A new axiom is proposed, the Ground Axiom, asserting that the universe is not a nontrivial set forcing extension of any inner model. The Ground Axiom is first-order expressible, and any model of ZFC has a class forcing extension which satisfies it. The Ground Axiom is independent of many well-known set-theoretic assertions including the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, the assertion V=HOD that every set is ordinal definable, and the existence of measurable and supercompact cardinals. The related Bedrock Axiom, asserting that the (...) universe is a set forcing extension of a model satisfying the Ground Axiom, is also first-order expressible, and its negation is consistent. (shrink)

This paper by Axel Honeth, translated by Charles Reitz, presents the distinctive qualities of Herbert Marcuse’s approach to critical theorizing. Marcuse’s early life in the German capital city of Berlin had lasting and contrasting impacts upon his political perspective and social activism when compared to the more provincial Frankfurt experiences of Horkheimer and Adorno. Marcuse was also more upbeat, resistant to defeatism, and conventionally thorough—in other words, less fragmentary or experimental—in his academic writing. I also offer a detailed description (...) of the deep intellectual affinities linking the work of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse into a distinguished “school” of critical social thought. (shrink)

We examine the reverse mathematical strength of a variation of Hindman’s Theorem (HT) constructed by essentially combining HT with the Thin Set Theorem to obtain a principle that we call thin-HT. This principle states that every coloring c:N→N has an infinite set S⊆N whose finite sums are thin for c, meaning that there is an i with c(s)≠i for all nonempty sums s of finitely many distinct elements of S. We show that there is a computable instance of thin-HT such (...) that every solution computes ∅′, as is the case with HT, as shown by Blass, Hirst, and Simpson (1987). In analyzing this proof, we deduce that thin-HT implies ACA0 over RCA0+IΣ20. On the other hand, using Rumyantsev and Shen’s computable version of the Lovász Local Lemma, we show that there is a computable instance of the restriction of thin-HT to sums of exactly 2 elements such that any solution has diagonally noncomputable degree relative to ∅′. Hence there is a computable instance of this restriction of thin-HT with no Σ20 solution. (shrink)

A timely addition to Henry Giroux's Critical Interventions series, Ecology and Revolution is grounded in the Frankfurt School critical theory of Herbert Marcuse. Its task is to understand the economic architecture of wealth extraction that undergirds today's intensifying inequalities of class, race, and gender, within a revolutionary ecological frame. Relying on newly discovered texts from the Frankfurt Marcuse Archive, this book builds theory and practice for an alternate world system. Ecology and radical political economy, as critical forms of systems analysis, (...) show that an alternative world system is essential - both possible and feasible - despite political forces against it. Our rights to a commonwealth economy, politics, and culture reside in our commonworks as we express ourselves as artisans of the common good. It is in this context, that Charles Reitz develops a GreenCommonWealth Counter-Offensive, a strategy for revolutionary ecological liberation with core features of racial equality, women's equality, liberation of labor, restoration of nature, leisure, abundance, and peace. (shrink)

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)

We present a class forcing notion, uniformly definable for ordinals η, which forces the ground model to be the ηth inner mantle of the extension, in which the sequence of inner mantles has length at least η. This answers a conjecture of Fuchs, Hamkins, and Reitz [1] in the positive. We also show that forces the ground model to be the ηth iterated of the extension, where the sequence of iterated s has length at least η. We conclude by (...) showing that the lengths of the sequences of inner mantles and of iterated s can be separated to be any two ordinals you please. (shrink)

Racial animosities are being mobilized today by right-wing voices in the US media. Resurgent racism requires intelligent analysis and societal intervention. This essay discusses how the classic, five-volume series Studies in Prejudice, undertaken by Max Horkheimer and others in the Frankfurt School, including Herbert Marcuse, furnishes a critical foundation. The mobilization of bias with regard to historical anti-Semitic abuses was seen to depend in definite ways upon an authoritarian type of personality structure. Herbert Marcuse strengthened the analysis by emphasizing that (...) prejudice formation must be understood as well within concrete socioeconomic conflicts and the requirements of repressive political forces. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse’s political-philosophical vision, cultural critique, and social activism continue to offer an intelligent strategic perspective on current concerns – especially issues of ecological destruction, neofascist white supremacy, hate speech, hate crimes, and racist police violence. These can be countered through a recognition of the intersectionality of radical needs of diverse constituencies and radical collaboration, giving rise to system negation as a new general interest, and an ecosocialist strategy of revolutionary activism within a global alliance of transformational forces.

