Double Democratisation?
PART 2 THE PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS OF RATIONAL FREEDOM
4 THE CONCEPT OF RATIONAL FREEDOM:
Modern Polis Democracy; New Politics, Self And Citizenship; The ‘Anarchism’ of Marxism; The Ethical-Rational Community
5 THE IMMANENT IDEAL OF PHILOSOPHY:
The Rational Utopia; The End of the State and Lawful Government
6 THE DIVORCE OF REASON AND MORALITY:
Reason and Repression; Marx and Postmodernism; The Postmodern Subject; Foucault and Emancipation
7 THE GRAECO-GERMANIC CONCEPT OF RATIONAL FREEDOM:
Marx’s Classicism; Rationalism and Empiricism; Negative and Positive Liberty; The Ethico-Rational Society; Government as the Agent of the Demos; Reason and Freedom; The Concept of Rational Freedom.
8 MODERN POLIS DEMOCRACY: Marx’s Restored Classicism
9 PLATO AND THE RULE OF REASON: Plato’s Republic; Plato and Justice; Who Rules – People or Philosophy?; The Philosopher Ruler; The Statesman; The Laws.
10 ARISTOTLE’S POLITIKON BION
11 THE GERMAN TRADITION OF RATIONAL FREEDOM
12 THE RATIONAL FREEDOM OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
13 KANT’S MORAL ARCHITECTONIC:
Left Kantianism; The Ideal Civic Constitution; Ethical and Political Dualism; Theory and Practice; Perpetual Peace; The Democratisation of Authority and Morality; Kant, Marx and Capitalism; The Critique of Kantian Morality; Order, Freedom and Law: Legal Fetishism; Public-Private Dualism as Impersonal/Personal Split
14 HEGEL AND THE EMBODIMENT OF FREEDOM
Hegel beyond Kant; Hegel Beyond Rousseau; Hegel’s Philosophy of Right; Hegel’s Associative Public
PART 3 THE ALIEN POLITICS OF THE ABSTRACT STATE
15 MARX'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL: The Separation of the State from Civil Society; Institutional Mediation; The State as Abstraction; True Democracy; The Inversion of Subject and Predicate.
16 REPRESENTATION AND ALIENATION: The Critique of Abstracted Representation; Liberal Public-Private Dualism; The State Bureaucracy - The Universal Class; Towards True Democracy; New Forms - The Multidimensionality of Praxis; The Demos and the Multiplicity of Forms
17 RENEGOTIATING PUBLIC-PRIVATE BOUNDARIES: The Boundaries of the Political - Representation and Democracy; The Liberal State as Political Monopolist; Neo-Medievalism, Community and Nostalgia.
PART 4 THE GOOD LIFE
18 THE MORALITY OF THE GOOD:
The Ideology of Rights; Morality and Nihilism - Social Identity and Control; Political Rights and Property Rights; Liberalism and Communitarianism; Illusory Communality; Abstract Citizen and Actual Bourgeois.
19 CITIZENSHIP AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN:
The Constraints and Contexts of Rights; The Emancipatory Significance of Rights; Abstract Individualism.
20 MARX AND THE LIBERAL DISCOURSE OF RIGHTS:
The Moral and Ontological Ultimacy of the Individual; Rights and the Human Condition; Formal and Substantive Equality; The Conflict Between Personal and Property Rights
21 THE MORAL COMMUNITY - THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE INDIVIDUAL:
The Idea of Community and Flourishing; Marx's Ontology of the Good Society; Liberalism, Communitarianism and Community; Differentiated Social Pluralism
22 LIBERALISM AND ITS COMMUNITARIAN CRITICS
The Precedence of Right over the Good; Liberal Theories of Justice; Macintyre and Virtue; Hegel and The Communitarians
23 COMMUNITARIAN LIBERALISM:
The Communitarian Forms of Community; The Externality of Relations and Abstraction of Morality; Virtue Theory.
PART 5 THE ONTOLOGY OF REASON – ACTIVE MATERIALISM
24 THE ONTOLOGICAL GROUNDING OF RATIONAL FREEDOM
Affirmative Materialism; Praxis - A New Politics of Democratisation; New Morality - The Multidimensionality of Praxis; The Relational Self
25 ONTOLOGY
Praxis. Power and Nature; Ontology and Alienation - Sensuous Human Activity; Praxis and Nature; Social Needs and True Community; The Internal and the External Conception of Power; The Value Form and Social Labour; Association of Individuals; Freely Associated Labour; Association versus the State - The Two Socialism's; Marx against the organic labour state; Necessary vs Surplus Labour.
26 ACTIVE MATERIALISM
Agency and Subjectivity; The Importance of Idealism; Active Idealism and Mechanical Materialism; Humanistic Naturalism and Naturalistic Humanism; The New Activist Materialism.
27 CRITIQUE OF THE THEORETICO-ELITIST MODEL
Praxis and Self-Emancipation; Praxis, Alienation and Determinism; Affirmative Materialism; Embodiment and Institutionalisation - Identity and Environment; Marx and Georg Simmel
28 STRUCTURE AND AGENCY AND CAPITALIST BREAKDOWN
Freedom as Self-Determination; Inversion of Subject and Object; The Duality of Structure and Agency; Giddens and Structuration
PART 6 MEDIATION
29 MEDIATION - SOCIAL VERSUS ALIEN:
Marxism and Modernity; Alien Control – Relational Freedom; Political Alienation; State and Capital as Alienated Social Power; Social Control - Autonomy and Relations.
30 SEPARATION
Against Alienating Separations and Dualisms; Weber and Rationalisation; Weber on Power and Discipline
31 DEMOCRATISATION VERSUS BUREAUCRATISATION
Formal Rationality
32 MODERNITY AND NIHILISM:
Marxism and Modernity; Morality and Nihilism; Value Rationality and Instrumental Rationality; Bureaucracy and the Individual; Community as a Substitute for God?
33 RELIGIOSITY AND REGULATION
The Regulation of the Individual; Complexity – The Division of Labour
PART 7 COMMUNIST INDIVIDUALITY
34 COMMUNIST INDIVIDUALITY THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF INDIVIDUALS:
Communism and Individuality; Socialism and Differentiation; Communal Autonomy
35 SOCIAL CONTROL AND THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY:
Marx's Individualist Materialism; Real Individuals and Community; True Community; Liberal Freedom and Objective Dependency
36 ALIEN OBJECTIVITY
Universal Intercourse and Common Control
37 COMMUNITY AND AUTONOMY IN THE GRUNDRISSE
The Process of Development; The All-Sided Development of individuals; Dependence and Social Interconnections.
PART 8 THE POLITICAL STRUCTURES OF COMMUNISM
38 THE POLITICAL STRUCTURES OF COMMUNISM THE POLITICS OF WELL BEING
Critique of Crude Communism; Liberal Critics of Community; Gemeinwesen - Community, Democracy and the Individual; Community and Democracy; The Conflict between Ascending and Descending Conceptions of Government; Socialism From Above and Below.
