The collapse of the Soviet Empire led many to think that communism and perhaps socialism were no longer relevant to the modern world. _Hegel and Marx After the Fall of Communism _presents a balanced discussion for and against the validity of the arguments of two of the most important political philosophers of all time, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. David MacGregor reinterprets Hegel and Marx’s philosophies, setting out key events in their lives against a backdrop of (...) historical global events. In a new afterword, MacGregor brings his study up to date, examining Russia’s revival as a world power under Vladimir Putin as well as China’s ambitious development efforts. (shrink)

In this radically revised intellectual portrait of Hegel and Marx that challenges standard interpretations of their political theory, David MacGregor considers the nature of the state in capitalist society. This is the first book to place Marx's and Hegel's political thought directly into social and historical context. Revealing the revolutionary content of Hegel's social theory and the Hegelian themes that underlie Marx's analysis of the English state in Capital, the author shows how the transformation of the Victorian state (...) in the nineteenth century influenced the mature Marx to reclaim Hegelian arguments he had earlier abandoned. These ideas included a theory of politics and social class that colored Marx's view of capitalist and working-class opposition to government reform initiatives. MacGregor criticizes interpretations of state action that present government solely as a tool of capitalist and patriarchal interests. Noting the essential significance of child labor in the growing industrialization during Hegel's and Marx's time, the author contends that "alienation," as the two philosophers understood the term, assumes a labor force in which many workers are socially powerless children and women. Given these conditions, the centrality of the English Factory Acts to workers' lives becomes obvious, a centrality acknowledged by Marx but forgotten by his followers. The author concludes his discussion with an assessment of current arguments about the state and civil society, relating these debates to Hegel's conception of the rational state. (shrink)

Abstract Chris Sciabarra's discussion of the dialectic and its uses in modern social science is most welcome. However, his account of Hegel, and his, and Ayn Rand's, vision of an ideal society, are groundlessly antistatist.

The title of this article, “The State at Dusk,” was adopted from the famous image of Minerva’s Owl in the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. I chose it to capture the current mood of despair and foreboding about the state, both in its growing failure to protect individuals from the ravages of capital and in its malevolent capacity to destroy all life on earth. The threat of nuclear holocaust and the question of whether the welfare state has a future (...) are now urgent topics of political debate. Notwithstanding a few significant victories, however, the so-called New Right has achieved nothing like total success in its war against public-financed health care, education, and civil liberties, to name only a few of its targets. Moreover, despite the obvious madness of the nuclear arms race and two terms under the most reactionary of all modern U. S. presidents, the planet survives. As darkness gathers around the late twentieth century state, its outline appears much the same as it was at the outset of the conservative attack a decade ago. (shrink)

Tony Smith argues that dialectical social theory - once the dominant mode of discourse among Marxists and other leftists - has practically disappeared in an environment where radical change seems unlikely. The aim of this book is to rescue Marxism from game theory and neo-Kantianism, and revive the Hegelian tradition in radical social theory. The attempt to insert Hegel into leftist discourse seems especially timely given the resurgence of interest in Hegel elsewhere. The question, however, is whether this effort will (...) succeed. Is it too late to reverse Marxism’s retreat from dialectics; and is Smith’s book an instrument for doing so? (shrink)

Chris Sdabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical offers a novel view of the founder of Objectivism. Sciabarra contends that Rand was influenced by Hegelian and Marxist themes that dominated Russian thought during its Silver Age, particularly the doctrine of internal relations. Yet while it is true that key Hegelian and Marxist concepts, such as the dialectics of work and the master‐slave relationship, are features of Rand's radical outlook, Sciabarra fails in his major argument that Rand's dialectical method presents an alternative (...) to that of Marx and Hegel. (shrink)

Now that I have caught my breath after the monster “run away from the absolute idea,” and feeling properly chastened for resorting to 132 footnotes in a single chapter, I want to point out some errors in Raya Dunayevskaya’s review. Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right” is mentioned first on page 7, and is cited throughout The Communist Ideal. Refuting Marx’s criticism of Hegel is a central aim of the book. Dunayevskaya apparently does not agree that the bare structure (...) of Hegel’s dialectic contains the three moments, recognition, method proper, and exposition. She does not state why she disagrees, contending instead that I have drawn this interpretation from more than one Hegelian source. Unhappily, she chooses to keep from her readers what I actually say about Hegel’s logical method, in preference to an ad hominem attack on the political and intellectual credibility of my argument. (shrink)

In his article “The State At Dusk” David MacGregor provides, in this writer’s view, a somewhat odd rendering of the significance of Minerva’s Owl as it relates to Hegel’s view of philosophy, and in particular to his philosophy of civil society. I am especially puzzled by MacGregor’s choosing to see dusk as the hour of prophecy at which Hegel the theorist is taken “to discern in the shape of the present the promise of a different way of (...) life”. Is this what Hegel intends in the preface to the Philosophy of Right where he says “that only in the ripeness of actuality does the ideal appear over against the real, and that only then does this ideal comprehend this same real world in its substance and build it up for itself into the configuration of an intellectual realm”? (shrink)

In his critique of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, David MacGregor argues that my book trivializes dialectical method. He fails to notice the many nondialectical assumptions that pervade contemporary social theory and practice. Dialectics, as a context‐sensitive methodological orientation, can provide tools for a better grasp of systems and processes in the real world—the goal, as I understand it, of the “post‐libertarian” approach Jeffrey Friedman advocates.

