Online research in philosophy

Thorstein Veblen is perhaps best thought of as America’s answer to Karl Marx. This is sometimes obscured by the rather unfortunate title of his most important work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), which misleading, insofar as it suggests that the book is just a theory of the “leisure class.” What the book provides is in fact a perfectly general theory of class, not to mention property, economic development, and social evolution. It is, in other words, a (...) system of theory that rivals Marx’s historical materialism with respect to scope, generality and explanatory power. Furthermore, it is a system of theory whose central predictions, with respect to the development of capitalism and the possibilities for emancipatory social change, have proven to be essentially correct. When stacked up against Marx’s prognostications, this success clearly provides the basis for what might best be described as an invidious comparison. (shrink)

Depoliticization: The Political Imaginary of Global Capitalism follows in the path blazed by Hannah Arendt and Cornelius Castoriadis, where politics is seen as a mode of freedom; the possibility for individuals to consciously and explicitly create the institutions of their own societies. Starting with such problem as: What is capital? How can we characterize the dominant economic system? What are the conditions for its existence, and how can we create alternatives?, the articles examine the central institutions of modern Western societies, (...) market capitalism, representative liberal democracy, and science. To elucidate the problem of depoliticization, the authors engage a number of thinkers from Karl Marx, Max Weber, Thorstein Veblen to Cornelius Castoriadis, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, and Stanley Kubrick. -/- . (shrink)

The term neoclassical economics delineates a distinct and relatively homogenous school of thought in economic theory that became prominent in the late nineteenth century and that now dominates mainstream economics. The term was originally introduced by Thorstein Veblen to describe developments in the discipline (of which Veblen did not entirely approve) associated with the work of such figures as William Jevons, Carl Menger, and Leon Walras. The ambition of these figures, the first neoclassicists, was to formalize and (...) mathematize the subject in the aftermath of the so-called marginalist revolution. Economics is, according to one definition, the science that studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means that have alternative uses. Neoclassical economics pursues this study by means of supply and demand models that determine prices based on the subjective preferences of producers and consumers. Neoclassical economics relies on subjective preferences for determining prices in order to escape from the so-called objective value theory of classical economics, according to which the value of goods could be established by reference to some basic commodity (usually corn) or the labor input required to produce a good. Neoclassicists hoped that by jettisoning objective value, economics could be placed on a more scientific basis as an essentially descriptive and predictive theory of human behavior. Political theory, by contrast, involves both positive and normative elements. It is a positive science to the extent to which it aims to describe and predict political behavior. It is a normative science to the extent to which it prescribes how agents should behave in the political arena and what the best political institutions are. Neoclassical economics is relevant to both of these elements. (shrink)

Conspicuous consumption was first identified and discussed by Thorstein Veblen in his classic text on The Theory of the Leisure Class published in 1899. Since that time, business organisations have encouraged and exploited the demand for status goods and today the supply of products which serve as social symbols is highly organised and profitable. This paper looks at the ways in which manufacturers, advertisers and retailers have combined to promote status-seeking as an acceptable form of consumer behaviour and (...) at how the market for status goods has been expanded by corporate strategies geared to securing rapid rates of social obsolescence in the conspicuous goods and services on offer. The ethical arguments for and against such business activity are then examined in detail. (shrink)

Dennis Ott: In a recent interview you quoted Thorstein Veblen, who contrasted “substantial people†and “underlying population.â€[1] At a shareholder’s meeting of Allianz AG, major shareholder Hans-Martin Buhlmannn expressed the view that there is only one limit to the increase of the dividend: “The inferiors must not be bled so much that they can no longer consume. They must survive as consumers.â€[2] Is this the guiding principle of our economic system? And if so, is there any substance to (...) the notion of a “social market economyâ€? (shrink)

From Bauhaus to Dada, from Virginia Woolf to John Dos Passos, the Modernist movement revolutionized the way we perceive, portray, and participate in the world. This landmark anthology is a comprehensive documentary resource for the study of Modernism, bringing together more than 150 key essays, articles, manifestos, and other writings of the political and aesthetic avant-garde between 1840 and 1950. By favoring short extracts over lengthier originals, the editors cover a remarkable range and variety of modernist thinking. Included are not (...) just the familiar high modernist landmarks such as Gustave Flaubert, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce, but also a diverse representation from the sciences, politics, philosophy, and the arts, including Charles Darwin, Thorstein Veblen, W. E. B. Du Bois, Isadora Duncan, John Reed, Adolf Hitler, and Sergei Eisenstein. Another welcome feature is a substantial selection of hard-to-find manifestos from the many modernist movements, among them futurism, cubism, Dada, surrealism, and anarchism. (shrink)