39 ORGANISATIONAL FORMS - REVOLUTION AS PROCESS
The Proletarian Public; The New 'Public’; The Restitution of Social Power; The Proletarian Transformation of Politics
40 ASSOCIATIONAL SELF-ACTIVITY AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PROLETARIAN PUBLIC
Party and Conciliar Politics; Epistemological Determinism and Authoritarian Politics; The Economic Struggle is a Means to Political Action whilst Political Action is a Means to Economic Emancipation.
41 DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY:
The Socialist Society: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat; The Commune as Proletarian Dictatorship; The Political - The New Public Sphere; Universal Suffrage and Communism; Differentiated Commune Democracy.
42 COMMUNE DEMOCRACY
The Political Institutions of Socialism; The Commune's Radical Potential; Recall and Revocation – Safeguards; The Political Structures of Socialism
PART 9 MARX AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOCIALISM
43 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOCIALISM
The Division of Labour and Alienation; Communism, the Division of Labour and the All Round Development of Individuality; The 'Utopian' Passage in The German Ideology; Self-Activity Vs the Fixation of Social Activity; Capital And Beyond
44 ‘HUMAN ORGANISATION’ – THE HUMANE ORGANISATION OF HUMAN POWER:
Work and the Length of The Working Day; Creation and Self-Actualisation; The Realm of Freedom
45 THE CASE AGAINST MARX'S ECONOMICS:
Market Socialism?; Participatory Planning
46 THE SOCIALISM OF ASSOCIATED PRODUCERS:
Centralisation and Decentralisation; Centralist Economic Means and The Decentralist Political End; Lenin's Centralisation; Workers Control and Industrial Democracy
47 WORKERS ASSOCIATIONS VERSUS ORGANIC LABOUR STATE THE FREE ASSOCIATION OF THE PRODUCERS
The Cooperative Mode of Production; The Direction of Economic Production; The Democratic Form of Social Authority
Abstract
This thesis distinguishes resolves the dualism of a scientistic-deterministic Marxism and a critical-emancipatory Marxism by reinstating Marx's dialectical materialist (social-natural) ontology. Marx is shown to reconcile the two great wings of the philosophical tradition, subjectivity (will and artifice) and objectivity (reason and nature) via a praxis conception that accents the mediation of human social practice. The reinstatement of Marx's materialist dialectics establishes Marx within the tradition of socialism from below, affirming a principle of self-emancipation that is of general significance with respect to human beings as co-agents participating in a ceaselessly creative universe. Applying this dialectical integral viewpoint to specific social relations, Marx is shown to have developed a powerful practical critique of the capital system. I shall demonstrate that the point of Marx's emancipatory project was to facilitate the recovery of human subjectivity from the alienated forms within which it has come to be expressed, thus affirming conscious, creative human agency in a self-made social world. The genuine sociability of the socio-historical subject in the process of completing itself is thus affirmed against the unsocial and even anti-social external sociality associated with the atomised subject of capitalist society. I shall further argue that Marx could only go so far conceptually and theoretically in order to leave space for the reality-changing constitutive power of praxis, grounded in and bounded by a materialist (social-natural) ontology. I shall argue that Marx belongs to the tradition of ‘socialism from below’, a tradition which emphasises democratisation as a process based upon the principle of self-emancipation. This tradition is defined against the tradition of ‘socialism from above' premised on theoretico-elitist models of theory and practice. I argue that the abandonment of the principle and the practice of self-emancipation lies behind the distortions and deviations of Marxism in the twentieth century. To demonstrate this clearly it is necessary but not sufficient to expose the failures of party political and state socialism. The thesis, therefore, also identifies some deep-rooted conceptual problems in the Marxist tradition, highlighting those principles which remain pertinent to emancipatory struggles in the modern world. Marx is shown to have made the move from theory to practical struggles in order to transform the world from within its own material sphere. Marxism can, in this sense, reclaim its relevance as a viable critical emancipatory-revolutionary project capable of being a factor in the transformation of society. And it is as such that Marxism remains the most intellectually and politically cogent hope we have in the struggle for liberation against alienative and exploitative power relations.
The thesis divides into five parts, each of which could serve as a stand-alone book in its own right. It is possible to read each of these different parts (or books) according to one's interests and concerns. At the same time, there is a unifying thread and consistency of purpose which advances a coherent view of Marx's conception as an active and integral materialism.
Part 1 Marx on the Postmodern Terrain
Part 1 sets the ‘crisis of Marxism’ in the context of the ‘crisis of Modernity’. Here I distinguish between the different views that have historically been discernible within Marxism in its dominant twentieth century formulations, emphasising Marx’s emancipatory commitment and making the case for Marx’s class analysis in light of the postmodern and post-marxist reaction against Marxism. I argue for an open Marxism based on critique, praxis, and materialist dialectics as against a closed Marxism that emphasises economic determinism, structure over agency, fetishism and alienation. I show that for Marx the world is objectified subjectivity, a field of materialist immanence. I argue that, rather than writing theory, Marx developed a critique of capital’s social metabolic order of alien control. As against the fetishisation of structures and categories and the theorisation and naturalisation of complexity, Marx shows how we may see through and break through the fetish systems of politics, power and production and recover our subjectivity. The ‘philosophy of praxis’ is thus defined against the contemplative-passive approach to knowledge.
Part 2 Active Materialism
This part can be considered central and foundational in the sense that it defines the materialist dialectic and ontology of Marx and Engels, avoiding the tendency to divide the philosophical-humanist Marx from a scientistic-naturalist Engels in order to explain the divide that opened up between a Western Marxism accenting freedom, culture, and creative agency on the one hand and the reductive, mechanical, and economist conceptions associated with the Second and Third Internationals. That division will itself be treated as a reproduction of the dualisms which express the inner contradictions of bourgeois thought and society – rationalism and moralism, naturalism and culturalism, scientism and emotivism. A marxist dialectics deriving from Marx's reconciliation and transcendence of philosophical idealism and materialism is show to reconcile the two great wings of the philosophical tradition – objectivity and subjectivity. A crucial part of the argument involves a positive evaluation of Engels' attempt to extend the dialectic to nature, showing how this extension is perfectly in keeping with the integral conception of Marx's social-natural ontology. The loss of the natural dialectic is shown to skew the character of the social dialectic, losing the anchoring of praxis in reality and inviting a reversion to idealism on the one side and relapse into mechanical materialism on the other.
Part 3 Revolutionary-Critical Praxis
This part argues for Marx’s critical and transformatory ‘philosophy of praxis’ as against the contemplative-passive approach to knowledge. I show how Marx’s praxis entails the democratisation of politics, philosophy, and power, subverting alienation, fetishism and determinism. I argue for a dialectic of structure and struggle, showing how values are central to Marx’s dialectic. I show how Marx incorporated the active side of idealism into his materialist conception.
