In A Philosophy for Communism: Rethinking Althusser Panagiotis Sotiris attempts a reading of the work of the French philosopher centered upon his deeply political conception of philosophy. Althusser's endeavour is presented as a quest for a new practice of philosophy that would enable a new practice of politics for communism, in opposition to idealism and teleology. The central point is that in his trajectory from the crucial interventions of the 1960s to the texts on aleatory materialism, Althusser remained (...) a communist in philosophy. This is based upon a reading of the tensions and dynamics running through Althusser's work and his dialogue with other thinkers. Particular attention is paid to crucial texts by Althusser that remained unpublished until relatively recently. (shrink)

COVID-19 is not only a health emergency but also a strategic challenge for any politics of resistance, struggle and transformation. Understanding the social and political dynamics associated with morbidity and mortality and the many ‘ecologies of disease’ associated with the pandemic is necessary if we want to think beyond the limits of the lockdown strategy. It is here that the possibility of a democratic biopolitics emerges as part of a broader strategy for communism.

This article deals with theories and political projects that can be defined as ‘left populism’. It begins with a reading and critique of the work of Ernesto Laclau on the theory of populism and then moves to recent debates about the possibility of left-populist movements. In contrast to these positions it attempts to present an alternative theoretical framework based on Gramscian notions, in order to rethink the notion of the people in ways that do not de-link it from class analysis (...) and social relations of production. (shrink)

Passive revolution is one of the most debated notions to come out of the Prison Notebooks. It belongs to the notions that have been used as ‘established’ descriptions of historical and political sequences. However, a reading of Gramsci’s texts suggests that passive revolution is not a ‘historical phase’ and is not limited to the historical interpretation of a particular historical period. Nor is it part of an historical ‘canon’ that would suggest that, in the absence of a ‘proper’ Jacobin revolution, (...) the only alternative is passive revolution. Rather it points to the experimental character of the Prison Notebooks and Gramsci’s confrontation with the profound changes in state apparatuses (and hegemonic apparatuses) and practices of politics and hegemony after WWI, in particular the new ‘mass’ forms of politics and ideological interpellation, and his attempt to elaborate a strategic–theoretical thinking suited to revolutionary politics in such a context. (shrink)

Promises of communism, traces of communism, outlines of communism, islets of communism: Althusser’s metaphors for communism emerging at the margins of existing social forms point towards important open questions for any rethinking of a strategy for communism: Is communism just a political project or a political design for a post-capitalist society or is the projection, elaboration, and expansion of social forms already appearing within contemporary capitalist society as a result of collective struggles, resistances, and experimentations that bring out the collective (...) ingenuity of the subaltern classes and groups? Can a political project for radical social transformation simply be a generalisation of the dynamics emerging within contemporary social dynamics? How can we think the political and organisational labour needed to turn these elements into new social forms? The aim of this paper is to attempt to revisit and rethink the tensions of Althusser’s thinking of communism emerging at the margins or interstices of capitalist society. (shrink)

*This article attempts a Marxist critique of Alain Badiou’s positions. The importance of Badiou’s ontology as an affirmation of the possibility of radical-historical novelty is stressed, but also its limits. These limits have to do with Badiou’s abandonment of a dialectical-relational conception of social reality, his refusal of any causal connection between social reality, political decision and event, and the absence of a theory of ideology and hegemony in his work. Consequently, Badiou’s notion of a ‘subtractive’ politics cannot be considered (...) an answer to the open questions of communist strategy, despite his endorsement of the ‘communist hypothesis’. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser encountered Machiavelli’s work and they both attempted to rethink the very possibility of political practice through their respective readings of the Florentine thinker. In a certain way for both Gramsci and Althusser, the reading of Machiavelli was the experimental site where they elaborated their own conceptions of politics, either in the form of Gramsci’s quest for the ‘modern Prince’, the political and organizational form of a potential hegemony of the subaltern, or in the form of (...) Althusser’s constant redefinition of a potential new practice of politics in a communist perspective. The reading of Machiavelli was for Althusser also one of the terrains upon which he attempted to confront Gramsci, something that is particularly evident in a series of Althusser’s texts in the 1970s from Machiavelli and Us to the recently published Que faire? The aim of this article is to do a comparative reading of the approaches to Machiavelli offered by Gramsci and Althusser, focusing in particular on the tensions running through Althusser’s reading of Gramsci’s writings on Machiavelli. In particular, I will offer a reading of Althusser’s extensive criticism of Gramsci in 1977–1978, linking it to his critique of Eurocommunism. Then, I will go back to Gramsci, and in particular Notebook 13, in order to bring forward not only the aspects of Gramsci that Althusser tended to overlook but also how Gramsci is in fact thinking the very question that Althusser attempted to pose, namely that of a new practice of politics for communism. (shrink)

In the past few years there has been a renewed interest in the work of Louis Althusser, although, in some cases, this interest has been one-sided, focusing mainly on his later writings on aleatory materialism. The three books reviewed in this article, however, offer balanced and insightful overviews of the totality of Althusser's work, placing it in the wider context of Marxist political and theoretical debates and stressing both its originality and strengths, but also its contradictions.

