Revolution

The purpose of this document is to outline why and how universities must both transform and mobilise to avert the worst impacts of the global crises faced by humanity. The first section addresses the justification for transformation and how academia can and must transform. In the second section, the document highlights the need for a peaceful mobilisation of student and staff bodies to make effective the transformation advocated for. The document then outlines a blueprint as to action that must be (...) taken in order to initiate the required transformation and mobilisation. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s theory of justifiable resistance to authority is complex and, at times, appears to conflict with his own practice, if not with itself. He distinguishes between the role of authority in “public” and “private” contexts. In private—e.g., when a person is under contract to do a specific job or accepts a social contract with one’s government—resistance is forbidden; external behavior must be governed by policy or law. In contexts involving the public use of reason, on the other hand—e.g., when (...) a person is faced with a moral decision or is engaged in a philosophical dispute—the freedom of conscience sometimes requires resistance, especially in cases where other persons inappropriately attempt to usurp authority over matters that are rightfully up to the individual to decide. In texts such as Perpetual Peace, Kant looks forward to a political situation wherein no political resistance (e.g., in the form of war) would be necessary. Yet in Metaphysics of Morals, he argues that a citizen never has the right to revolt against one’s government, suggesting we must cooperate even with war. On a personal level, Kant openly praised both the American and the French revolutions; yet when his own writings on religion were deemed by the censor to have come into conflict with the king’s edict, Kant failed to resist the (arguably unjust) authority; instead, he gave up his (apparently public) right to free philosophical expression, promising never to write or speak on religion again during the king’s reign. I shall argue that a key to resolving these tensions lies in the principle that universities must promote a healthy, public “conflict” between philosophers and all “private” employments of reason. The only ground for disallowing private resistance, therefore, is the underlying presence of genuine philosophical resistance. (shrink)

Ethics and Insurrection articulates an ethical position that takes critical pragmatism and Harrisian insurrectionist philosophy seriously. It suggests that there are values and norms that create boundaries that confine, reduce and circumscribe the actions we allow ourselves to consider. McBride argues that an insurrectionist ethos is integral in the disavowing of norms and traditions that justify or perpetuate oppression and that we must throw our faith behind something, some set of values, if we want a chance at shaping a future. (...) This book encourages us to (re)imagine and shape futures with less subjection, less degradation. It urges us to interrogate and deconstruct those intervening background assumptions that authorize and reinforce the subordination of stigmatized groups. It implores us to pursue new conceptions of personhood and humanity, conceptions that forefront reciprocity and solidarity-conceptions that do not cast groups of human beings as inherently subhuman or naturally bereft of honor. And finally Ethics and Insurrection beseeches us to form new coalitions and bonds of trust, to engage in those forms of collective action likely to shape a better future. (shrink)

This article focuses on a slightly earlier period in its investigation of the meanings of and associations with the term normal than Cryle and Stephens have done in their recent book. It looks at the establishment and rapid demise of the Ecole normale in Paris in 1794–5, founded on the same model as a school for the manufacture of arms that had operated in spring 1794, and suggests that this model was not only responsible for some of the problems the (...) Ecole normale experienced, setting up unachievable expectations of rapid efficacy, but also had an impact on what its name was assumed to mean. Moving between, on the one hand, an analysis of explicit definitions of what the term normal meant, and, on the other, an account of how the Ecole normale was set up and what it was set up to do, this paper agrees with Cryle and Stephens that the term was ‘formed in controversy’, and fills in the intellectual and philosophical context from which the notion of the statistical norm would emerge. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to explain economic dualism in the history of modern Europe. The emergence of the manorial-serf economy in the Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary in the 16th and the 17th centuries was the result of a cumulative impact of various circumstantial factors. The weakness of cities in Central Europe disturbed the social balance – so characteristic for Western-European societies – between burghers and the nobility. The political dominance of the nobility hampered the development of cities and (...) limited the influence of burghers, paving the way to the rise of serfdom and manorial farms. These processes were accompanied by increased demand for agricultural products in Western Europe. (shrink)

