This article has four main objectives. First, it introduces the ideal types of domination of Weber. Contrary to the received wisdom, which knows only “three ideal types” (traditional, charismatic and legal rational) I present the “fourth” type of domination, Weber called “Wille der Beherrschten” as an important correction of his ideal type of legal-rational authority. Next I make a novel, critical distinction between patrimonial and prebendal types of traditional authority. Third, I discuss various ways that communist regimes tried to legitimate (...) themselves and how they entered eventually a legitimation crisis, leading to the collapse of communism. In the next section, I explore the different ways post-communist capitalisms seek legitimacy (with various combinations of legal rational authority and patrimonialism), and finally I conclude with a trend of re-convergence of some post-communist systems (especially Russia and Hungary, but with signs for similar trends elsewhere) into an illiberal, prebendal quasi-democratic system. (shrink)

Karl Polanyi’s scholarship is interpreted in radically different ways. The “hard” reading of Polanyi sees him as a radical socialist; the “soft” reading presents him as a theorist of mixed economy. This article sides with the soft interpretation. It uses Polanyi’s biography to explain his theoretical “elusiveness,” presents a novel interpretation of his three types of economic integration, claiming all economies are “mixed.” While it acknowledges Polanyi as one of the major sources of world system theory, it claims that Polanyi (...) saw not only the dangers, but also the necessity and positive consequences of globalization. Finally, it shows that, in spite of Polanyi’s life-long commitment to the political left, his scholarly work did not offer an apology of socialism. Instead this article uses Polanyi’s theory of economic integration to build a critical political economy of state socialism. (shrink)

This article proffers an invitation to neoclassical sociology. This is understood as a Habermasian reconstruction of the fundamental vision of the discipline as conceptualized by classical theorists, particularly Weber. Taking the cases of Eastern and Central Europe as a laboratory, we argue against the idea of a single, homogenizing globalizing logic. Currently and historically what we see instead is a remarkable diversity of capitalist forms and destinations. Neither sociological theories of networks and embeddedness nor economic models of rational action adequately (...) comprehend this diversity. A neoclassical approach enjoins an empirical research agenda comparing capitalisms, and an ironic, historical approach to analysis to inform an immanent critique of capitalist possibilities. (shrink)

This review essay discusses Bálint Magyar’s most recent book, Stubborn Structures: Conceptualizing Post-communist Regimes (Budapest: CEU Press 2019). Bálint Magyar first published in Hungarian in 2015 (published in English by CEU Press in 2016) a path-breaking book on The Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary. This was the first major attempt to move beyond political controversies and offer a systematic critique of post-communist states. The book also went beyond the usual accusation of “corruption.” Magyar’s key point is that—at least (...) in Hungary—a mafia style of “upper-world” was created, with a “godfather” at the top of it and an “adopted family” below it. This fascinating idea was followed by edited books that included contribution by other scholars. The latest such book is Magyar’s Stubborn Structures: Conceptualizing Post-communist Regimes (CEU Press 2019), which includes articles applying the “mafia state theory” to a great variety of post-communist countries. (shrink)

Because of the growing debate concerning the nature of Soviet-type societies, a symposium-review was organized around two important recent books on the subject. The following are discussions of either one or both of the following volumes: Ferenc Feher, Agnes Heller, Gyorgy Markus, Dictatorship over Needs, St. Martin's Press (New York, 1983). Victor Zaslavsky, The Neo-Stalinist State: Class, Ethnicity and Consensus in Soviet Society, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. (New York, 1982). In social analysis, effective explanations alternate “thick description” with “thin description” Zaslavsky's (...) The Neo-Stalinist State and Feher's, Heller's and Markus’ Dictatorship over Needs, can be seen to track “actually existine socialism” down the respective paths of “thick” and “think” analysis. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the political and educational relevance of Hannah Arendt’s account of friendship. Drawing from Arendt’s central works on friendship, we offer a novel interpretation of the concept by connecting the notion with the idea of educational ‘love for the world’, amor mundi. With this interpretation, we seek to demonstrate that the concept of friendship has both direct educational and indirect political significance. Thereby, we distinguish our interpretation from two previous understandings of the educational relevance of the (...) Arendtian notion of friendship—those by (1) Aaron Schutz and Marie G. Sandy, and (2) Morten T. Korsgaard—in which friendship is either assigned a specifically political role (as in (1)) or its significance to education is narrowly understood (as in (2)). We argue our interpretation of friendship offers both a new contribution to the understanding of the relationship between education and politics in the context of Arendt scholarship, and a novel way of thinking about the educational significance of friendship in the context of contemporary democratic politics, especially the prevailing political polarization. (shrink)

Introduction 'Indoctrination' belongs to a family of concepts which includes ' teaching', 'education', 'instruction', and 'learning'. ...