Peter Thomas has written an important book that brings forward the full importance of Gramsci’s strategic concepts and the pertinence they have for current theoretical and political debates. Based upon this interpretation of Gramsci, this text attempts a critical reading of the contradictory stance of the Althusserian School towards his work. Using Althusser’s own ambivalence towards Gramsci as a starting-point, the main aim of this article is to reconstruct Poulantzas’s direct and indirect dialogue with Gramsci. Despite Poulantzas’s reservations and criticisms (...) regarding aspects of Gramsci’s work, his theoretical endeavour not only is indebted to Gramsci, but also represents, despite its shortcomings and limits, one of the more original and profound theoretical attempts to come to terms with the theoretical challenges posed by Gramsci’s elaboration on hegemony, hegemonic apparatuses and the ‘integral state’. (shrink)

The relation between structure and conjuncture has been one of the biggest challenges facing social theory and Louis Althusser’s writings provide some of the most important interventions on this subject. Contrary to an image of Althusser first embracing and then abandoning structuralism, Althusser tried from the beginning to articulate the theory of structural causality with an insistence on the singularity of historical conjunctures. Althusser’s theoretical trajectory, despite his shortcomings, still offers a necessary starting point for a materialist conception of the (...) relation between structural and conjunctural determinations that stresses the complex, uneven and overdetermined character of social reality without resorting either to a ‘surface phenomena/deep structures’ dualism or to the empiricism of simply registering singular practices. (shrink)

On the occasion of the publication of the translation of Pierre Raymond’s text on Althusser’s materialism, we attempt an introduction to his theoretical trajectory. We begin with his conception of the conflict between materialism and idealism inLe passage au matérialismein 1973 and his thinking on the question of the history of sciences inL’histoire & les sciences, before turning our attention to his elaboration on the question of a history of mathematics and in particular of the emergence of probabilistic reasoning. Then (...) we examine his confrontation with the question of the relation between materialism and dialectics inMatérialisme dialectique et logique. After that, we proceed to his conception of the need to break with any form of teleology and finalism as the starting point for a new conception of causality, before looking atDissiper la terreur et les ténèbresof 1992 and his attempt to rethink the question of practical reason. It is in light of the above presentation that we insist on the importance of Raymond’s text on Althusser. (shrink)

In ‘Thinking Beyond the Lockdown’, Panagiotis Sotiris argues that lockdowns are repressive and should be opposed. In this response I take issue with his analysis. He posits the existence of a ‘lockdown strategy’ which has little relation to reality. He identifies lockdowns with neoliberalism, flirts with the Great Barrington project, and calls for anti-lockdown resistance – without so much as a glance at the right-wing libertarian camps that are also staked out on this terrain. On these points, and (...) in respect of his interpretation of Foucault, I offer a rebuttal. (shrink)

In ‘Thinking Beyond the Lockdown’, Panagiotis Sotiris argues that lockdowns are repressive and should be opposed. In this response I take issue with his analysis. He posits the existence of a ‘lockdown strategy’ which has little relation to reality. He identifies lockdowns with neoliberalism, flirts with the Great Barrington project, and calls for anti-lockdown resistance – without so much as a glance at the right-wing libertarian camps that are also staked out on this terrain. On these points, and (...) in respect of his interpretation of Foucault, I offer a rebuttal. (shrink)

The ontic conception of explanation is predicated on the proposition that “explanation is a relation between real objects in the world” and hence, according to this approach, scientific explanation cannot take place absent such a premise. Despite the fact that critics have emphasized several drawbacks of the ontic conception, as for example its inability to address the so-called “abstract explanations”, the debate is not settled and the ontic view can claim to capture cases of explanation that are non-abstract, such as (...) causal relations between events. However, by eliminating the distinction between abstract and non-abstract explanations, it follows that ontic and epistemic proposals can no longer contend to capture different cases of explanation and either all are captured by the ontic view or all are captured by the epistemic view. On closer inspection, it turns out that the ontic view deals with events that fall outside the scientists’ scope of observation and that it does not accommodate common instances of explanation such as explanations from false propositions and hence it cannot establish itself as the dominant philosophical stance with respect to explanation. On the contrary, the epistemic conception does account for almost all episodes of explanation and can be described as a relation between representations, whereby the explanans transmit information to the explanandum and that this information can come, dependent on context, in the form of any of the available theories of explanation (law-like, unificatory, causal and non-causal). The range of application of the ontic view thus is severely restricted to trivial cases of explanation that come through direct observation of the events involved in an explanation and explanation is to be mostly conceived epistemically. (shrink)