Collating, for the first time, the key writings of Leonard Harris, this volume introduces readers to a leading figure in African-American and liberatory thought. -/- Harris' writings on honor, insurrectionist ethics, tradition, and his work on Alain Locke have established him as a leading figure in critical philosophy. His timely and urgent responses to structural racism and structural violence mark him out as a bold cultural commentator and a deft theoretician. -/- The wealth and depth of Harris' writings are brought (...) to the fore in this collection and the incisive introduction by Lee McBride serves to orient, contextualize, and frame an oeuvre that spans four decades. In his prolegomenon, Harris eschews the classical meaning of “philosophy,” supplanting it with an idiosyncratic conception of philosophy--philosophia nata ex conatu--that features an avowedly value-laden dimension. As well as serving as an introduction to Harris' philosophy, A Philosophy of Struggle provides new insights into how we ought conceptualize philosophy, race, tradition, and insurrection in the 21st century. (shrink)

„Csak az a gondolkodás kecsegtet valamivel, amely hajlandó feltörni a jelen hatalmi vonatkozásainak pecsétjét, és a jelennel eltökélten polemizálva mutat fel eleddig bejáratlan utakat. A kapitalizmus ugyanakkor több a történelmi meghatározottságainál: olyan végpontként érvényesíti magát, amely visszafelé nézve átírja az egész általunk ismert történelmet, visszatekintő módon kezdeteket teremt.”.

Social work is a contested tradition, torn between the demands of social governance and autonomy. Today, this struggle is reflected in the division between the dominant, neoliberal agenda of service provision and the resistance offered by various critical perspectives employed by disparate groups of practitioners serving diverse communities. Critical social work challenges oppressive conditions and discourses, in addition to addressing their consequences in individuals’ lives. However, very few recent critical theorists informing critical social work have advocated revolution. A challenging exception (...) can be found in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–97), whose explication of ontological underdetermination and creation evades the pitfalls of both structural determinism and post-structural relativism, enabling an understanding of society as the contested creation of collective imaginaries in action and a politics of radical transformation. On this basis, we argue that Castoriadis’s radical-democratic revisioning of revolutionary praxis can help in reimagining critical social work’s emancipatory potential. (shrink)

Biswas's book is a panoramic treatment of contemporary world theatre. The book under review will help both the neophyte, as also a scholar to negotiate ancient dramaturgy and more recent theatre. Biswas's eye for details is also remarked in this review. The review shows how Biswas, as it were, has written a manifesto of protest in this book.

Recent studies have revealed how workers’ movements adapted republicanism into a language of anticapitalism in the nineteenth century. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the role feminists played in this process. This essay addresses this oversight by introducing the voices of the utopian socialists under July Monarchy France. These socialists insisted that there could be no social revolution without sexual revolution. Although they are often positioned outside of the republican tradition, this essay argues that the utopian socialists are (...) better understood as rendering the legacy of classical and French republicanism compatible with nascent workers’ movements in the 1830s. By foregrounding the feminist Flora Tristan, this essay shows how utopian socialists weaponized republican tropes to address the social question, thereby expanding what a republican critique of capitalism could look like. (shrink)

This article examines Alain Badiou’s and Slavoj Žižek’s advocacy for fidelity to revolutionary truths in light of complex system theory’s understanding of resiliency. It begins with a discussion of how Badiou and Žižek describe truth. Next, it looks at the features that make a complex system resilient. The article argues that if we understand neoliberalism as a resilient system, then the fidelity to revolutionary truths that Badiou and Žižek advocate is not enough, for it doesn’t realize how truths come from (...) the system as a whole. The article concludes by describing how this viewpoint alters discussions of political change. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFoucault extolled the Iranian revolution and, anticipating the havoc that his public intervention in favour of the revolution would create, he wrote: “I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong”. Examining Foucault’s valorisation of certainty and the partisan affectivity it bestows upon knowledge and truth, I read his unusual engagement with the Iranian revolution against the grain. A major tendency is to approach Foucault’s Iranian writings as aberration; against this tendency, I read them as (...) an effect of Foucault’s specific epistemic and utopian optics. Through a critical reading of neglected aspects of Foucault’s comments on Iran, I argue that much nuance is missing when damning critiques fail to see why and how Foucault’s interest in an active rather than folklore non-European political identity unveils deeper tensions of his own worldview and outlook on international politics and interrogates mainstream appraisals of Foucault’s political philosophy. (shrink)