The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment gathers together state-of-the-art theoretical reflections and empirical research from leading researchers and practitioners working in this transdisciplinary and transnational academic field. Over the course of the book, these contributors provide critical analyses of the gender dimensions of a wide range of timely and challenging topics, from sustainable development and climate change politics, to queer ecology and interspecies ethics in the so-called Anthropocene. Presenting a comprehensive overview of the development of the field from early (...) political critiques of the male domination of women and nature in the 1980s to the sophisticated intersectional and inclusive analyses of the present, the volume is divided into four parts: Part I: Foundations; Part II: Approaches; Part III: Politics, policy and practice; Part IV: Futures. Comprising chapters written by forty contributors with different perspectives and working in a wide range of research contexts around the world, this Handbook will serve as a vital resource for scholars, students, and practitioners in environmental studies, gender studies, human geography, and the environmental humanities and social sciences more broadly. (shrink)

Brent Kious has recently attacked several arguments generally adduced to support anti-doping in sports, which are widely supported by the sports medicine fraternity, international sports federations, and international governments. We show that his attack does not succeed for a variety of reasons. First, it uses an overly inclusive definition of doping at odds with the WADA definition, which has global, if somewhat contentious, currency. Second, it seriously misconstrues the position it attacks, rendering the attack without force against a more balanced (...) construal of an anti-doping position. Third, it makes unwarranted appeals to matters Kious considers morally ‘clear’, while simultaneously attacking a position many others take to be equally morally ‘clear’, namely that of anti-doping. Such an inconsistency, attacking and appealing to the moral status quo as befits one’s argument, is not acceptable without further qualification. Fourth, his position suffers from a general methodological flaw of over-reliance upon argumentation by analogy. Moreover, it is argued that the analogies, being poorly selected and developed, fail to justify his conclusion that the anti-doping lobby lacks philosophical and moral authority for its stance. These issues are symptomatic of a more fundamental problem: any attempt at providing a blanket solution to the question of whether doping is morally acceptable or not is bound to run up against problems when applied to highly specific contexts. Thus, rather than reaching any particular conclusion for or against doping products or processes in this article, we conclude that an increased context-sensitivity will result in a more evenhanded appraisal of arguments on the matter. (shrink)

David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the "sophistry and illusion"of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash. The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or (...) indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded skepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the "superstition" of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and his edition places it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

A leading political theorist’s groundbreaking defense of ideal conceptions of justice in political philosophy Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question (...) whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? Utopophobia argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. David Estlund does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does he assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. Estlund engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, he counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, Utopophobia stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy. (shrink)

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical (...) philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the "animal question" -- consideration of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this book, David Gunkel takes up the "machine question": whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral consideration. The machine question poses a (...) fundamental challenge to moral thinking, questioning the traditional philosophical conceptualization of technology as a tool or instrument to be used by human agents. Gunkel begins by addressing the question of machine moral agency: whether a machine might be considered a legitimate moral agent that could be held responsible for decisions and actions. He then approaches the machine question from the other side, considering whether a machine might be a moral patient due legitimate moral consideration. Finally, Gunkel considers some recent innovations in moral philosophy and critical theory that complicate the machine question, deconstructing the binary agent--patient opposition itself. Technological advances may prompt us to wonder if the science fiction of computers and robots whose actions affect their human companions could become science fact. Gunkel's argument promises to influence future considerations of ethics, ourselves, and the other entities who inhabit this world. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

By means of an example, shows the possibility of beliefs that are separately rational whilst together inconsistent.

Over the past decade, a number of accounting and financial reporting frauds have led to lost stock wealth, destroyed public trust, and a worldwide recession that called for necessary reform. Regulatory responses and systemic reforms quickly followed, and we show that, while necessary, these reforms are insufficient. The purpose of this paper is to forward virtuous professionalism as a necessary path toward restoring financial reporting systems. We take the position of external observer and analyze the accounting profession over time to (...) assess what has transpired within our financial reporting systems. Our analysis reveals that the combined influence of commercialism and regulatory response has led to a systemic decline in accounting’s professional ideals and, as a result, an erosion of public trust. We then propose virtuous professionalism as a necessary process for restoring financial reporting systems based on sociological, professional, and philosophical theories. We argue that virtuous professionalism is necessary for restoring the public servant identity of the accounting professional. We conclude that efforts to restore financial reporting systems should begin with reforms that restore professional identity shaped by virtues. (shrink)

How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.