"Plato's Statesman reconsiders many questions familiar to readers of the Republic: questions in political theory - such as the qualifications for the leadership of a state and the best from of constitution (politeia) - as well as questions of philosophical methodology and epistemology. Instead of the theory of Forms that is the centrepiece of the epistemology of the Republic, the emphasis here is on the dialectical practice of collection and division (diairesis), in whose service the interlocutors also deploy the ancillary (...) methods of myth and of models (paradeigmata). Plato here introduces the doctrine of due measure (to metrion) and a conception of statecraft (politikē) as an architectonic expertise that governs subordinate disciplines such as rhetoric and the military - doctrines later developed by Aristotle. Readers will find a sustained defence of the importance of expertise (technē or epistēmē) in the conduct of affairs of state, a robust (although not unqualified) defence of the rule of law, and an unsparing but nuanced critique of democratic government. The chapters in this volume provide a comprehensive and detailed philosophical engagement with the entirety of Plato's wide-ranging dialogue, with successive chapters devoted to the sections of the dialogue as it unfolds, and an introduction that places the dialogue in the context of Plato's philosophy as a whole. While not a commentary in the traditional sense, the volume engages with Plato's Statesman in its entirety" -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

The ontic conception of explanation is predicated on the proposition that “explanation is a relation between real objects in the world” and hence, according to this approach, scientific explanation cannot take place absent such a premise. Despite the fact that critics have emphasized several drawbacks of the ontic conception, as for example its inability to address the so-called “abstract explanations”, the debate is not settled and the ontic view can claim to capture cases of explanation that are non-abstract, such as (...) causal relations between events. However, by eliminating the distinction between abstract and non-abstract explanations, it follows that ontic and epistemic proposals can no longer contend to capture different cases of explanation and either all are captured by the ontic view or all are captured by the epistemic view. On closer inspection, it turns out that the ontic view deals with events that fall outside the scientists’ scope of observation and that it does not accommodate common instances of explanation such as explanations from false propositions and hence it cannot establish itself as the dominant philosophical stance with respect to explanation. On the contrary, the epistemic conception does account for almost all episodes of explanation and can be described as a relation between representations, whereby the explanans transmit information to the explanandum and that this information can come, dependent on context, in the form of any of the available theories of explanation (law-like, unificatory, causal and non-causal). The range of application of the ontic view thus is severely restricted to trivial cases of explanation that come through direct observation of the events involved in an explanation and explanation is to be mostly conceived epistemically. (shrink)

This monograph evaluates public policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic through a public choice lens. The book compares two prominent, albeit mutually exclusive, theories in social sciences—public interest theory and public choice theory—and explores how their predictions perform within the framework of the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapters present different pandemic policies alongside empirical data in order to draw conclusions about their efficacy, and, in turn, draw conclusions about the veracity of each theory. By the end of the volume, the reader (...) will be able to draw their own conclusions about whether the pandemic policy responses served the public interest, as public interest theory suggests, or the personal interests of the politicians who implemented them, as public choice theory holds. (shrink)

Until recently, cardiotoxicity in the setting of a malignant disease was attributed solely to the detrimental effects of chemo‐ and/or radio‐therapy to the heart. On this account, the focus was on the evaluation of well‐established cardiac biomarkers for the early detection of myocardial damage. Currently, this view has been revised. Cardiotoxicity is not restricted to a single organ but instead affects the endothelium as a whole. Indeed, it has come into light that not only cancer therapy but also malignant cells (...) per se can impair the cardiovascular system, through a paracrine and endocrine mode of action. Even more intriguingly, a clear interplay between molecular pathways involved in cancer and cardiovascular disease has become prevalent, suggesting a common nominator that governs the pathophysiology of these two entities. Taken together, our strategy in the quest of novel biomarkers in the emerging field of cardio‐oncology should be critically reshaped. (shrink)