This is the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s carta de 24 de octubre, 1851, a letter encapsulating many of his views on revolution and decision. This remarkable letter, sent as a diplomatic missive while he was serving the Spanish crown in Paris, describes how Napoleon III––stuck between the 1848 constitution’s prohibition against his election and his impending coup that will crown him emperor––must gain the support of the liberal bourgeoise middle class if he is to maintain his (...) rule over France. The letter is also of great importance to Donoso and Schmitt scholars because it contains the first and only time Donoso uses the complete term “las clases discutidoras,” which, through Schmitt’s injudicious and repeated misspellings as “una clasa discutidora” has become famous for its characterization of the liberal bourgeoisie as the “discussing” or “disputing” class that is incapable of action at the precise historical moment when a decision is most direly needed to save the constitution from inner or outer existential threats. (shrink)

Revolutionary Gnosticism is a religious–philo- sophical category introduced in the academic debate by the philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901–1985). Starting from his important work, several philosophers and sociologists have adopted Gnosticism as a useful explanatory notion to frame and define numerous modern and contemporary political and cultural movements. The immanentization of the eschaton, which is a renowned Voegelian expression, intimately defines the politico–cultural project of revolutionary Gnosticism. The destruction of the past for the creation of a new world, the last aeon, (...) demarcates the vision of history of revolutionary Gnosticism. Hence, according to a similar Weltanschauung, man replaces God, giving birth to «the idea of a transfiguration of mankind through a process of auto–redemption (grace replaced by revolution)» (Augusto Del Noce). The paper aims to investigate in broad terms the vast time span in which the concept of rev- olutionary Gnosticism has taken shape, from ancient Gnosis to Late Middle Ages, through seventeenth century Puritanism and Jacobinism, until twentieth–century totalitarianisms, eventually suggesting further lines of research. The present study intends to suggest a new interpretation for politico–revolutionary phenomena that have emerged in the whole West and in all epochs, with the purpose of finding a recurrent pattern that reflects one of the most disruptive intellectual engine for radical politics. (shrink)

The social scientific study of revolution has been deviled by a lack of progress in recent years, divided between competing views on the universality of patterns in revolution. This study examines the origins of these epistemologies. Drawing on an insight that different modes of comparison yield different types of knowledge, I argue that the network structure of how cases are compared constrains or enables the development of a field’s theoretical sensibilities. Analysis of comparative studies of revolution published from 1970 to (...) 2009 reveals that the field overall is most amenable to knowledge about particular cases rather than the phenomenon of revolution broadly. Analysis of the changing structure of comparison over time reveals that comparison precedes the development of an epistemology. The results suggest that conclusions about the possibility, or lack thereof, of generalization may be an artifact of the comparative method. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to define the status and role of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense as a historical document. I argue that although Paine’s influential pamphlet offers no original ideas and seems simply to reinforce existing trends, its layered text transcends the regurgitation of propaganda and extends to literary achievement in its reflection of social and economic conditions, its deliberate narrative style, and its usage of literary devices and culture references grounded in historical context. Consequently, my methodology is necessarily (...) focused through literary discourse to achieve historical understanding of this key document from the American Revolution. (shrink)

The 1917 February Revolution led to the reshaping of the war-era image of the German enemy. Focusing on the former imperial borderland province of the Southwestern Krai, this article unveils the national, political, and cultural considerations of the local Ukrainian and Russian-language media that affected their attitude towards the Germans. It argues that the developments of the 1917–1918 Ukrainian Revolution presented a unique case of constructing the image of the Germans due to the ongoing rivalry between the respective Ukrainian and (...) Russian national projects. The study is based on the materials of prominent Kyivan daily newspapers, thus rendering the spectrum of the region’s political thought. Built upon the concept of imagology, the article apprehends the images of “otherness” in conjunction with the actor’s own identity. (shrink)