Veblen's concept of conspicuous consumption, although widely known and commonly invoked, has rarely been examined critically; the associated "theory" has never been tested. It is suggested that the reason for this lies in the difficulty of determining the criterion that defines the phenomenon, a difficulty that derives from Veblen's failure to integrate two contrasting conceptual formulations. These are, first, an interpretive or subjective version that conceives of conspicuous consumption as action marked by the presence of certain intentions, purposes, (...) or motives, and second, a functionalist formulation in which conspicuous consumption is viewed as a form of behavior characterized by particular end results or outcomes. Consideration of each of these strands reveals major difficulties that prevent the construction of an operational definition of conspicuous consumption and hence the extraction of a workable theory from Veblen's discussion. (shrink)

We consider Borel sets of finite rank $A \subseteq\Lambda^\omega$ where cardinality of Λ is less than some uncountable regular cardinal K. We obtain a "normal form" of A, by finding a Borel set Ω, such that A and Ω continuously reduce to each other. In more technical terms: we define simple Borel operations which are homomorphic to ordinal sum, to multiplication by a countable ordinal, and to ordinal exponentiation of base K, under the map which sends every Borel set A (...) of finite rank to its Wadge degree. (shrink)

This is an examination of the significance of Gandhi's social philosophy for development. It is argued that, when seen in light of Gandhi's social philosophy, the concepts of appropriate technology (A.T.) and basic needs take on new meaning. The Gandhian approach can be identified with theoriginal "basic needs" strategy for international development (Emmerij, 1981). Gandhi's approach helps to provide greater equity, or "distributive justice," by promoting technology that is appropriate to "basic needs" (food, clothing, shelter, health and basic education). (...) Gandhi's social philosophy (Erikson, 1968; Roy, 1985) has been neglected by most development specialists, with only a few exceptions (e.g., Chambers, 1983; Charles, 1983). This analysis attempts to draw out some aspects of M.K. Gandhi's background and his thinking aboutswadeshi (i.e. local self-reliance and use of local knowledge and abilities) andswaraj (i.e. independent development that leads to equity and justice). Gandhi's ideas, which emerged out of an "Indic" meta-cultural background, are based on an emphasis on equity. Gandhi's syncretic Indic background includes a belief in what Bateson (1972), writing about Bali, Indonesia, has called the "steady state." Development activities should be carried out in a phased manner that does not disturb the beneficial aspects of dynamic equilibrium, but that does promote "positive development." A.T. is particularly useful within the context of a basic needs approach to international development because use of A.T. is probably more likely to lead to equitable growth. The "economic growth" strategy, utilizing "advanced technology" (or even "high tech") exclusively, has caused unemployment and has not led to effective "trickle down," much less "high mass consumption." In many developing countries the poorest 20% of the population are worse off in 1990 than they were in 1980. By making use of the "advantage of backwardness" (Veblen, 1966) and viewing development in terms of long-term impacts, a basic needs approach using A.T. is more likely to lead to a positive impact on third world food systems than a pure "economic growth" strategy. (shrink)

Articles by two American mathematicians, E. V. Huntington and Oswald Veblen, are discussed as examples of a movement in foundational research in the period 1900-1930 called American postulate theory. This movement also included E. H. Moore, R. L. Moore, C. H. Langford, H. M. Sheffer, C. J. Keyser, and others. The articles discussed exemplify American postulate theorists' standards for axiomatizations of mathematical theories, and their investigations of such axiomatizations with respect to metatheoretic properties such as independence, completeness, and consistency.

In this article we provide wellordering proofs for metapredicative systems of explicit mathematics and admissible set theory featuring suitable axioms about the Mahloness of the underlying universe of discourse. In particular, it is shown that in the corresponding theories EMA of explicit mathematics and KPm 0 of admissible set theory, transfinite induction along initial segments of the ordinal φω00, for φ being a ternary Veblen function, is derivable. This reveals that the upper bounds given for these two systems in (...) the paper Jager and Strahm [11] are indeed sharp. (shrink)

If sociology is about society must it not also be about morality? In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the identification between sociology and morality was clear cut; Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Spencer, and Veblen all dealt with moral issues and one might argue that they saw themselves as engaged in a moral vocation. Now, one might argue that the connections between sociology and moral currents have become more tenuous. Moral Culture examines what it means to be moral in contemporary (...) social and cultural life. Author Keith Tester takes the highly original and revealing step of exploring how violence today, and throughout history, affects the relatively safe and secure people who live in the west and who tend to know horror only through television and cinema screens. The book raises questions about the meaning and significance of massacres in the Balkans, Rwanda and, rather more historically, the Holocaust, and the slaughter of Vietnamese peasants by American soldiers in My Lai. It also discusses how Adolf Eichmann and the men of Charlie Company might be different from or similar to us. It answers questions about whether this is a time of moral decay or more seriously, the collapse of moral Civilization. Sociologists often claim that they make a virtue of being relevant and objective, but few have attacked these issues with the urgency and originality that Keith Tester displays in this work. Each chapter provides a historically aware account of a moral problem making it especially relevant reading for students of cultural studies, sociology, political science, and moral philosophy. (shrink)