In this paper I discuss the possibility of the idea of emancipation within an educational philosophy that does not accept schooling as its first premise. The first part of the paper will take Sweden as an example of an educational state defined through educational policies such as life long learning, accountability and evidence-based research, and argue that these words are only meaningful within the myth of schooling and not in a language of education/emancipation. The second part of the (...) paper discusses different but related conceptions of emancipation by exploring its ambiguous nature. In the third part of the paper I specify the role and place of emancipation within a philosophy of education that seeks to articulate its social value. (shrink)

Feminist theory needs both explanatory-diagnostic and anticipatory-utopian moments in order to be truly critical and truly feminist. However, the explanatory-diagnostic task of analyzing the workings of gendered power relations in all of their depth and complexity seems to undercut the very possibility of emancipation on which the anticipatory-utopian task relies. In this paper, I take this looming paradox as an invitation to rethink our understanding of emancipation and its relation to the anticipatory-utopian dimensions of critique, asking what conception (...) of emancipation is compatible with a complex explanatory-diagnostic analysis of contemporary gender domination as it is intertwined and entangled with race, class, sexuality, and empire. I explore this question through an analysis of two specific debates in which the paradoxical relationship between power and emancipation emerges in particularly salient and seemingly intractable forms: debates over subjection and modernity. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, I argue that a negativistic conception of emancipation offers the best way for feminist critical theory to transform the paradox of power and emancipation into a productive tension that can fuel critique. (shrink)

The growing sophistication in the Soviet discussion about man and morality carries with it the threat that human autonomy may recover some of its Marxian originality in contrast with the Leninist-Stalinist insistence on a mechanist determinism.

Divided he falls -- The path to contradiction: redefining emancipation -- Hegel after Freud -- What Hegel means when he says Vernunft -- The insubstantiality of substance: restoring Hegel's lost limbs -- Love and logic -- How to avoid experience -- Learning to love the end of history: freedom through logic -- Resisting resistance, or freedom is a positive thing -- Absolute or bust -- Emancipation without solutions -- Replanting Hegel's tree.

This article draws on the antebellum political thought of Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany in critically assessing the efficacy of reasonableness in advancing the aims of emancipatory politics in political discourse. I argue, through a reading of Douglass and Delany, that comporting oneself reasonably in the face of oppressive ideology can be counterproductive, if one’s aim is to undermine such ideology and the institutions it supports. Douglass and Delany, I argue, also provide us with a framework for evaluating (...) alternative discursive strategies we might wish to employ in light of the limited value of reasonableness for emancipatory politics. (shrink)

A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his unique (...) position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational -- it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure -- any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority -- whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism -- emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his unique (...) position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational -- it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure -- any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority -- whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism -- emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

Introduction -- Vicissitudes and possibilities of critical theory today -- Global modernity : levels of analysis and conceptual strategies -- Existential social questions, developmental trends and modernity -- History, sociology and modernity -- Realism, trend-concepts and the modern state -- Family, modernization and sociological theory -- The basic forms of social interaction -- The imaginary and politics in modernity: the trajectory -- Critical social theory and developmental trends, emancipation -- References -- Index.

In this article, I critically engage with a vital assumption behind the work of Paulo Freire, and more generally behind any critical pedagogy, viz. the belief that education is fundamentally about emancipation. My main goal is to conceive of a contemporary critical pedagogy which stays true to the original inspiration of Freire’s work, but which at the same time takes it in a new direction. More precisely, I confront Freire with Jacques Rancière. Not only is the latter’s work on (...) education fully predicated on the idea of emancipation. For both Freire and Rancière, literacy initiation practice can be seen as an archetypical model for understanding the emancipatory moment in education. For both, educational practices are never neutral, as they decide to a great extent on the fate of our common world. Reflecting on similarities and differences in both their positions, I will propose to conceive of critical pedagogy in terms of a thing-centred pedagogy. As such, I take a clear position in the discussion between teacher- and student-centred approaches. According to Rancière, it is the full devotion to a ‘thing’, i.e. to a subject matter we study, which makes emancipation possible. Over and against Freire’s defense of emancipatory education, I highlight with Rancière the importance of educational emancipation. (shrink)