The article explores the religious and philosophical origins of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s ideas of “honesty with oneself,” “omnilateral liberation,” and “concordism.” Two treatises, Vidrodzhennia natsii (Rebirth of a Nation, 1919–1920) and Konkordyzm. Systema buduvannia shchastia (Concordism. A System of Building Happiness, 1938–1945), illustrate the development of Vynnychenko’s worldview. In the first work, social revolution was considered as the answer to human problems, while, in the second, such a solution was found in becoming one with the universe. Despite his negative attitude towards (...) religion, Volodymyr Vynnychenko actively used religious images and patterns in his writings. For instance, criticizing Christianity for its dogmatism, he nevertheless created his codex of thirteen rules of concordism, which had to harmonize the unbalanced forces of mankind with the universe. In this context, particular attention is paid to the significant influence of pagan concepts on Vynnychenko’s thinking. (shrink)

يضمُّ هذا الكتاب النصوص التي كتبتها، في ميدان الفكر العربي عمومًا، بين عامي 2011-2016. وكما هو واضحٌ في العنوان، تتمحور مواضيع الكتاب حول ثلاث نقاطٍ أساسيةٍ: بعض إشكاليات الفكر السياسي (العربي) المعاصر، مثل مسائل القومية والديمقراطية؛ بعض الإشكاليات المرتبطة بالثورة السورية مثل خلفية هذه الثورة وأسبابها وسيرورتها وآفاقها؛ وبعض الإشكاليات المتعلقة بمسألة اللجوء.

El artículo describe el horizonte apocalíptico de la filosofía de la historia contenidaen los Cuadernos negros de Heidegger. Ser-para-la-muerte, el gran tema de Ser yTiempo, se transfiere a la historia, donde Heidegger mira hacia el final. Esta es unade las grandes novedades de los Cuadernos negros, donde el tema de la revoluciónsiempre ha sido concebido en términos demasiado metafísicos, como un simple giro,no como un acontecimiento, mientras surgen interesantes reflexiones sobre el comunismo.

The Fifty-Year Rebellion invites us to consider Detroit’s recent history as both epitomizing and shaping national trends. But it’s not the kind of invitation we’ve all grown used to...

Yefremov’s personal characteristics exemplify the characteristic features of the Ukrainian revolution. He was an argumentative, pugnacious man, and the revolution was characterized by infighting. He was an institution builder, and that’s a key element of the Ukrainian revolution. He was ideologically an advocate of Ukrainian identity (sooner than social rights or state building) and that too was a feature of the Ukrainian revolution. His diaries and ego writing offer a variety of evidence of these aspects of his personality.

Prominent Ukrainian historian Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky (1919–1984) repeatedly addressed the topic of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917 – the 1920s, especially considering its intellectual origins and implications in the context of the history of Ukrainian social and political thought. Analysis of his works shows the manner in which the Ukrainian revolution as an event structures the history of Ukrainian social and political thought in both senses of the term “history”: as history itself and as its historiography. Based on this analysis, the (...) article considers changes in the meaning of the revolution for modern Ukrainians, as well as the credibility – in the context of these changes – of the classifications of the historiography of Ukrainian social and political thought, which rest on the key meaning of the revolution for modern Ukrainian history. The article also supports the conclusion that the rejection of the evolutionary model which I. Lysiak-Rudnytsky most directly addressed will help to outline a well-balanced and reliable history of Ukrainian social and political thought without excessive historicism. (shrink)

Latin American religious political thought includes colonial Spanish and Portuguese ideologies that preceded independence but have survived into the post-independence era, authoritarian ideologies supportive of military governments in the twentieth century, and progressive liberation theologies. In this article, I present a distinct tradition: a version of classical liberal thought. This tradition is skeptical of big government, opposed to caste systems, supportive of a high degree of federalism, uneasy with militarism, and supportive of democratic institutions while affirming religious social norms. This (...) ideology was developed in northeastern Brazil in the early nineteenth century by a Carmelite activist named Frei Caneca (Brother Mug), who published a newspaper titled the Typhis Pernambucano (Tiphys of the State of Pernambuco). (shrink)

Political Revolution Revolutions are commonly understood as instances of fundamental socio-political transformation. Since “the age of revolutions” in the late 18th century, political philosophers and theorists have developed approaches aimed at defining what forms of change can count as revolutionary as well as determining if and … Continue reading Political Revolution →.