Part 4 Agency and Structure
Part 4 employs Marx’s active and affirmative materialism against naturalism and positivism. The argument examines capitalist crisis as a crisis transformative potential, demonstrating socialism as an immanent potentiality for Marx, whose realisation required the self-development of proletarian autonomy and subjectivity.
Part 5 Alienation and Rationalisation
Part 5 develops Marx’s teleology of labour to make the case against the alienating separations and dualism of the capital system . This part compares and contrasts Marx’s critique of alienation with the rationalisation thesis of Max Weber, showing how the substantive irrationality and unnatural spirit of capital's fetish relations expresses a class rationality that can only be overcome by locating the problems not in an ahistorical reason – the rationalism of bourgeois thought, inviting an impotent moralism in response - but in an alienated system of production. I show how Marx affirms the everyday social world of reciprocity and solidary exchange against the violence and tyranny of abstraction. In the process, I develop a concept of social self-determination as against capital's objective determinism, overcoming the monopolisation of power/alienation of control under the capital system through an emphasis on practical-sensuous experience embodied in the conscious, collective control of social relations.
Contents
PART 1 MARX ON THE POSTMODERN TERRAIN
1 INTRODUCTION:
Lyotard’s criticism; The Future For Socialism; The Different Marx's And Marxisms; The Breakthrough From Philosophy To Reality And Practice; Theory And Practice; The Recovery Of Critical And Emancipatory Themes; The Tyranny of Abstraction and its Critique.
2 MARX’S EMANCIPATORY COMMITMENT
Marx And Theory; The Emancipatory Commitment; 'New’ Politics; The Collapse Of Party-State Socialism; The Proletariat And Alternative Agents; The Case For Class Understanding; The Principle Of The Proletariat; The Repudiation Of The Theoretico-Elitist Model; Praxis; Premises; Revolutionary-Critical Praxis; The Critical Assessment Of Social Democracy And Communism; The Demise Of Party-State Socialism; The 'Anarchism' Of Marx.
3 MARXISM AND THE POSTMODERN POLITICAL TERRAIN
Postmodernism And Late Capitalism; Marx's Emancipatory Project; Democratisation Versus Institutionalised Separation; Marx And Utopianism; Basic Principles; The Academicisation Of Marxism; Beyond The Passive-Contemplative Approach; The Crisis Of Marxism; The Distinction Between Critical-Emancipatory Marxism And Scientific-Deterministic Marxism; The Post-Marxist Reaction; 'Proletarian’ Theory; The Crisis Of The Political Agencies
4 WHICH MARX? WHICH MARXISM?
'Political' Socialism; Beyond Marx?; Marx Between and Beyond Libertarianism And Authoritarianism; Critique of Closed Marxism; Alienation And Economic Determinism; The Marxism Of The Working Class Subject; Subject And Object; Beyond Alienating Dualisms; The Difference Between the Early Philosophical Marx and the Later Economist Marx; Emancipation And The Critique Of Political Economy; The 'Scientific’ Marxists And Subjectivity; Class Analysis And The Libertarian Perspective.
5 SCIENTIFIC-OBJECTIVISING VERSUS CRITICAL-REVOLUTIONISING MARXISM
The Split Between 'Objectivist' And 'Subjectivist’ Marxism; The Repudiation Of The Theoretico-Elitist Model; Marxist Orthodoxy; Materialism And Dialectics; Orthodoxy and the Bureau-Sclerosis of Social Democracy; Economic Evolution and Political Revolution; The Economic And The Political - Subject And Object; Dualism; The Privileging of Structure over Agency; The World as Objectified Subjectivity; Immanence, Inevitability and Possibility; Emancipatory-Revolutionary Activity; Against the Objectivism of Political Economy; Praxis - The Critique of Abstract Knowledge; Marx's Emancipatory Project; The Fetishisation of Structures and Categories; Humanist Determinism; The Rupturing of Rationalised Determinism; Class, Capital and Crisis; The Elitism Of Scientific Marxism; The Democratisation of Politics, Philosophy and Knowledge Versus Socialism 'From the Outside'; The Critique Of Alien Control; The Bureaucratisation of Socialist Politics; Immanence and Transformatory Agency; Academic versus Revolutionary Marxism; The Theorisation and Naturalisation of Complexity; State And Society - System And Life World; Socialism and Weberian Determinism; The Marxism of the Academy; The Academicisation of Marxism; The Reversion to Interpretation and the Assimilation of Marxism; The Reinstatement of the Theoretico-Elitist Model; The Interaction Of Spontaneity And Control; Marxism And Ecology; Marxism's Historical Purpose; Post-Modernism/Marxism - The Autonomy of Theory and Politics; Postmarxism; Necessary Relations And Essences; Laclau And Mouffe; Post-Modernism; Discourses of Extremity and the Dangers of the Linguistic Turn.
PART 2 ACTIVE MATERIALISM
6 DIALECTICAL REALISM – THE UNITY OF SOCIAL AND NATURAL HISTORY
Marxist Materialist Ecologism as against Rationalist Environmentalism; Immanence, Essence, and Emergence.
7 ACTIVE MATERIALISM
The Immanent Ideal Of Philosophy; The Incorporation of the Active Side; The Accusation of Idealism; The Intellectual Appreciation of a Self-Made World; Materialism - Old And New; Active Materialism vs Determinism; The Repudiation of Environmentalism; The Unification of Politics and Philosophy
8 WESTERN MARXISM AND THE DIALECTIC OF NATURE
Recovering the Dialectics of Nature; The Dialectics of Nature
9 DIALECTICAL INTERPLAY AND METABOLIC INTERACTION
10 ENGELS AND THE RECOVERY OF HEGEL’S DIALECTICS
German Scientific Materialism: The Turn against Hegel
11 ENGELS AND THE DIALECTICS OF NATURE
Active Reflexivity as against Passive Reflection
12 NATURE IS THE PROOF OF DIALECTICS
Nikolai Bukharin; Reconciling subjectivity and objectivity
PART 3 REVOLUTIONARY-CRITICAL PRAXIS
13 THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS
Theory and Practice; The Reversion to the Contemplative-Passive Approach; The Dialectical Conception; The Theoretical Consciousness; The Two Marxisms; The Opposition of the Life World to the Alien World; Democratisation Of Politics, Philosophy And Power; Philosophy and the Proletariat.
14 FETISHISM AS THE CENTRAL CATEGORY
Alienation and Determinism; The Political Implications Of The Approach To Fetishism; Fetishism, The Party and Proletarian Agency; Resistance to Fetishism; The Intransigence of Fetishism; Fetishism and the Proletariat.
15 THE DIALECTIC OF STRUCTURE AND STRUGGLE
The Real Dialectic; The Duality of Structure and Agency; The Repudiation of Determinist Materialism; Active Materialism – Summary of the Key Points.