Following on from Roy Bhaskarâe(tm)s first two books, A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, establishes the conception of social science as explanatoryâe"and thence emancipatoryâe"critique. Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation starts from an assessment of the impasse of contemporary accounts of science as stemming from an incomplete critique of positivism. It then proceeds to a systematic exposition of scientific realism in the form of transcendental realism, highlighting a conception of science (...) as explanatory of a structured, differentiated and changing world. Turning to the social domain, the book argues for a view of the social order as conditioned by, and emergent from, nature. Advocating a critical naturalism, the author shows how the transformational model of social activity together with the conception of social science as explanatory critique which it entails, resolves the divisions and dualisms besetting orthodox social and normative theory: between society and the individual, structure and agency, meaning and behavior, mind and body, reason and cause, fact and value, and theory and practice. The book then goes on to discuss the emancipatory implications of social science and sketches the nature of the depth investigation characteristically entailed. In the highly innovative third part of the book Roy Bhaskar completes his critique of positivism by developing a theory of philosophical discourse and ideology, on the basis of the transcendental realism and critical naturalism already developed, showing how positivism functions as a restrictive ideology of and for science and other social practices. (shrink)

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we commemorate its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery? In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs—some never before published—from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African (...) Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration. Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end. Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture. (shrink)

The ideal of emancipation has been traditionally grounded on the premise that human activity is not restrained by external boundaries. Thus the realisation of values such as autonomy or recognition has been facilitated by economic growth and material expansion. Yet there is mounting evidence that the human impact on natural systems at the planetary level, a novelty captured by the concept of the Anthropocene, endangers the Earth’s habitability. If human development is to be limited for the sake of global (...) sustainability, can emancipation be kept as a mobilising ideal? As opposed to alternative views such as that of degrowth, this article argues that it can. The key lies in the ability of the Anthropocene to produce planetary subjectivities. By recognising the bounded quality of human embeddedness, the possibility of a different emancipation is opened up. The latter does not give up material well-being, yet it makes sure that the latter does not endanger planetary habitability. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘Subjectification', the cornerstone concept of Biesta's philosophy of education, refers to how autonomy should be realized in educational settings and to the fact that explanation is irrelevant to emancipation. In this article a critical realist reading is provided of how Biesta links narrative learning to emancipation and of the shortcomings that spring from this connection. The central thesis of my argument is that truth and values should take center stage in an educational philosophy of emancipation and that (...) these two concepts are left out of Biesta's conception of emancipation. It is suggested that Biesta's philosophy of emancipation has no criteria for distinguishing what is true from what is false and valuable from invaluable. This happens because it cannot adequately address (i) how one passes from ‘is' to ‘ought’ (ii) the ways in which rational thinking could be emancipatory and (iii) the grounds on which emancipatory living is better than non emancipatory living. (shrink)

Nietzsche has been accused by Habermas of abandoning the pursuit of emancipation and truth. Ironically, this pursuit is at the core of Nietzsche’s works, though radically transformed. The pursuit of knowledge requires emancipated sovereign individuality, a severe honesty, and the courage to follow one's most rigorous use of reason and creative insight wherever they may lead, including the most disturbing insights about truth, language and reason themselves. The first part of this paper discusses Nietzsche’s ideas of individual sovereignty and (...) the associated ideas of emancipation and transformation necessary to this. The next section entitled The Question of Truth: Beyond Universalism and the Quest for Foundations and Certainty deals with how knowledge and truth are intelligible notions in the absence of certainty and absolute standards of truth. The following section, Nietzsche, Habermas and Social Solidarity shows how Habermas’s attempt to ground morality in his discourse ethics cannot succeed once the Nietzchean insight into truth is understood. In the final part, The Irony of Sovereign Individuality, I argue that morality is inconsistent with the individuality that it is supposed to uphold. Nietzsche’s ethical ideal provides a model for concrete individuality that offers the most powerful ethical contribution to social solidarity, given the failure of any grounded morality. (shrink)

