Al-Jazeera and other satellite television stations have transformed Arab politics over the last decade.

The Plebeian Experience describes a recurring phenomenon that clarifies struggles for emancipation throughout history, expanding research into the political agency of the many and shedding light on the richness of radical democratic ...

Taking as its starting point the long-standing characterization of Milton as a "Hebraic" writer, Milton and the Rabbis probes the limits of the relationship between the seventeenth-century English poet and polemicist and his Jewish ...

This paper explores the paradox of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory where the notion of "critical theory" became identified with aesthetics and asks whether the disappearance of the political dimension of critical theory was necessary.This disappearance of the political also presents some uncomfortable affinities between it and postmodernism. But in the more sober world after 1989, post-communism poses more relevant questions than post-modernism for an assessment of the history of the Frankfurt School.The political project of the old Frankfurt School has (...) to be revivified - or at least given a decent burial. (shrink)

In this rethinking of Marxism and its blind spots, Dick Howard argues that the collapse of European communism in 1989 should not be identified with a victory for capitalism and makes possible a wholesale reevaluation of democratic politics in the U.S. and abroad. The author turns to the American and French Revolutions to uncover what was truly "revolutionary" about those events, arguing that two distinct styles of democratic life emerged, the implications of which were misinterpreted in light of the rise (...) of communism. Howard uses a critical rereading of Marx as a theorist of democracy to offer his audience a new way to think about this political ideal. He argues that it is democracy, rather than Marxism, that is radical and revolutionary, and that Marx could have seen this but did not. In Part I, Howard explores the attraction Marxism held for intellectuals, particularly French intellectuals, and he demonstrates how the critique of totalitarianism from a Marxist viewpoint allowed these intellectuals to see the radical nature of democracy. Part II examines two hundred years of democratic political life -- comparing America's experience as a democracy to that of France. Part III offers a rethinking of Marx's contribution to democratic politics. Howard concludes that Marx was attempting a "philosophy by other means," and that paradoxically, just because he was such an astute philosopher, Marx was unable to see the radical political implications of his own analyses. The philosophically justified "revolution" turns out to be the basis of an anti-politics whose end was foreshadowed by the fall of European communism in 1989. (shrink)

Goldmann's "tragic vision" is shown to be founded on an antinomy between the demands of philosophy and those of sociology. To overcome this antinomy, he would need to formulate a 'second' antinomy, between philosophy and politics. This would permit him to think the political nature of modern democracy, rather than reduce it--like the Marxists--to the demands of a social class called the "bourgeoisie." The root of Goldmann's problem is shown to lie in his reading of Kant.

Originally published: Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, c2001.

This book traces a dialectic relationship between “politics” and “antipolitics,” the first, as used here, being akin to philosophy as an activity of open inquiry, plural democracy, and truth-finding, and the latter in the realm of ideology, technocracy, and presupposed certainties. It returns back to the emergence of a New Left movement in the 1960s in order to follow the history of this relationship since then. It addresses contemporary debates by looking to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the (...) Soviet Bloc, and asking in the wake of that: what is a revolution? Finally, it draws on these analyses to examine the age of terrorism after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and resounds with a call to pursue democracy and real politics in the face of new forms of antipolitics. (shrink)

The first part of this study is devoted to an attempt to provide a systematic philosophical argument for the political movement from Marx to Kant. The second half proposes analyses of the New Left of the 60s and the potential birth of a new New Left in the 80s.

Against the backdrop of the radical change in political conditions since the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, noted philosopher and political theorist Dick Howard asks: what is modern politics? Returning to the historical problems posed by the French and American Revolutions, Howard examines the ways that philosophy has tried to understand the contemporary political dilemma. He then puts his theory to the test by looking at political problems in Eastern Europe, in the European Union, and in the United States. This (...) collection of essays, many available in English for the first time, will be useful to philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists. (shrink)

The Marxian Legacy, first published in 1977 and released in a second edition in 1988, was and remains distinct in its view of Marxian theory as 'critique, ' aware of its own origins and limitations and self-conscious about its own historical rootedness in changing social and political conditions. This new and fully revised third edition retains the original synthesis of the divergent traditions of German, critical, and French Marxisms into a living Marxian legacy that changes and reconceptualizes itself, while also (...) providing a new critical introduction and concluding chapter. Such a re-evaluation of the Marxian legacy, which was urgent in the 1970s when the United States was caught up in imperial wars and domestic as well as racial conflict, remains relevant today when—as was the case nearly half a century ago—Marx’s legacy has largely been forgotten and yet remains as a symbol of radical thinking that could inspire the new movements. The Marxian Legacy, 3rd Edition retains the freshness of discovery from those times while fully updating the text for our contemporary moment, and adding two features: a philosophical closure; and, a perspective on what was possible then, and what remains to be done today. (shrink)