16 DIALECTICS AND VALUES
The Normative Dimension of Marx's Science; The Dialectical Approach.
17 THE INDIVIDUAL AND INDIVIDUALITY
Marx's Communist Individuality; Marx Radicalises the Bourgeois Individual; Individuality Versus Individualism; The Free Individual; The Critique of the Liberal Conception; The Realm of Freedom.
PART 4 CLASS PRAXIS – THE DIALECTIC OF AGENCY AND STRUCTURE
18 HEGELIAN MARXISM
The Naturalism and Positivism of Orthodoxy; Marx and the Proletariat; The Materialist Premises
19 AGENCY AND CAPITALIST BREAKDOWN
The Revolution Against Marx's Capital; Crisis and Breakdown; The Inevitability of Breakdown; The Existence of Crises with Transformative Potential; The Systemic Tendency to Crisis; And Socialism as an Immanent Potentiality; The Political Implications of Inevitability; Labour and its Alienation; Unity of Subject and Object; The Revolutionary Class.
20 CLASS AGENCY
The Stress on the Internal Mechanisms of the Capital System; The Questioning Of The Working Class; The Complexity Of Class; The Process Of Class Formation; The Reversion to Idealism and Utopianism; The Crisis of the Political Agencies of Labour; The Caricature Of Marxism's Class Understanding; The Fragmentation of the Working Class.
21 THE PROLETARIAT AS THE CLASS SUBJECT
The Privileging of the Proletariat?; The Centrality of the Proletariat; The Continuing Relevance of Class Struggle
22 PROLETARIAN AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVITY
The Tendency to 'Objectivism’ through Political Economy; Marxism as Emancipatory Theory; The Theorisation of Proletarian Incapacity; The ‘Objectivism’ of Marxism as Political Economy; Class Activity; Exploitation and 'Economism'; The Proletariat as Antagonistic Class Subject; The Standpoint of the Working Class; The Proletariat without Guarantees; Vulgar Historical Materialism; Class as Antagonistic Subject; Self-Valorisation; Self-Emancipation and Organisational Form; Autonomy; The Proletariat as the Class Subject; The Broader Conception of Materialism; The New Social Movements and New Politics; The Political Implications of Theory; The Continuing Search for New Social Agents; The Reification of the Proletariat?; The Reinstatement of Class; The Proletariat and the Crisis of Marxism/
PART 5 MODERNITY, ALIENATION AND RATIONALISATION
23 ALIENATION AND ITS ABOLITION
The Teleology of Labour; The Active Element of Alienation; Alienation and Class
24 THE VALUE FORM AND SOCIAL LABOUR
Necessary Vs Surplus Labour; Crisis and Class Struggle; The Dependence of Capital upon Labour.
25 MARXISM AND MODERNITY
Rationalisation and Separation; Rationalisation and Alienation; Against Alienating Separations and Dualisms
26 THE CAPITAL SYSTEM AND CLASS RATIONALITY
The Substantive Irrationality of Capital's Fetish Relations; The Unnatural Spirit of Capitalism; Rationality and Class; Weber, Rationality and Socialism; Weber and the Dualism of Formal and Substantive Rationality
27 ABSTRACTION AND IMPERSONALITY
Instrumental Rationality; The Dialectic of Enlightenment; Praxis and the Proletariat; Bureaucracy
28 RATIONAL SOCIALISM - SOCIALISM AND RATIONALISATION
Rationalisation, Alienation and Socialism; The Inversion of Means and Ends; Rationalisation and Class Rationality; Totalitarianism as a General Alienation; 'Scientific' Marxism and Bureaucratic Politics.
29 STATE OWNERSHIP
The Alienation of the Organic Labour State; The Emancipatory Component of Reason; Nationalisation and the Transformation of Social Relations; 'Orthodoxy' and State Socialism; The Proletariat and the Substitutionism of Political Socialism; Self-Governing Socialism
30 LIFE WORLD VS SYSTEM WORLD
The Violence and Tyranny of Abstraction; The State as Abstraction; The Ambiguous Process of Modernity; Nostalgia; The Activist Conception of Knowledge; Marx's Critique of Abstraction.
31 THE EVERYDAY WORLD OF RECIPROCITY VERSUS ABSTRACTED RATIONALISM
The Colonisation of the Human World; Marx's Affirmative Materialism; The Critique of the Parasitic Institutional-Systemic World; Religiosity and Regulation; The Administration of Society; Institutionalised Power; Marx's Materialist Dialectics; Power, Mediation, and Abstraction; The New Serfdom; Standardisation and the Subordination of the Individual; The Critique of Uniformity, Conformity and Regimentation; Weber and Foucault; Marx and the Location of Power.
32 THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
The Domination of the Exchange Principle; The Frankfurt School and the Domination of Nature; Marx's Ecological Perspective; First and Second Nature; Marx as a Forerunner of Social Ecology; The Society-Nature Dialectic; The Centrality of Praxis.
33 COMPLEXITY - THE DIVISION OF LABOUR
Bureaucratisation and Modernity; Weber's 'Objective Indispensability'; Democratisation Versus Bureaucratisation; Bureaucratisation, Power and Class Interests; The Necessity of the Class Struggle.
34 THE REDISCOVERY OF LIBERAL POLITICS
The Complexity of the Realists; Democratisation and Institutional Separation; Democratisation - Reformist and Marxist; The Intransigence of Social Institutions; The Bureaucratic Conception of Politics; Alien Politics and Secular Religiosity.
35 SOCIAL SELF-DETERMINATION VERSUS CAPITAL'S NECESSITY
Alien Control; The Monopolisation of Power/Alienation of Control; Human Self-Determination Versus Objective Determinism; Scientific Socialism as the Rationalisation of Alienation; Determinism in Marx; Marx's Critique of Alienated Power; Abstraction and Modernity.
36 SOLIDARY SELF-DETERMINATION
Active Materialism - The Democratisation of Philosophy, Politics and Power; Practical-Sensuous Experience vs. Capital's External-Abstract Determinism; Conscious, Collective Control of Social Relations; Enselfment And Empowerment.
Abstract
"The argument of this book attempts to show the relevance of Marx's work to the attempt to create a new politics of citizenship. This argues that Marx is engaged above all in an attempt to formulate a new politics - specifically, a communist politics based upon the reintegration of political and social relationships, the overcoming of the state and civil society dualism and the dissolution of both spheres. This means defining democratisation as a repoliticisation, implying the extension of public spaces through a decentralisation resulting from the relocation of power from the abstracted political realm to the social realm. The concept of on active citizenship rooted in society is distinguished from the abstract citizenship conceded by the state, reading Marx in opposition to centralised, bureaucratised elitist state politics.
Public life – libertarian communalism – social power and the state – conscious control – free association – commune democracy – the lost traditions of anarchism and marxism – postmarxism – democratisation – radical democracy – democracy as method – Norberto Bobbio, democracy and socialism – the social public."