This article elicits two overlapping frameworks in which emancipation has been understood and applied to women. The first distinguishes between a) an original definition grounded in Roman Law and defined as release from slavery and b) an Enlightenment sense in which an emancipatory process is associated with a critical ethos. I derive this latter meaning from an analysis of Kant's and Foucault's respective essays on enlightenment. Although they agree that emancipation is an ongoing critical task, I emphasize two (...) aspects of Foucault's version: his attention to practices of liberty that entail bodily as well as subjective reconstruction and his inclusion, among topics for critique, of modernity's ontology of the human subject. In the case of women's emancipation, I argue that both aspects of emancipation must proceed simultaneously because of the distinctive nature of their oppression. For second-wave feminism, I note a continued, although reoriented, equation between women and slaves. But now I identify a further framework whereby emancipation emerges as a threefold although systemic undertaking in which legal, subjectivist, and economic dimensions are at stake. I argue in conclusion that each entails unfinished emancipatory projects that represent timely ways to revive emancipation in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In _The Long Emancipation_ Rinaldo Walcott posits that Black people globally live in the time of emancipation and that emancipation is definitely not freedom. Taking examples from across the globe, he argues that wherever Black people have been emancipated from slavery and colonization, a potential freedom has been thwarted. Walcott names this condition the long emancipation—the ongoing interdiction of potential Black freedom and the continuation of the juridical and legislative status of Black nonbeing. Stating that Black people (...) have yet to experience freedom, Walcott shows that being Black in the world is to exist in the time of emancipation in which Black people must constantly fashion alternate conceptions of freedom and reality through expressive culture. Given that Black unfreedom lies at the center of the making of the modern world, the attainment of freedom for Black people, Walcott contends, will transform the human experience worldwide. With _The Long Emancipation_, Walcott offers a new humanism that begins by acknowledging that present conceptions of what it means to be human do not currently include Black people. (shrink)

Like Frege's distinction of sense and force in semantics, the central distinction of pragmatics is that between perlocutions and illocutions. All speech acts theorists offer a version of this distinction, including Habermas in his theory of communicative action. However, whether or not there is such a distinction at all remains an essentially disputed issue. In this paper I consider the importance of this distinction for analyzing both ideology and rhetoric, but in particular for analyzing one species of rhetorical speech for (...) the purpose of changing beliefs, that engaged in by the social critic. To make these substantive points, I must first consider important recent criticisms of Habermas's distinction, especially those of Erling Skjei and Allen Wood. While I agree with the core of both criticisms, I still think the distinction can be made along the lines that Strawson proposed. I argue that there is not a completely disjunctive, mutually exclusive set of properties defining each type of speech act. There are, and must be, overlapping, nontrivial features common to both. These common features are in fact crucial to the analysis of the sort of speech engaged in by social critics and emancipators. To show this, I argue for the existence of an intermediate class that I call "communicative perlocutions." This class, in turn, overcomes the traditional, Platonic enmity to rhetoric which ought not be imported unquestioned into the philosophy of language or the justification of rational social criticism. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to articulate a conception of emancipation for the Anthropocene. First, the Kantian roots of emancipation understood as the capacity of rational beings to act according to self-chosen ends are explained. It is shown that this conception of emancipation sets the realm of autonomous beings humans over the realm of heteronomous beings. Accounts of the ‘humanisation of nature’ are analysed as incomplete attempts to overcome this dualism. It is argued that the root (...) of this incompleteness lies in the application of analytical rather than dialectical reason to the human–nature interaction. The Anthropocene is presented as the geological–historical moment when at the same time as nature is being humanised, humans are being made aware of themselves as animal. This gives way to a conception of Anthropocene emancipation which will be described in a fourth section. The article concludes with reflections on COVID-19 as a ‘disease of the Anthropocene’ and as an opportunity reflexively, and at unprecedented scale, to internalise our heteronomy and to live an emancipation fit for a terraforming species. (shrink)

This paper explores the status of symbolic representation in the work of the Left Hegelians Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach. Hegel believed, contrary to his Romantic contemporaries, that symbols were too ambiguous to serve as means of philosophical communication; and as his followers turned against religion, they radicalized Hegel's critique of Romantic symbolism in the name of an emancipatory impulse toward clarity and full possession of the object of meaning. While Bauer insisted that the possibility of human emancipation depended (...) on overcoming the otherness of symbolic representation, Feuerbach reintroduced the symbolic as a crucial dimension of his humanist theory of religion and his account of embodied subjectivity. (shrink)