This volume constitutes an attempt at bringing together philosophies of time--or more precisely, philosophies on time and, in a concomitant way, history--emerging from Christianity's and Islam's intellectual histories. Starting from the Neoplatonic heritage and the voice of classical philosophy, the volume enters the Byzantine and Arabic intellectual worlds up to Ibn Al-Arabi's times. A conscious choice in this volume is not to engage with, perhaps, the most prominent figures of Christian and Arabic philosophy, i.e., Augustine on the one hand and (...) Avicenna/Ibn Sina on the other, precisely because these have attracted so much attention due to their prominence in their respective traditions--and beyond. In a certain way, Maximus the Confessor and Ibn Al-Arabi--together with Al-Fārābi--emerge as alternative representatives of their two traditions in this volume, offering two axes for this endeavor. The synthesis of those approaches on time and history, their comparison rather than their mere co-existence, is left to the reader's critical inquiry and philosophical investigation. (shrink)

This volume seeks to explore the intersection of theology, philosophy and the public sphere not by referring the social and political to ethics and deontology as is often the case, but rather to ontology itself, to the very nature of beings. The meaning of history and historicity is most pertinent to this enquiry and is approached here both from the perspective of social reality and from the perspective of ontology. Joining together contributions focusing on theory of the public sphere and (...) metaphysics, chapters explore subjects as diverse as the political implications of the Incarnation, the paradox between ontology and history, politically left and right appropriations of Christianity, the fecundity of Maximus the Confessor’s insights for a contemporary political philosophy, modern Orthodox political theology focusing on Christos Yannaras and numerous thematic areas that together form the mosaic of the enquiry in question. (shrink)

Immersive virtual reality (VR) emerges as a promising research and clinical tool. However, several studies suggest that VR induced adverse symptoms and effects (VRISE) may undermine the health and safety standards, and the reliability of the scientific results. In the current literature review, the technical reasons for the adverse symptomatology are investigated to provide suggestions and technological knowledge for the implementation of VR head-mounted display (HMD) systems in cognitive neuroscience. The technological systematic literature indicated features pertinent to display, sound, motion (...) tracking, navigation, ergonomic interactions, user experience, and computer’s hardware that should be considered by the researchers. Subsequently, a meta-analysis of 44 neuroscientific or neuropsychological studies involving VR HMD systems was performed. The meta-analysis of the VR studies demonstrated that the new generation HMDs induced significantly fewer dropouts and VRISE. Importantly, the commercial versions of the new generation HMDs with ergonomic interactions had zero incidents of adverse symptomatology and dropouts. Solely, HMDs equivalent to or greater than the commercial versions of contemporary HMDs accompanied with ergonomic interactions are suitable for implementation in cognitive neuroscience. In conclusion, researchers’ technological competency, along with meticulous methods and reports pertinent to software, hardware, and VRISE, are paramount to ensure the health and safety standards and the reliability of neuroscientific results. (shrink)

Different why-questions emerge under different contexts and require different information in order to be addressed. Hence a relevance relation can hardly be invariant across contexts. However, what is indeed common under any possible context is that all explananda require scientific information in order to be explained. So no scientific information is in principle explanatorily irrelevant, it only becomes so under certain contexts. In view of this, scientific thought experiments can offer explanations, should we analyze their representational strategies. Their representations involve (...) empirical as well as hypothetical statements. I call this the “representational mingling” which bears scientific information that can explain events. Buchanan’s thought experiment from constitutional economics is examined to show how mingled representations explain. (shrink)

White liberals like to claim that they live in a post-racial society. Furthermore, they believe that most people do not sympathize with the far-right. However, it is not racism fueling right-wing extremism in North America and Western Europe but the dominant ideology, liberalism. Consequently, Slavoj Žižek argues that racism is a problem concerning “objective violence,” which he further breaks down into “symbolic violence” and “systemic violence.” These primarily target minority groups. Thus, “objective violence” best explains the West’s problematic views of (...) Muslims and Islam since it supports what Edward Said refers to as “Orientalism” and reproduces racist depictions of racialized communities. These are incredibly harmful since the West still perceives the Orient and its residents as violent, strange, and backward. These Orientalist attitudes ultimately lead to discrimination against Muslims and Arabs. Furthermore, this ideology naturalizes and legitimizes capitalist social relations while concealing racialization processes. (shrink)

The model of ownership psychology as a cognitive adaptation proposes that people flexibly navigate cognitive systems of cooperation and competition, thus enabling them to justify unethical behavior. We discuss how this model captures previous accounts of unethical behavior and propose that a disengagement heuristic can help us understand recent findings in the interconnection between scarcity psychology and unethical behavior.

This article is divided into two parts: in the first we explore the academic debate conducted at an international level about insider trading (IT). In particular, we exame IT on three grounds: economic, ethical and legal. In each section we present the arguments in favour of and against IT and then we give our personal opinion. In the second part we present the situation in the Athens Stock Exchange. We examine its past record on the issue of IT and recent (...) developments, and comment on the implications for the future. (shrink)