Contents
1 NEW POLITICS – INTRODUCTION
2 LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: Marx's Contribution To A New Politics Of Citizenship; Citizen Politics; Politics And Bourgeois Society; Marx's Politics; Marx's Aristotelian Politics; Alien Politics; The Communalist Agenda.
3 SOCIAL CONTROL: Marx’s Early Writings; The Demos As The Foundation Of The State; The Demos And The State; The Separation Of The State From Civil Society; Community – Real And Abstract;
4 HUMAN RELATIONS AND CONSCIOUS CONTROL: Politics And Power; The Negative And Critical Assessment Of Politics; Politics And Power.
5 HUMAN RELATIONS AND CONSCIOUS CONTROL: The Critique Of The Abstract Community; Conscious Control; The Independent Existence Of Relations Under Capitalism; Community; Property As Alien Labour; The Power Of Labour; Community; The Separation Between Labour And Property; Capital As Alien Labour; Competition; The Fetishism Of Commodities; Free Association; The Community Of Free Individuals; Conscious Communal Control; The Commune As The Social Republic; The Commune As The Political Form Of The Social Emancipation Of Labour; The Limitations Of Political Abolition And The Critique Of Party-State Socialism.
6 THE LOST TRADITION OF MARXISM AND ANARCHISM: The Bureaucratisation Of Socialism; Political Party/State Socialism; The Two Socialisms; Ascending And Descending Conceptions Of Socialism; Socialism From Above And Below; Passive Radicalism; The Syndicalist Case; The Authentic Marxist Tradition; Centralism – Self Versus Bureaucratic.
7 ANARCHISM AND MARXISM: Marx's Emancipatory Project
8 JACOBINISM - THE TWO FRENCH REVOLUTIONS: The Anarchism Of Marx; Socialism - Governmental And Associational; Anarchism; Prefiguration - Building The Social Republic; Socialist Anarchism; The Division Between Anarchism And Marxism; Libertarian Communism; Anarcho-Syndicalism.
9 A POSTMODERN MARXISM? The Crisis Of Marxism; A New Social Movement; A Socialist Public Sphere And A Pluralist Civil Society; The New Social Movements; The Privileging Of The Proletariat?; The Principle Of The Proletariat; Laclau And Mouffe; Hegemony And Marxism
10 DOUBLE DEMOCRATISATION OR THE RECOVERY OF LIBERALISM:
Liberal Democracy In The Socialist Movement; Double Democratisation
11 RADICAL DEMOCRACY: The Conception Of Post-Social Democracy; A Socialist Public Sphere And A Pluralist Civil Society;
12 DEMOCRACY AS METHOD: Democratisation And Pluralism
13 BOBBIO'S 'LIBERAL' SOCIALISM: Capitalism, Socialism And Democracy
14 CONCLUSION - A SOCIALIST PUBLIC SPHERE
Abstract
This book develops Marx’s commitment to a thoroughgoing democratisation of power and philosophy as a critique of alien politics. Defining the state as an alienated social power, Marx is shown to realise rather than abolish ‘the political’ through the political investment of civil society, overcoming the state-civil society dualism to realize a genuine public life. The book establishes the distinction between a state socialism and an associational socialism, showing how the historical relocation of socialism from the social to the (abstracted) political came as a result of the failure to overcome the dualisms constituting the bourgeois order. This switch from an integral social conception (overcoming the separation of the social and the political) to the untransformed and abstracted political realm served to distort the character of socialism and turned it into a moral and rational regulation of capital’s fundamental amoral and anarchic system of production, instead of being the genuinely social control of that systemic subjectless irresponsibility. The point of socialism is not to regulate power or bring democratic pressure to bear upon the decisions of the powerful, but to restitute that power to the self-organizing social body, turning decisions made in light of systemic imperatives into the conscious choices of a citizen body determining the collective terms of its existence. I therefore revalue the principle of self-assumed obligation to establish the possibilities for the democratic constitution of authority, exploring the fertile links between Marx’s emancipatory commitment and anarchism. I proceed to distinguish ‘socialism from below’ from the ‘socialism from above’ tradition that has been the dominant tradition, opposing proletarian self-organization and autonomous working class 'self' activity to bourgeois forms, defining an associative system of council democracy as a social self-government. The view presented here expresses a council republicanism.
Contents
1 MARX'S EMANCIPATORY POLITICS
The State as Political Alienation; The Critique of Representation; The State as Alienated Social Power; The Critique of Hegel; The Social Reabsorption of State Power; Political and Human Emancipation; The Case for Representative Government; The State and Politics; The State-Civil Society Relation; Marx's Roots in Classical Political Philosophy; Democratization and the Realization of the Political.
2 THE RESTITUTION OF SOCIAL POWER
The System of Councils; Proletarian Self-Emancipation; Marxism as Bourgeois Ideology; 'New Class' Colonization of Socialism; The Party and Abstract Representation; The Centrality of Proletarian Autonomy.
3 CLASS AGENCY - CLASS ‘IN' AND 'FOR' ITSELF
Revolution as Process; Marx's 'Anti-Politics'
4 THE FUTURE FOR SOCIALISM
Socialization vs. Nationalization
5 NEO-BERNSTEINISM - LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT
Neo-Bernsteinism
6 LIBERALISM, SOCIALISM, AND DEMOCRACY
John Keane; Norberto Bobbio on Socialism and Democracy
7 DOUBLE DEMOCRATISATION – LIBERAL INSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION
Questioning the Necessity of a Political-Legal Order
8 THE DIALECTIC OF LIFE
ASSOCIATIONAL SOCIALISM
9 SOCIALISM - GOVERNMENTAL AND ASSOCIATIONAL
The Relocation of Socialism from the Social to the Political; The Links between Anarchism and Marxism; Means and Ends; Self-Assumed Obligation: The Principle of Rational Freedom; The Division between Anarchism and Marxism; William Morris; 10 ANARCHISM
Socialist Anarchism
11 THE LOST TRADITION OF MARXISM AND ANARCHISM
The Third Stream of Socialist Thought; Marxism’s Subterranean Tradition; Anarchism; Passive Radicalism; Kropotkin's Relevance to Marxism; The Scientific Marxist Tradition - Luxemburg and Lenin; Council Communism – Pannekoek; Anarchism as Socialism.
12 JACOBINISM - THE TWO FRENCH REVOLUTIONS
The Origins of Marx's Alleged Totalitarianism; The Two Wings of Revolutionary Politics; Marx and Self-Emancipation; Jacobinism and Atomistic Bourgeois Society; Leninism and Jacobinism; The Anti-Totalitarian Resolution of the State-Civil Society Dualism; Centralisation and Decentralisation; Centralist Economic Means and the Decentralist Political End; Lenin's Centralisation.