A wide-ranging analysis of the Mokṣopāya, the Indian literary classic that teaches through storytelling how to enjoy an active, successful, worldly life in a spiritually enlightened way. In the Mokṣopāya (also known as the Yogavāsiṣṭha), an eleventh-century Sanskrit poetic text, the great Vedic philosopher Vāsiṣṭha counsels his young protégé Lord Rāma about the ways of the world through sixty-four stories designed to bring Rāma from ignorance to wisdom. Much beloved, this work reflects the philosophy of Kashmir Śaivism. Precisely because all (...) worldly pursuits are dreamlike and fiction-like, the human soul must first come to an experience of non-dualistic, mind-only metaphysics, and after attaining this wisdom, promote moral activism. _Engaged Emancipation_ is a wide-ranging consideration of this work and the philosophical and spiritual questions it addresses by philosophers, Sanskritists, and scholars of religion, literature, and science. Contributors allow readers to walk with Rāma as his melancholy and angst transform into connectivity, peace, and spiritual equipoise. (shrink)

The case for an eco-emancipatory politics to release the Earth from human domination and free us all from lives that are both exploitative and exploited Human domination of nature shapes every aspect of our lives today, even as it remains virtually invisible to us. Because human beings are a part of nature, the human domination of nature circles back to confine and exploit people as well—and not only the poor and marginalized but also the privileged and affluent, even in the (...) world’s most prosperous societies. Although modern democracy establishes constraints intended to protect people from domination as the arbitrary exercise of power, it offers few such protections for nonhuman parts of nature. The result is that, wherever we fall in human hierarchies, we inevitably find ourselves both complicit in and entrapped by a system that makes sustainable living all but impossible. It confines and exploits not only nature but people too, albeit in different ways. In Eco-Emancipation, Sharon Krause argues that we can find our way to a better, freer life by constraining the use of human power in relation to nature and promoting nature’s well-being alongside our own, thereby releasing the Earth from human domination and freeing us from a way of life that is both exploitative and exploited, complicit and entrapped. Eco-emancipation calls for new, more-than-human political communities that incorporate nonhuman parts of nature through institutions of representation and regimes of rights, combining these new institutional arrangements with political activism, a public ethos of respect for nature, and a culture of eco-responsibility. (shrink)

In his classic work The Mind and its Place in Nature published in 1925 at the height of the development of quantum mechanics but several years after the chemists Lewis and Langmuir had already laid the foundations of the modern theory of valence with the introduction of the covalent bond, the analytic philosopher C. D. Broad argued for the emancipation of chemistry from the crass physicalism that led physicists then and later—with support from a rabblement of philosophers who knew (...) as much about chemistry as etymologists—to believe that chemistry reduced to physics. Here Broad’s thesis is recast in terms more familiar to chemists. In the hard sell of particle physics, several prominent figures in chemistry—Hoffmann, Primas, and Pauling—have had their views interpreted to imply that they were sympathetic to greedy reductionism when in fact they were not. Indeed, being chemists without physicists as alter egos, they could not but side with Broad’s contention that chemistry, as a science that deals primarily in emergent phenomena which are beyond the purview of physicalism, owes no acquiescence to particle physics and its ethereal wares. Historically, among the most widely used expediencies in chemistry and materials science are additivity or mixture rules and their cohort transferability, all of which are devised and used under the mantle of naive reductionism. Here it is argued that while the transfer of functional groups between molecules works empirically to an extent, it is strictly outlawed by the no-cloning theorem of quantum mechanics. Several illustrative examples related to chemistry’s irreducibility to physics are presented and discussed. The failure of naive reductionism exhibited by the deep-inelastic scattering of leptons by A > 2 nuclei is traced to the same flawed reasoning that was the original basis of Moffitt’s ‘atoms in molecules’ hypothesis, the neglect of context, nuclei in the case of high-energy physics and molecules in the case of chemistry. A non-exhaustive list of other contexts from physics, chemistry, and molecular biology evidencing similar departures from the ideal of additivity or reductionism is provided for the perusal of philosophers. Had the call by the mathematician J. T. Schwartz for developments in mathematical linguistics possessed of a less single, less literal, and less simple-minded nature been met, perhaps it might have persuaded scientists to abandon their regressive fixation with unphysical reductionism and to adapt to new methodologies that engender a more nuanced handling of ubiquitous emergent phenomena as they arise in Nature than is the case today. (shrink)