The aim of the article is to compare the ideas of Herbert Marcuse and Michel Foucault. In his works Marcuse focused on the excluded social circles. Their revolt against the establishment shook up the normative foundations of the social order in the 1960s and the 1970s, which finally led to a cultural revolution. Inspired by these social changes, Foucault was interested in the effects of this revolution at the epistemological and moral level. He recognized that the actions of the excluded (...) circles weakened the institutional order which hitherto tempered the development of the alternative forms of knowledge and lifestyle in the western culture. Hence the contemporary western culture is a place of relentless conflicts between different values and conceptions of truth, but also a place of unique tolerance and a variety of lifestyles. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe work of Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues has established that people do not always think and act “rationally.” However, this amounts to saying that Kahneman and his collaborators interpret people's behavior in experimental settings to be inconsistent with the narrow understanding of rationality deployed by orthodox neoclassical economists. Whether this means that people make poor decisions in the real world, however, has not been demonstrated, a fact that calls into doubt the significance of the list of heuristics and biases (...) generated by behavioral economists. Dual-process theory was meant to give theoretical coherence to this list, but its empirical foundation, too, retains the premises of “rational” choice as an ideal. (shrink)

Мировой порядок как система определенных идей и правил, господ-ствующих в международной политике, стал формироваться в Европе начиная с XVI в., окончательно утвердившись в XIX столетии. Однако этот порядок держится обычно в пределах трех-четырех десятилетий, а затем под влиянием изменившихся обстоятельств и нового баланса сил меняется. В настоящее время мы как раз переживаем период смены ми-рового порядка и начала формирования новой его системы. В статье анализируется начало ослабления мирового порядка, основанного на американской гегемонии, рассматриваются характерные черты и методы, которые используют США (...) для поддержания своих позиций в мире. Автор показывает, почему не могла надолго установиться абсолютная американская гегемония, каким образом глобализация стала более выгодной не для развитых, а для развивающихся стран, как постепенно формировалось убеждение в неизбежности ослабления ли-дерских позиций США. В статье дается характеристика современного положения в международных отношениях как ситуации, когда началась реконфигурация Мир-Системы, что должно означать наступление эпохи турбулентности и формирования новых коалиций. Это будет своего рода переходная эпоха к более устойчивому новому мировому порядку, становление которого будет непростым. Автор высказывает идеи от-носительно того, в каком направлении и как этот новый порядок будет формироваться, о возможных принципах этого порядка и механизмах его установления. (shrink)

Революционные события 1917–1920 гг. в России не только потрясли мир в момент их совершения, но и существенно, даже круто изменили его, причем это влияние в течение десятилетий возрастало. Социали-стическая революция в России вызвала мощный резонанс в мире, стала новым направлением развития. Речь идет не только о силе примера, о повторении события в других обществах. Ее воздействие и шире, и глубже. Она существенно изменила систему мирового порядка в ХХ в. В статье рассмотрен аспект данного влияния на трансформацию миро-вого порядка в разные (...) периоды ХХ в., а также сделана попытка связать это влияние с общими тенденциями исторического процесса. (shrink)