_Epistemic Logic_ studies statements containing verbs such as 'know' and 'wish'. It is one of the most exciting areas in medieval philosophy. Neglected almost entirely after the end of the Middle Ages, it has been rediscovered by philosophers of the present century. This is the first comprehensive study of the subject. Ivan Boh explores the rules for entailment between epistemic statements, the search for the conditions of knowing contingent propositions, the problems of substitutivity in intentional contexts, the relationship between epistemic (...) and modal logic, and the problems of composite and divided senses in authors ranging from Abelard to Frachantian. (shrink)

_Epistemic Logic_ studies statements containing verbs such as 'know' and 'wish'. It is one of the most exciting areas in medieval philosophy. Neglected almost entirely after the end of the Middle Ages, it has been rediscovered by philosophers of the present century. This is the first comprehensive study of the subject. Ivan Boh explores the rules for entailment between epistemic statements, the search for the conditions of knowing contingent propositions, the problems of substitutivity in intentional contexts, the relationship between epistemic (...) and modal logic, and the problems of composite and divided senses in authors ranging from Abelard to Frachantian. (shrink)

An assertion is existentially known if and only if: (i) the speaker knows that the sentence she uses to make the assertion expresses a true proposition; (ii) she makes the assertion based on that knowledge; and (iii) she does not believe, have justification for, or know the proposition asserted. Accordingly, if existentially known assertions could be made correctly—as argued by Charlie Pelling in his ‘Assertion and the Provision of Knowledge’—this would show that the norm of assertion cannot be the speaker's (...) belief in, justification for or knowledge of the proposition. In this paper, I try to show that Pelling's argument is inconclusive, as it rests on two assumptions which can be resisted. In turn, I offer a pair of alternative strategies to explain how we can deal with existentially known assertions under the assumption that the speaker's knowledge is the norm of assertion. (shrink)

"The medical establishment has become a major threat to health. The disabling impact of professional control over medicine has reached the proportions of an epidemic. Iatrogenesis, the name for this new epidemic, comes from iatros, the Greek word for physician, and genesis, meaning origin. Discussion of the disease of medical progress has moved up on the agendas of medical conferences, researchers concentrate on the sick-making powers of diagnosis and therapy, and reports on paradoxical damage caused by cures for sickness take (...) up increasing space in medical dope-sheets [...] The public has been alerted to the perplexity and uncertainty of the best among its hygienic caretakers [...] This book argues that panic is out of place. Thoughtful public discussion of the iatrogenic pandemic, beginning with an insistence upon demystification of all medical matters, will not be dangerous to the commonweal."-- from Introduction. (shrink)

Lackey’s (2007) class of “selfless assertions” is controversial in at least two respects: it allows propositions that express Moorean absurdity to be asserted warrantedly, and it challenges the orthodox view that the speaker’s belief is a necessary condition for warranted assertibility. With regard to the former point, I critically examine Lackey’s broadly Gricean treatment of Moorean absurdity and McKinnon’s (2015) epistemic approach. With regard to the latter point, I defend the received view by supporting the knowledge account, on which knowledge (...) is the necessary condition for warranted assertion. After examining two defenses of KA, by Montminy and Turri, I propose two alternative approaches. Although I remain neutral between them, I develop in more detail the view which classifies “selfless assertions” as “presentations”, a type of assertives distinct from genuine assertions. This account is motivated further by allowing for the expansion of the normative approach to other assertives, a feature we may be interested in, in the light of a recent wave of normative accounts of speech acts. (shrink)

O utopianismo científico de Neurath é a proposta para que as ciências sociais se envolvam na elaboração, desenvolvimento e comparação de cenários contrafactuais, as ‘utopias’. Tais cenários podem ser entendidos como peças centrais de experimentos de pensamento científicos, isto é, em exercícios da imaginação que não apenas promovem a revisão conceitual, mas também estimulam a criatividade para lidar com problemas vivenciados, já que utopias são esforços para imaginar como o futuro poderia ser. Ademais, experimentos de pensamento utópicos podem oferecer conhecimento (...) científico para informar debates e decisões políticas, contribuindo para formatar a sociedade. Este ensaio reconstrói um evento histórico como um exemplo da metodologia utopianista de Neurath. No final dos anos 1970 e início dos anos 1980, uma comissão científica e política designada pelo parlamento da Alemanha Ocidental inventou e comparou quatro cenários para políticas energético-econômicas futuras. Conclusões da comissão informaram decisões políticas que puseram a Alemanha Ocidental (e depois reunificada) em um caminho para se tornar uma potência industrial verde. Uma parte fundamental do trabalho da comissão envolveu um apelo à imaginação, permitindo a caracterização sob a metodologia de Neurath. (shrink)

The "theory of mind" framework has been the fastest growing body of empirical research in contemporary psychology. It has given rise to a range of positions on what it takes to relate to others as intentional beings. This book brings together disparate strands of ToM research, lays out historical roots of the idea, and indicates better alternatives.