The resistance of Muslims to shamanism began when lies of the shamans were exposed on social media. Many shamans practise fraud under the guise of religion. Magical objects such as luminous daggers or stones that emit smoke, used by shamans as occult actors are also known to be objects of magic tricks that are sold freely and can be used by anyone. Scholars also continuously preach that Muslims’ belief in shamans is forbidden. Therefore, Muslims in Indonesia fear that believing in (...) shamans degrades human dignity and makes worship unacceptable. The purpose of this research is to identify the factors that cause the resistance of Muslim youth to shamanism. This study used a cross-sectional design which was conducted by interviewing 3025 Muslim youths who had the desire to highlight shamanism phenomena in North Sumatra. The analysis in this study used a logistic regression test with Jeffreys’s Amazing Statistics Program (JAPS 16 software). The results of this study indicate that Muslim youths have a high resistance to shamanism. The resistance of young Muslims to shamanism is influenced by emancipative Islamic theology ( p < 0.001; Exp [β] = 2.504) and hifz al-din [maintaining religion] ( p = 0.001; Exp [β] = 2.293). Muslim youths have high resistance to shamanism due to the fear that this culture will reduce the dignity of the human caliphate if it is subject to anyone other than Allah. Muslim youth also have high resistance to shamanism because they are of the view that shamanism makes worship unacceptable to Allah SWT. Contribution: This article explains the resistance of Muslim youth to shamanism. It also demonstrates how Muslims live in a multicultural society. (shrink)

Emancipation serves not only as a midwife for progressive agendas such as greater equality and sustainability but also as their gravedigger. This diagnosis underpins Ingolfur Blühdorn’s ‘dialectic of emancipation’, which depicts a dilemma but offers no perspective on how to deal with it. By drawing on Foucault, this article suggests conceiving of emancipation as a task moderns are confronted with even if a given emancipatory project has come to devour its children. Claiming autonomy from given social constellations (...) is key to this task; key also is judging between legitimate and illegitimate claims to autonomy. In late modernity, the criteria for such judgement are no longer universally given. Instead of regarding the latter as entry into mere subjectivism, this article presents judgement as a key political, ‘world building’-activity, a critical social theory may join in, by not only observing the world but by also taking sides in it. (shrink)

This article investigates the work of Žižek and Ernesto Laclau on the topic of Emancipatory politics. Although the positions of each on this topic has recently been criticized by the other, the aim here is to locate the elements that can allow both positions to converge for the purpose of conducting ideological critique of the logic of emancipation and the necessity of utopia. In focusing on this debate, the opposition between populism and class struggle is considered, as well as (...) notions of the universal and the particular as they relate to emancipatory politics and the critique of ideology and hegemony. Finally, the use of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory is assessed in the work of both Laclau and Žižek as a way of positioning historical-political understandings of emancipation and utopia. (shrink)

This paper seeks to answer the following question: does it still make sense today to speak of political emancipation, in particular in the sense bequeathed to us by Marx, as emancipation from capitalism? I consider three serious objections to this possibility: the objection that reference to “capitalism” is unduly essentialist in view of the multiplicity of historical situations; the anti-utopian objection according to which the programme of emancipation from capitalism lacks any precise, practical content; and the normative (...) objection that emancipation in and of itself does not specify the norms of the putative post-capitalist society. In the final section of the paper, I attempt to respond to these three objections, and seek to outline the different levels at which something like an emancipatory project, understood as a surpassing of capitalism, can still make sense today. (shrink)

All theories of critique rely on a – often implicit – description of the activity that doing critique is supposed to consist in. These “pictures of critique” frame all further distinctions and justifications in the debate about critique and critique’s normativity. After distinguishing three pictures of critique – measuring, disrupting and emancipating critique – I ask whether the theoretical reflection in which a certain conception of critique is elaborated is itself accurately captured by the picture of critique it employs. In (...) other words: Is the theoretical reflection of critique a critical activity according to its own picture of critique? I propose to call only those theories of critique critical theories the theoretical activity of which is a critical activity on their own picture of critique - which are surprisingly few. Most critical theories are thereby revealed to be rather traditional when it comes their own theorizing of critique. (shrink)

With his concept of the social unconscious, Erich Fromm showed that the reproduction of social ideologies depends on the suppression of specific social contradictions. Fromm’s concept represents an extension of Freud’s individual-based approach to the unconscious combined with a Marxist-influenced critique of society. In this paper, I will argue that Fromm’s concept of the social unconscious is not only an indispensable component of an emancipative social critique. Furthermore, I will argue that it is through Fromm’s concept that the productive relationship (...) between philosophy, in the sense of an ethical-political social critique, and psychoanalysis becomes fully apparent. (shrink)