13 BUILDING THE SOCIAL REPUBLIC
Anarchism and Decentralism; Prefiguration - Building the Social Republic; Marx's Anarchism; Libertarian Communism.
14 POLITICAL PARTY/STATE SOCIALISM
The Reversion to Petty Bourgeois Politics; The Political Expropriation of Working Class Socialism; The Two Socialisms; Organisational Forms - Revolution as Process; Proletarian Self-Organisation; The Fetishisation of Form – Incorporation; The Distinction between Proletarian and Bourgeois Forms; Autonomous Working Class 'Self' Activity; Revolution as Process; Marx's New Politics; Workers Self-Organisation.
15 THE PARTY - BUREAUCRATIC VERSUS SELF-CENTRALISM
The Conflict between Ascending and Descending Conceptions of Socialism - Socialism from Above and Below; The Two Socialisms; The Marxist Conception - Active Citizenship; Centralism - Self Versus Bureaucratic; The Dualism of the Political and the Social; The Bureaucratization of Socialism; The Syndicalist Criticism; Assimilation to Bourgeois Modes.
16 PROLETARIAN AUTONOMY
Class Struggle, Politics and Representation; Proletarian Autonomy and Libertarian Principles; Party / State- Socialism; 'The Party’ and the Abolition of Bourgeois Dualism; Class Constitution versus Party Building; The Politicization of the Socialist Movement; Bolshevism - The Critique of Vanguardism; The Collapse of State Socialism.
17 THE NEGATIVE AND CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF POLITICAL ACTION
Bolshevism; 'The Party’ and Self-Mediation; Representation and Leadership.
18 THE MEDIATION OF THEORY AND POLITICS
Appearance and Reality; The Political Implications; The Party as Mediation; Internal and External Mediation; Conclusion: On the Workers’ Revolution; The Dialectical Synthesis of Organization and Action.
19 BOURGEOIS/PARLIAMENTARY SOCIALISM
Passive Radicalism; Marx and Social Democracy; Workers Associations versus the Organic Labour State; The Free Association of the Producers; The System of Council Democracy - Marx's Commune State; Councils as Public-Private Organs of Social Self-Government; The Marxist Goal; The New 'Public'; Proletarian Self-Development and Socialism; The Proletarian Transformation of Politics; The Organizational Principle.
RATIONALISTS AND EMPIRICISTS (2011)
Abstract
ABSTRACT There is harmony at the heart of the cosmos, an order beyond the senses which is accessible by symbols. Philosophy, science, religion, music and the arts are not mutually exclusive. They approach the same reality beyond the senses from different angles to give a more rounded and more fully human appreciation of the world and our place within it. The pivotal figure here is Pythagoras, mathematician, philosopher, vegetarian leader of cults and the source of the quote the ‘music of the spheres’. Philosophy, science, religion and the arts explore the single reality, the One, addressing the mystery of the world's existence and our existence as human beings. Since they all use different methods and follow different paths to try to achieve a deeper understanding of existence, each may appeal to different temperaments. What they share in common is the goal of exploring human knowledge and experience, attempting to bring what is hidden to light in a publicly articulate form. Philosophy, science, religion and the arts can enrich one another, and a fully rounded human being will find himself becoming naturally interested in all three. The problems that arise will stem from the encroachment of one into the sphere of the others. Pythagoras taught the means to attain freedom through rational conduct and the philosophic life. Pythagoras is the origin of the Platonic trinity of the true, the good and the beautiful. His metaphysics enables the Intellect to apprehend and to know the ultimate TRUTH. His moral precepts ensure the conformity of human conduct with the perfect GOODNESS. His aesthetics cultivate the adoration of the supreme BEAUTY, inspiring the Muses and the Arts. Mathematics, music, art and architecture – the highest human achievements - all adhere to the cosmic principle of harmony – the music of the spheres. The failure to respect harmonic laws generates ugliness and disorder, which is to sin against the Muses. Respect for harmonic laws presupposes a state of soul open to Intelligible Beauty and gives human beings access the divinely beautiful order of the cosmos. The beauty in the eye of the beholder is the divinely beautiful order of the cosmos which human beings are capable of seeing if their souls have been opened by mathematics, music, philosophy, art and architecture.
Abstract
Plato defined the key concepts of ‘rational freedom’ and sought to show how these could be embodied in the polity. The most important question discussed by Plato - and Aristotle following him - concerns the nature of the relation of the individual to the political community. Plato defines justice as the social virtue par excellence. The human being as a social animal is not an isolated, autonomous entity but a part of society, living in a social context. It follows that the flourishing of the individual required a social context that is devoted to realising the good life. Individuals as social beings realise their essential human potentialities in and through the political community, in relation to rather than as against each other. Plato's principal concern was to discover the norms and rules that govern the life of the political community as the good life enabling the flourishing of the human individual.
Plato is the fountainhead of the ‘rational’ tradition. Today he is more denigrated than read, his trinity of the true, the good and the beautiful being held to somehow contain a repressive and totalitarian intent inimical to human freedom whereas, in fact, the concern was to canalise human growth to its true potential. In a modern world characterised by the cacophony of pluralist voices and identities, an irreducible subjectivity, Plato is a timely figure. For Plato was concerned with the problem of developing the overarching moral framework of the common good in a fractious or pluralist society. The remedy for political ills was found in philosophy: ‘I was forced .. to the belief that the only hope of finding justice for society or for the individual lay in true philosophy and that mankind will have no respite from trouble until either real philosophers gain political power or politicians become by some miracle true philosophers’ (Plato The Seventh Letter 1987:xvi). Good government is to be realised through the integration of politics and philosophy. Reason was to rule over ‘the passions’, over the empirical world of desire, appetite and ambition. This is the central theme of rational freedom in affirming the unity of the freedom of each and all. Human beings can only fully realise their human purposes when nous reigns over doxa, reason over opinion. And this can only be achieved in unison, individuals working together with each other rather than apart against each other.
Abstract
Plato and Aristotle defined the concept and established the philosophical foundations of what may be called ‘rational freedom’. Plato and Aristotle defined the key themes of ‘rational freedom’ and sought to show how these could be embodied in the polity. The most important question discussed by Plato and Aristotle concerns the nature of the relation of the individual to the political community. The human being as a zoon politikon or social animal is not an isolated, autonomous entity but a part of society, living in a social context. It follows that the flourishing of the individual required a social context that is devoted to realising the good life. Individuals as social beings realise their essential human potentialities in and through the political community, in relation to rather than as against each other. The principal concern of Plato and Aristotle was to discover the norms and rules that govern the life of the political community as the good life enabling the flourishing of the human individual.
Abstract
This paper includes a discussion of form and substance, knowledge, particulars and universals, teleology, reason, metaphysics, politics, naturalism, happiness, virtue ethics, the golden mean and why we need Aristotle in today's disenchanted world.