"Ivan Illich alights on such topics as education, history, language, politics, and the church. The conversations range over the whole of Illich's published work and public career as a priest, vice-rector of a university, founder of the Centre for Intercultural Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and author of such classics as Tools for Conviviality, Medical Nemesis, and Deschooling Society.".

This paper clarifies some of the contested ideas put forward by John Stuart Mill by analyzing the reasons and arguments Mill used to support them and demonstrating how these ideas and arguments supporting them are connected into a coherent system. Mill’s theory is placed in wider explanatory framework of democratic legitimacy developed by Thomas Christiano, and is portrayed as a typical example of democratic instrumentalism—a monistic position that focuses on the outcomes and results of a decision-making process. Following this move, (...) the focus is shifted on the understanding of political equality in Mill’s political thought. I claim that, contrary to some contemporary interpretations, Mill’s theory is based on a few fundamentally inegalitarian ideas. Finally, Mill’s view on the role of experts in democratic decision-making is analyzed and compared with contemporary theories advocating democratic expertism—Mill’s view is again portrayed as inegalitarian, both to the extent of setting political aims and creating methods for achieving these aims. (shrink)

Jan Patočka , filósofo checo de renombre mundial, escribió su tesis de habilitación con E. Husserl en Friburgo, lugar en donde también se familiarizó con la obra de M. Heidegger. En su propia obra, Patočka trató de resolver el conflicto filosófico entre sus diferentes conceptos de fenomenología. El intento de añadir una dimensión histórica a la noción de Lebenswelt y al concepto de fenomenología como tal le llevó finalmente a formular una filosofía de la historia fenomenológica. En su último artículo, (...) el cual es el tema principal de mi conferencia, Patočka esboza una "historia de la filosofía del significado de la vida humana, empezando en Kant" y expone su propio concepto del significado de la historia, influenciado por motivosheideggerianos. Yo expongo aquí una interpretación concisa de su idea y adopto una postura crítica con respecto a ella.Jan Patočka , Czech philosopher of world importance, wrote hishabilitation script with Edmund Husserl in Freiburg, where he also became acquainted with the work of Martin Heidegger. In his own work, Patocka tried to resolve the philosophical conflict between their various concepts of phenomenology. The attempt to add a historical dimension to the notion of Lebenswelt and to the concept of phenomenon as such led him ultimately to formulate a phenomenological philosophy of history. In his last essay, which is the main subject of my lecture, Patočka sketches out a “history of the philosophy of the meaning of human life, beginning with Kant” and sets forth his own concept of the meaning of history, influenced by Heideggerian motifs. I present a concise interpretation of his idea and take a critical position towards it. (shrink)

Conversation analysts have noted that, in psychotherapy, formulations of the client's talk can be a vehicle for offering a psychological interpretation of the client's circumstances. But we notice that not all formulations in psychotherapy offer interpretations. We offer an analysis of formulations that are diagnostic: that is, used by the professional to sharpen, clarify or refine the client's account and make it better able to provide what the professional needs to know about the client's history and symptoms. In doing so, (...) these formulations also have the effect of shepherding the client's account towards subsequent therapeutic interpretation. In a coda, we notice that sometimes the formulations are designed discreetly. We examine one such discreet formulation in detail, and show how its very ambiguity can lead to its failure as a diagnostic probe. (shrink)

An overview on archaeological evidence, provided by Colagè and d’Errico, reveals that the timing, location, and pace of cultural innovations are more consistent with scenarios that take culture, rather than genetic evolutionary processes, as the key driving force for human cognition. The authors elaborate on those mechanisms by which cultural evolution operates, with a specific focus on cultural exaptation and cultural neural reuse.

Epistemic logic is one of the most exciting areas in medieval philosophy. Neglected almost entirely after the end of the Middle Ages, it has been rediscovered by philosophers of the twentieth century. Epistemic Logic in the Later Middle Ages provides the first comprehensive study of the subject. Ivan Boh explores the contrast between epistemic and alethic conceptions of consequence, the general epistemic rules of consequence, the search for conditions of knowing contingent propositions, the problems of substitutivity in intentional contexts, the (...) considerations of epistemic/doxastic iterated modalities, and the problems of composite and divided senses in authors ranging from Abelard to Frachantian. Boh concludes with a comparison between medieval endeavors and the epistemic logic of our own times. Written in a clear and readable style with minimal symbolic apparatus, this book employs modern symbolism and conceptual frameworks, and complements the studies of the syntacticand semantic dimensions of medieval logic. (shrink)