In this comprehensive analysis of Jürgen Habermas's philosophy and social theory, Marie Fleming takes strong issue with Habermas over his understanding of rationality and the lifeworld, emancipation, history, and gender. Throughout the book she focuses attention on the various ways in which an idea of emancipation motivates and shapes his universalist theory and how it persists over several major changes in methodology. Her critique of Habermas begins from the view that universalism has to include a vision of gender (...) equality, and she asks why Habermas, despite deeply held concerns about equality and inclusiveness, repeatedly and systematically relegates matters of gender to secondary status in his social and moral theory. She extends her critique to a range of issues in his theory of rationality and examines what she views as his very problematical claims about truthfulness, art, and bourgeois intimacy. The point of Fleming's critique of Habermas is not to dispute universalism, but to build on the key universalist principles of inclusiveness and equality. She is not persuaded by the view, shared by both sympathizers of Habermas and his postmodern critics, that to be for or against Habermas is to be for or against universalism. Her intention rather is to show that Habermas's theory of modernity is so structured that it cannot achieve its universalist aims. Contending that his theory is not universalist enough, she claims that universalism has to be reconceived as a radical, critical, and historical project. (shrink)

In this paper I succinctly outline the standpoint from which Marx criticizes capitalism, namely, by pointing to the difference between the transforming potentiality of technology as developed under the capitalist mode of production, and its effective reality in this same system . On these grounds, I argue that Marx's critique of the capitalist system consists mainly in the fact that the permanent valorization of capital is the goal of production, and that this is an irrational aim which creates as a (...) result an abstract form of domination over individuals . Finally, I reinterpret the meaning of emancipation in Marx's later thought, arguing that it refers to an emancipation from this abstract domination, culminating in an emancipation from work in favor of the creation of increased disposable time .No presente artigo, traço, rapidamente, a perspectiva a partir da qual Marx constrói sua crítica ao capitalismo, a saber, a diferença entre o potencial transformador da técnica tal como desenvolvida sob o modo capitalista de produção e a sua realidade efetiva nesse mesmo sistema . Com isso feito, argumento que a crítica de Marx ao sistema capitalista consiste em grande parte no fato de a valorização permanente do capital ser a meta da produção, uma finalidade irracional e que cria uma dominação abstrata desse mecanismo sobre os indivíduos , de modo a, por fim, repensar o sentido de emancipação no pensamento marxiano tardio, sustentando, sobretudo, que se trata de uma emancipação dessa dominação abstrata que culmina, também, em uma emancipação do trabalho em prol da criação de cada vez mais tempo disponível. (shrink)

The text attempts to rethink the concept of emancipation and how it is structured as political action, while describing its historical origins and how it is further understood by the three important political philosophers: Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Rancière. All three of them – specifically and with substantial differences – understand politics as a space for political action that leads to emancipation in the name of equality. In order to determine the historical origin of the concept (...) in more detail, the argumentation of the text rely upon its elaboration within the school of “conceptual history”, which deals with the historical semantics of terms and sees the etymology of and the change in the meaning of terms as forming a crucial basis for a contemporary cultural, conceptual, and linguistic understanding, and afterwards it links this “pre-history” with Marx’s, Arendt’s, and Rancière’s understanding of the concept of emancipation, and see how they differ and are related to each other, considering what theoretical conclusions about the concept of emancipation we can take from these relations. Particular interest is aimed at how the concept of emancipation is perceived today, who the subject of emancipation is, what the method and final goal of emancipation is, and, finally, how these understandings can help us in the present time when it seems that we need emancipation more than ever. (shrink)

The thesis analyzes the position of Albanian women in the first decade of socialist rule in Montenegro, during which women became full members of society. The efforts of the communist authorities t...