Aristotle and the Public Good (1995)
Abstract
This paper argues that questions of balance with respect to public and private life benefit from a thorough grounding in Aristotle’s philosophy of the public life. For Aristotle, the potentially ruinous dissension of private interest points to the need for a public life concerned with the common good of the whole. The free and full realisation of the human capacities of the individual is not possible in the private realm and instead requires a public life. Aristotle defined the human being as a zoon politikon, a social animal, requiring a politikon bion or public life so that each individual realises his or her existence to its full meaning by fully functioning within the public community. This community is the essential foundation for human flourishing. Without this public life, the individual remains confined to a level of immediacy and immaturity pursuing wants and desires in a purely private existence.
Machiavelli and the Citizen Ideal (2004)
Abstract
This paper argues that Machiavelli’s political theory involves a reformulation of the concept of citizenship in relation to liberty and popular/republican government, becoming a powerful influence on future political developments in the process. Machiavelli's achievement is to have taken the distinct concepts of liberty, citizenship, and republicanism as they had been developed autonomously of each other in previous generations, and to have shown that the realisation of the one is possible only by being linked to the realisation of the others. With Machiavelli, citizenship, liberty and republicanism form a body of interconnected principles implying popular government. The interesting thing about Machiavelli is that, although he explicitly rules out a philosophical anthropology, so that his politics is shorn of an ethical framework, there is an implicit anthropology in his constant reference to power, not just institutional power, the power of things, but the power that all human beings have as citizens. That Machiavelli considers the realisation and exercise of power on the part of human beings a good thing is evident. The controversial point is that Machiavelli considers this to be a good thing in itself and not something that stands in need of an extra ethical overlaying to direct the exertion of human power to the right ends. The paper seeks to answer the question as to whether Machiavelli consider that human nature, allowed to flourish by the right institutional and social conditions, is naturally predisposed to the good?
Notes on Montesquieu (2019)
Abstract
In order to get to the essence of a philosopher, I always think of Iris Murdoch's question in The Sovereignty of the Good (1985) as to what said philosopher is afraid of. Montesquieu's fear is stiff, inflexible, and repressive government rationalizing its misrule by way of false fixities. That and tyrannical government that contravenes true freedom, true authority and authenticity. Montesquieu offers an alternative.
Rousseau on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind (2003)
Abstract
The argument of the first Discours is governed by the antithesis between the ‘original’ nature of man on the one hand and the corruption of modern civilisation on the other; this antithesis is developed in terms of a contrast between the freedom implied by true being and the enslavement and estrangement which is the human condition in the modern world. Rousseau is concerned not so much with historical details as with the moral theme which allows him to separate the original elements of man’s being from the artificial elements added by the process of civilisation. By ‘original’ Rousseau means ‘what belongs incontestably to man’. Rousseau is therefore concerned to distinguish the essential and authentic as given by true original being from the accidental and artificial elements added by civilisation.
The Rational Freedom of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2001)
Abstract
This paper considers Rousseau’s importance as a prophet of popular sovereignty and of the democratic state. In examining these claims, this paper makes an important distinction between the negative and positive conceptions of freedom. The paper proceeds to show how, in Rousseau’s construction, government becomes an agent of individual freedom so that individuals are perfectly free in a democracy worthy of the name - that is, which embodies and expresses sovereign power actively and directly.
Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (2003)
Abstract
The argument of the first Discours is governed by the antithesis between the ‘original’ nature of man on the one hand and the corruption of modern civilisation on the other; this antithesis is developed in terms of a contrast between the freedom implied by true being and the enslavement and estrangement which is the human condition in the modern world. Rousseau is concerned not so much with historical details as with the moral theme which allows him to separate the original elements of man’s being from the artificial elements added by the process of civilisation. By ‘original’ Rousseau means ‘what belongs incontestably to man’. Rousseau is therefore concerned to distinguish the essential and authentic as given by true original being from the accidental and artificial elements added by civilisation.
Rousseau : Autonomy and Authority (2003)
Abstract
Rousseau’s attempt to combine authority and autonomy has led to him being described as both the theorist of the totalitarian state and as the exponent of the anarchist society. The complexities of Rousseau’s conception of self-legislation and self-government suggest both but, on closer analysis, involve neither. Rousseau is shown to develop an actively democratic principle of authority based on the principle of self-assumed obligation. This allows Rousseau to incorporate certain anarchist themes into a conception of government as the realisation of human freedom - the concern that freedom requires a more natural form of living, a simplicity of life and politics that suggests the small scale communities; so too does the justification of the small property of independent producers.
Rousseau and the Quest for Human Happiness (2003)
Abstract
In his final work, Rousseau claimed that his ideas formed ‘a body of doctrine so solid, so well connected and formed with so much meditation and care’ that it was more plausible than any other system. The unifying principle behind his thought was identified with the development of ‘a doctrine which ... was aimed only at the happiness of the human race’. This work argues that the thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau forms a unity in all essentials; it exhibits a unity of purpose and is organised around a theme that remained consistent throughout Rousseau’s life. Rousseau the writer is characterised by a singular and naked honesty and a unity of purpose. What makes Rousseau’s philosophy so vibrant and meaningful is its grounding in the most profound questions of being. Rousseau valued rational understanding as much as any philosopher. He also felt that this reason was thin and misleading if it is concerned with pure intellect detached from human being. Hence Rousseau’s view that true philosophy rests upon an inner determination which makes it clear that the philosopher loves the truth rather than merely wants to identify it. Philosophy needed to rest on something more profound in the human ontology. For Rousseau, the philosophical enterprise is inextricably connected with a consideration of being as a whole. Limited to intellectual activity alone, philosophy is not a genuine search for truth and is certain to leave the most important questions unanswered to the extent that it fails to engage with humanity’s whole existence. Philosophers need to penetrate beyond the intellect to identify the principles which were ‘engraved in the human heart in indelible characters’ and so find truth in the comprehension of the depths of being. This exploration of the inner landscape is genuine philosophy. In coming to understand essential being, the philosopher would come to comprehend the fundamental features of human society, thus reaching the level of universal principle. The moral ought-to-be of philosophy is thus grounded in something real, human nature and its potentialities, not something impossibly ideal, some abstract standard. Rousseau purported to give human beings a vision of the ideal human society that they would all, by nature, create and flourish in if they were to become truly human beings.