Illustrates how Marcuse's theory sheds new light on current debates in both education and society involving issues of multiculturalism, postmodernism, civic education, the "culture wars," critical thinking, and critical literacy.

Materialism & Dialectics : Marx -- The Dialectic of the Concrete Concept : Manheim -- Liberating "the Critical" in Critical Theory : Marcuse -- The Linguistic Turn's Evasion of Philosophy : Critical Warrants for Radical Praxis and Pedagogy -- Herbert Marcuse and the New Culture Wars -- Education Against Alienation -- The Labor Theory of Ethics and Commonwealth -- Global Capitalism and Radical Opposition : Herbert Marcuse;s 1974 Paris Lectures -- Critical Education and Political Economy -- Decommodification & Liberation : (...) Commonwealth as Aesthetic Form of Alienation-Free Society -- A Commonwealth Counter-Offensive -- Appendix No. 1: Engaging a Radical Past : Socialist Germans in New York City, 1853 -- Appendix No. 2: Engaging a Radical Past : Anti-Racism in Kansas Free State Struggle, 1854-64. (shrink)

In this historical contextualization of Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, I present critical arguments that Marcuse deploys in the US context—especially in light of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. I argue that Marcuse’s critical perspective worked to deprovincialize Anglo-American philosophy and to demythologize the extravagantly glorified and sanitized “American Pageant” view of the world that prevailed in the United States at the time and Marcuse’s critical pedagogy thus led to a revitalization and recovery of philosophy in the United (...) States after World War II. (shrink)

The current practice of late termination of pregnancy in Germany has been criticized by the German Medical Association as well as several sociopolitical groups. The controversy has especially concerned the time limit for the termination of pregnancies and the counseling process prior to that intervention. The criticism, in part, originates from the reform of the German Abortion Law in 1995, and demands for change led to legislative initiatives in 2008.

Diese kurzen Beispiele geben einen Eindruck davon, wie vielfältig die Verfahren sind, mit denen der epitomierende Autor seiner Aufgabe der Verkürzung einer literarischen Vorlage gerecht zu werden sucht. Die Raffungen und Verknappungen finden auf allen Ebenen des Ausdrucks statt, sprachlich, syntaktisch, inhaltlich durch Zusammenfügung von Szenen. Auf der anderen Seite wird große Sorgfalt darauf verwandt, den Leser in diesen Prozess mit einzubeziehen. Dies geschieht auf zunächst scheinbar divergierenden Wegen. Einerseits erhält der Leser implizite und explizite Hinweise auf das verkürzende Vorgehen. (...) Andererseits gibt es auch Passagen, insbesondere die Anfangsverse, in denen dem Leser suggeriert wird, mit einer wörtlichen Wiedergabe des griechischen Originals in lateinischer Sprache konfrontiert zu sein, deren Tempo dann aber bald rapide beschleunigt wird. Die Technik des ‚vertere‘ steht also dem Verkürzen als verwandt, aber doch verschieden, im selben Werk gegenüber. Es lässt sich also an diesem häufig als Schulübung abqualifizierten Stück aus neronischer Zeit Grundsätzliches beobachten, sowohl für die epische Technik und deren Beurteilung durch die antiken poetischen Epitomatoren selbst, als auch für den geistigen Vorgang des Zusammenfassens und Resümierens. Deshalb möchte ich Scaffais Behauptung, die „Ilias Latina“ sei nicht eigentlich eine systematische Epitome, sondern eine freie Überarbeitung des homerischen Gedichts, nicht zustimmen, sondern bin zuversichtlich, dass Wirkungsabsicht und Wirkung einer solchen ‚poetischen Kurzfassung‘ sich gerade am Beispiel dieses Textes einleuchtend demonstrieren lassen. (shrink)