Abstract This essay attempts to articulate an understanding of the goal of ?freedom? in classical Ch'an Buddhism by setting concerns for ?liberation? in relation to the kinds of authority and regulated structure characteristic of Sung dynasty Ch'an monasteries. It begins with the thesis that early Western interpreters of Zen have tended to emphasise the dimensions of Zen freedom that accord with modem Western versions of freedom presupposing tension between freedom and authority as well as between individual autonomy and the demands (...) of a communal setting. These dichotomies, assumed by modem Western interpreters, appear to have been absent from this medieval Chinese context, thus suggesting that their concepts of freedom and liberation must have differed significantly from our own. The essay examines classical Ch'an rhetoric and practices in an effort to reconceive what ?freedom? might have meant in this context and concludes with a proposal for this reconception. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 35-37 [Access article in PDF] Seeking Emancipation through Engagement:One Nichiren Buddhist's Approach to Practice Bill Aiken SGI-USA I was born and raised Roman Catholic, which meant attending Catholic schools, first in the local parish schools and later at a private academy in suburban Philadelphia. As a child I was serious about my religion. I served as an altar boy and had serious thoughts about (...) becoming a priest.That was until the mid-1960s, when my hormones took over, my voice changed, and I converted to hedonism. I hadn't so much turned against my Catholic upbringing as I was temporarily distracted from it.It was when I went away to college that the religious questions began to resurface. Friends and classmates wanted to know what I believed in, and I really didn't know. The old form of Catholicism, with its stern, patriarchal vision of God, didn't seem to fit anymore. But the mystery remained as a palpable presence, and it seemed to require an answer. Was I an atheist? That seemed so negative. How about an agnostic? Possibly. They seemed to believe in something, even if they didn't know what it was. That seemed about right for the moment.My first encounter with Buddhism came during that freshman year at Penn State University in the fall of 1968. While attending a rather psychedelic party, a friend asked me if I knew anything about Buddhism. Replying that I didn't, I asked what Buddhism had to say for itself. My friend said that it spoke of the oneness and interrelatedness of everything. All I can say is that at that particular moment this made sense to me and started me on what would at first be a pretty casual exploration of Buddhism.But it would be in the bedridden summer of 1970, while recovering from a lifestyle-inflicted illness, that I started to reflect on my life in earnest and began to read as though Buddhism had something to say directly to me. More books by Alan Watts led to D. T. Suzuki, which in turn led to collections of sutras and finally to Phillip Kapleau and the Three Pillars of Zen. This would be my guide for the next year as I struggled to bring focus to my mind and my life.Being the poor and struggling student that I was, I could not afford the cost of a [End Page 35] retreat or sesshin training. So I struggled as well as I could with a combination of self-instruction and whatever I could learn from those who did attend these sessions.I should say at this point that while I may have had a highly developed religious sense, I never wanted to become a religious virtuoso or a renunciate. From the depths of my adolescent angst and confusion, I longed for an awakening, but I had conditions. And chief among them was that I would not be pried apart from my life as I knew it. The quietude of the monastery and hours of prayer or meditation held absolutely no appeal for me. If I were going to attain enlightenment it would have to be in Times Square (before Disney took it over). And so, through my daily stumbling efforts at zazen, I began struggling to bring about this awakening.So this is where I was spiritually when on a late summer day in 1971, a pleasant though somewhat scattered young woman approached me on the streets of downtown Philadelphia, invited me to a Buddhist meeting, and introduced me to the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. The first meeting I attended was a rather large one on the campus of Columbia University in NewYork. Everyone seemed pleasant enough, but the meeting seemed more like a pep rally than a serious discussion about the profound teachings of the Buddha. When the main speaker finally took the stage, I found it nearly impossible to understand his broken English. So I'm afraid that I don't remember a single word he... (shrink)

When we consider the social and political disarray of the moment, we are forced to recognize how hard it is, in periods of crisis, to clarify the changes taking place. So it is an urgent and necessary task to return to Michel de Certeau's work, whose central aim is to clarify the transformations that abruptly emerge during times of crisis, transformations that undermine our most tenacious assumptions. Certeau's project is the work of constant reconnaissance. He expressed his need to elucidate (...) what he would call `generating flashes'. The meaning of that need for inventive distancing can be informed by psychoanalysis. From this perspective, the obligation to clarify the most heterogeneous ruptures appears as the echo of an ancient need to express the desire to be with the Other. But Certeau's attitude provoked incomprehension and irritation, so much so that in order to correctly approach his legacy we must first explain the different reception Certeau's texts receive in French-speaking countries compared with, say, the USA. (shrink)

The article argues that feminist emancipation, understood as practices and discourses of self-development and of solidarity as empowerment, has become entangled with the neoliberal project. Indeed, emancipation as self-improvement has become synonymous with moral regulation projects that seek to adapt women to global capitalism. The article explores the relation between emancipation and neoliberal regulation from a situated approach by addressing the experience of Latin American feminisms, with a particular focus on Chile. This approach recognizes by implication that (...) Latin American feminisms are co-extensive, or coeval, with North American and European ones, and are not merely derivative forms. (shrink)