The Socratism of Immanuel Kant (2012) 9,907
Abstract
In this paper, I shall investigate the character and purpose of the work of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, in light of ancient philosophy. I shall argue that Kant is the most important and influential philosopher of the modern age, not by breaking with antiquity but by redeeming the philosophic promise of the ancient Greek world. Not only does Kant redeem the highest philosophical ideals of antiquity, he does so not by any simple restatement or return but by establishing their rational and moral conditions in the modern age, thereby putting philosophy on entirely new foundations. First published praxisphilosophie.de
Kant and Virtue (2012)
Abstract
This paper argues the case for the centrality of virtue in Kant’s ethics. It argues that Kant has plenty to contribute to the normative turn away from utilitarian and deontological ethics, with increasing emphasis coming to be placed upon agents and the sorts of lives they lead rather than upon atomic acts and the rules for making choices, even less upon the consequences of such acts It argues that although Kant has been understood as a deontologist pure and simple, Kant sought not to turn away from virtue, but to place virtue ethics on a more secure foundation. In recovering Kant’s conception of virtue, this paper argues that Kant sought to build an ethical theory based not just on rules but upon agents and the kinds of lives they lead. The paper argues that Kant’s great achievement is to have created a moral theory which, in paying close attention to both the life plans of moral agents and to their discrete acts, combined rule ethics and virtue ethics. First published praxisphilosophie.de
Kant and the Architectonics of Reason (2007)
Abstract
The architectonic was Kant's favourite expression and indicated the concern to grasp the idea of the whole correctly and thereby view all parts in their mutual relations. This paper develops Kant's architectonics of reason in terms of the normative conception of the good political order. Kant is shown to be scathing of the familiar sophistry in politics that might rules over right. Kant's normative position entails the repudiation of dehumanising, alienating, and oppressive social forms. His notion of human beings as ends in themselves comes with a notion of essential humanity or dignity as its logical corollary. Kant’s idea that all individuals as rational agents are equally worthy of respect generates a politics of equal dignity. Kant picks out here a universal human potential, a capacity shared by all human beings, which means that each individual deserves respect. The progress made to the free and rational society is based upon a conception of human growth and development. Kant is therefore shown to affirm the capacity for human potentialities to flourish. Ultimately, once reason is in control, the need for an institutional and legal framework constraining individuals to the good will be diminished, replaced by a conscious and immediate identification of the individual with the good. The question is whether Kant can make good his moral cl aims in terms of practical politics.
Kant : Reason as the Realisation of Nature (2001)
Abstract
This paper relates reason to the operation of an unconscious natural teleology. Human beings, as children of Nature, are born with the natural instinct for selfishness, and this leads them into the state of war. However, this war drives human beings to develop the intelligence that Nature has also endowed them with. Eventually, human beings become sufficiently intelligent to leave the state of war by building a civil society to enable the orderly exercise of their freedom, thus creating the foundation for the flowering of culture. However, a civil peace and freedom that is established within the confines of a single state is vulnerable to the predation of competing states in a condition of international war. Therefore, according to natural teleology, humankind will extend the peaceful union of warring individuals in the social sphere to a peaceful union of warring states in the international sphere. This development is initiated by Nature and Nature’s endowment. This paper argues that, for Kant, human history is the work of Nature. Humankind is a product of nature, and is endowed with the power to realize the highest good. Nature’s two-way mediation between phenomena and noumema proceeds thus: Nature creates living beings in the phenomenal world by bringing down the supersensible Ideas, and one species amongst those living beings have the intelligence to apprehend the noumenal world. The moral and aesthetic life of human beings is a link in the creative cycle of natural teleology which Kant calls the Providence of Mother Nature in his Idea of a Universal History.
Hegel and the Embodiment of Freedom (2001)
Abstract
The conception of Hegel in this paper builds upon the themes of participation, reciprocity and community. The attempt is made to extract the potentials for participatory public life contained in Hegel’s system of differentiated representation.
William Godwin and Political Simplicity (2004)
Abstract
From an English libertarian direction, William Godwin presents his own peculiar version of rational freedom, making some of the largest claims for the reason common to the nature of all human beings, emphasising the reciprocity of the freedom of each and all. Godwin affirms political simplicity through the moral equality of humankind.
The Stationary State of John Stuart Mill (2004)
Abstract
John Stuart Mill represented the high water mark of classical political economy, applying the insights of Smith and Ricardo in the 19th century. A free trade liberal who extolled the virtues of market economics, Mill was also extremely critical of the social and economic features of Victorian capitalism. This paper argues for the relevance of Mill's legacy with respect to the contemporary urban ills of overscale, excess and endless growth. Mill’s argument presupposed the productive achievements of capitalism. To Mill, the economic problem had been solved; the key question in the advanced capitalist economies was no longer production but distribution. Mill therefore sought to place the emphasis upon the end of the capitalist economy rather than the means. In the process, he rediscovered the Greek principle of limitation to define a stationary state in which human growth replaces material growth. The emphasis is placed upon exploiting the margins for freedom that capitalism has achieved for human self-realisation away from the world of necessity. This paper shows how Mill’s stationary state defines a sense the scale, proportion and balance most needed in the modern world.
Martin Heidegger : Ontology and Ecology (2004)
Abstract
This paper postively evaluates the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) as ‘the metaphysician of ecologism’, showing how his philosophy is full of profound wisdom and insight concerning the place of human beings on earth. The paper establishes Heidegger as first and foremost a philosopher of ontology, of the nature of being. Heidegger is concerned to discover precisely when and how human beings lost touch with being. Heidegger reveals that the loss of being in the modern world has its origins not in the capitalist-industrialist process of modernisation and rationalisation but in the way that Western civilisation has conceived reason since ancient times. Praising the pre-Socratics, Heidegger makes the challenging criticism that the Western philosophy has been on the wrong path since Plato. The concern with human ontology is shown to be a concern with environing ecology.
The Rational Community of Jurgen Habermas (2004)
Abstract
This paper appraises Jurgen Habermas’ attempt to reclaim the emancipatory terms of "rational freedom’ on the modern terrain, paying particular attention to possibilities for a democratic public sphere generated out of the lifeworld. Habermas is firmly part of the tradition of 'rational freedom'. Looking to realise the freedom of each and all within community, Habermas is concerned to reject the postructuralist accusation that 'rational’ unity necessarily entails the totalitarian suppression of difference and autonomy (Lyotard). Arguing that the social and philosophical grounds of both individualist liberalism and orthodox marxism have dissolved, Habermas argues that a critical theory of modernity is more adequately grounded in the 'suppressed traces of Reason'.
Jurgen Habermas and the Rational Utopia (2001)
Abstract
This paper appraises Jurgen Habermas’ attempt to reclaim the emancipatory philosophical connection between reason and freedom on the modern terrain, paying particular attention to possibilities for a democratic public sphere generated out of Habermas' lifeworld in contradistinction to the system world of money and power. Habermas is firmly part of the tradition of 'rational freedom'. Looking to realise the freedom of each and all within community, Habermas is concerned to reject the postructuralist and postmodern accusation that 'rational’ unity necessarily entails the totalitarian suppression of difference and autonomy. Arguing that the social and philosophical grounds of both individualist liberalism and orthodox marxism have dissolved, Habermas is shown to argue that a critical theory of modernity is more adequately grounded in the suppressed traces of Reason as embodied in communicative structures. Habermas' 'rational' ideal is shown to adumbrate and justify a post-capitalist 'good' society characterised by the greatest possible happiness, peace, and community.
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