The article analyzes the technological shifts which took place in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries and forecasts the main shifts in the next half a century. On the basis of the analysis of the latest achievements in inno-vative technological directions and also on the basis of the opportunities pro-vided by the theory of production revolutions the authors present a detailed analysis of the latest production revolution which is denoted as ‘Сybernetic’. The authors give some forecasts (...) about its development in the nearest five decades and up to the end of the 21st century. It is shown that the development of various self-regulating systems will be the main trend of this revolution. The authors argue that at first the transition to the beginning of the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution will start in the field of medicine (in its some innovative directions). In future we will deal with the start of convergence of innovative technologies which will form the system of MBNRIC-technologies (i.e. the technological paradigm based on medicine, bio- and nanotechnologies, robotics, IT and cognitive technologies). The article gives a detailed analysis of the future breakthroughs in medicine, bio- and nanotechnologies as well as some other technologies in terms of the development of self-regulating systems with their growing ability to select optimum modes of functioning as well as of other characteristics of the Cybernetic Revolution (resources and energy saving, miniaturization, individualization, etc.). (shrink)

In the present paper, on the basis of the theory of production principles and production revolutions, we reveal the interrelation between K-waves and major technological breakthroughs in history and make some predictions about features of the sixth Kondratieff wave in the light of the Cybernetic Revolution which, we think, started in the 1950s. We assume that the sixth K-wave in the 2030s and 2040s will merge with the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (which we call the phase of self-regulating (...) systems). This period will be characterized by breakthroughs in medical technologies which will manage to combine many other technologies into a single complex of MBNRIC-technologies (med-bio-nano-robo-info-cognitive technologies). The article offers some predictions concerning the development of these technologies. (shrink)

В настоящей статье на базе теории принципов производства и производственных революций мы показываем взаимосвязь между К-волнами и крупнейшими технологическими переворотами в истории, а также делаем прогнозы об особенностях шестой К-волны в свете идущей с 1950-х годов кибернетической революции. Мы предполагаем, что шестая кондратьевская волна в 2030–2040-х годах сольется с завершающей фазой кибернетической революции (которую мы назвали фазой самоуправляемых систем). Этот период будет характеризоваться прорывом в медицинских технологиях, которые смогут объединить вокруг себя много других технологий и в целом составят комплекс МБНРИК-технологий (...) (медико-био-нано-робото-инфо-когнитивных технологий). В статье даются некоторые прогнозы о разви-тии данных технологий. (shrink)

Процесс старения населения захватил не только развитые страны, но и многие развивающиеся, превратившись в глобальный. Представляется, что он будет одним из самых важных процессов в ближайшие десятилетия, определяющим облик общества буду-щего и направление развития технологий. В статье дается анализ некоторых параметров процесса старения населения, показыва-ются его важные следствия для общества и мира в целом. На ос-новании этого анализа делается вывод о том, что грядущий тех-нологический переворот (обозначаемый авторами как завершаю-щая фаза кибернетической революции) и предполагаемый шестой технологический уклад, связанный с наступающей (...) шестой конд-ратьевской волной, будут связаны в первую очередь с прорывами в медицине и смежных с ней технологиях. Также авторы представ-ляют свой взгляд на финансовые инструменты решения проблемы пенсионного обеспечения увеличивающегося пожилого населения в развитых странах. Они считают, что при более целенаправленном использовании денег пенсионных фондов, направлении их (при нуж-ных гарантиях) на образование и рост квалификации молодежи развивающихся стран возможно частично облегчить указанную проблему в развитых государствах. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es interrogar la obra ensayística, literaria y periodística del escritor inglés Gilbert Keith Chesterton desde una perspectiva teórico-política y poner en tensión aquellos elementos conceptuales que se encuentran enfrentados con algunos de los principales supuestos de la modernidad. La propuesta de este trabajo es organizar estos elementos dispersos y postular la posibilidad de estructurar una filosofía política a partir de una lectura que los integre. Se hará hincapié en su crítica a la idea moderna de (...) progreso, para luego explorar la posibilidad de derivar de las reflexiones del autor un cuerpo conceptual coherente que pueda ser considerado relevante para la teoría política. Para esta tarea, se toman como punto de partida conceptos centrales para la ciencia política presentes en sus obras que se encuentran alumbrados por doctrinas teológicas clave dentro del pensamiento cristiano, vector fundamental de sus escritos. Particularmente, se insiste en profundizar en las reflexiones del autor en torno a la democracia, estableciendo una relación específica con sus consideraciones teológicas y políticas. (shrink)