Reflecting on the development of social theory in postwar Germany, Habermas asked, Who better than Germany’s expelled Jewish scholars had something to teach the new nation’s young intellectuals about the dark elements of the all-too-near Nazi past? Habermas’s respect for Adorno, Horkheimer, Löwith, Popper, and others who returned is enormous. Still, he makes clear in this personal letter to Marcuse that it was Marcuse whom he found more exhilarating than any of the others. This he says was due to Marcuse’s (...) critical Marxism, the links he forged between Marx and Freud, and his ability to connect Frankfurt theory to radical praxis against militarism and colonialism. (shrink)

Reflecting on the development of social theory in postwar Germany, Habermas asked, Who better than Germany’s expelled Jewish scholars had something to teach the new nation’s young intellectuals about the dark elements of the all-too-near Nazi past? Habermas’s respect for Adorno, Horkheimer, Löwith, Popper, and others who returned is enormous. Still, he makes clear in this personal letter to Marcuse that it was Marcuse whom he found more exhilarating than any of the others. This he says was due to Marcuse’s (...) critical Marxism, the links he forged between Marx and Freud, and his ability to connect Frankfurt theory to radical praxis against militarism and colonialism. (shrink)

Roy Bhaskar, renowned philosopher of naturalism and critical realism, discloses key new personal and political context to his writings to interlocutor Savita Singh.

Given an inner model and a regular cardinal κ, we consider two alternatives for adding a subset to κ by forcing: the Cohen poset Add(κ, 1), and the Cohen poset of the inner model. The forcing from W will be at least as strong as the forcing from V (in the sense that forcing with the former adds a generic for the latter) if and only if the two posets have the same cardinality. On the other hand, a sufficient condition (...) is established for the poset from V to fail to be as strong as that from W. The results are generalized to, and to iterations of Cohen forcing where the poset at each stage comes from an arbitrary intermediate inner model. (shrink)

Ovid’s poetic descriptions of Rome are not as vivid, as pictorial as one tends to suppose. In the poems from exile the lack of detail and the flat imagery seem to be programmatic. Thus, the reader’s attention is directed to the metapoetic message conveyed, by bringing into focus the role of enargeia/evidentia and the rivalry between literature and the visual arts. Evidence for this hypothesis is furnished by passages from the “Metamorphoses”, the “Tristia” and the “Epistulae ex Ponto” as well (...) as by statements concerning the ancient theory of evidentia. (shrink)

​In Abwandlung eines Satzes von Luhmann ließe sich über Gesellschaften der Gegenwart sagen: Fast alles könnte anders sein, und fast nichts können wir kollektiv ändern. Wie rasch sich umweltschädliche Technologien auf dem Globus ausbreiten, welche Unternehmen und welche Ausbeutungsformen erfolgreich sind, welche Ungleichheiten trotz formeller Gleichheit reproduziert werden, entzieht sich großenteils staatlichen und erst recht demokratisch legitimierten Entscheidungen. Stattdessen scheinen unkontrollierbare gesellschaftliche Wechselwirkungen, namentlich die des krisenhaften Weltmarkts bestimmend zu sein. Das stellt offenkundig eine Herausforderung für die politische Theorie dar. (...) Eine wichtige Antwort besteht darin, dass sie vermehrt jenseits der Zentren ansetzt, die offiziell für Entscheidungen zuständig sind, und sich dezentralen Auseinandersetzungen zuwendet. Zugleich sollte sie jedoch genauer als bisher der Annahme nachgehen, dass die Grenzen und Grundstrukturen des kollektiv nicht Gestaltbaren selbst keineswegs klar sind und (proto-)politisch umkämpft bleiben​. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the central theme of this conference and discusses how higher education can help us in accomplishing our humanization. It looks at the critical educational theory of Herbert Marcuse, and examines his notion of the dis-alienating power of the aesthetic imagination. In his view, aesthetic education can become the foundation of a re-humanizing critical theory. I question the epistemological underpinnings of Marcuse's educational philosophy and suggest an alternative intellectual framework for interpreting and releasing the emancipatory power of (...) education. (shrink)