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)

Although Amy Allen’s critique of contemporary Frankfurt School critical theory has been widely discussed, her concern for an adequate conceptualization of reason’s intertwinement with power has not received the attention it deserves. The article shows that the diagnosis of a too idealistic account of reason forms the backbone of Allen’s charges against Habermas, Honneth and Forst, before it discusses her criteria for an adequate conceptualization of the intertwinement of reason and power. It demonstrates that Allen’s attempt to formulate such a (...) conceptualization falls short of two of her own criteria, namely the basic commitments of essentially impure reason and radical self-reflexivity. Taking seriously Allen’s proposal for a radical self-reflexive genealogical critique would force her to question the very terms in which she formulates her critique of critical theory, namely the search for “normative foundations,” and the article sketches a way for doing so. (shrink)

In this article, three theses are proposed. The first is that ›force‹ and ›normativity‹ are not just two fundamental concepts in philosophy today but two paradigms: Each claims to structure how we view the world, to name what is specifically human and to determine the task of philosophy. Their confrontation repeats, according to the second thesis, the dispute between neo-Kantian normativism and life-philosophy in the 19th century, best captured by the concepts of ›life‹ and ›validity.‹ Third, the differences within this (...) repetition concern the position, status and nature of subjectivity: Whereas theories of validity in the 19th century are at least partially anti-subjectivist, and thus accused of being abstract, scholastic and hostile to ›life‹ by life-philosophy, today it is the paradigm of ›force‹ which regards the subject as a contingent result of forces. In contrast, contemporary normativism argues for the autonomy of a sovereign subject whose activity is the source of non-indifference in his or her world. (shrink)

Was bedeutet die steile Karriere von Verantwortung (nicht nur) in der Philosophie, und welchen Preis zahlen wir dafür? Dass große Teile der modernen Philosophie ihr verfallen sind, so die zentrale These, bezahlt diese mit Blindheit für die theoretischen wie praktischen Auswirkungen von Verantwortung. Um sie zu analysieren, muss Verantwortung als diskursiven Operator verstanden werden, dessen Einheit im ambivalenten Selbstverhältnis der Verantwortung Tragenden liegt. Seine praktischen Auswirkungen werden exemplarisch in den Praktiken der Arbeit und der Kriminalität studiert, in denen das verantwortliche (...) Selbstverhältnis intensiviert und zugleich von der Voraussetzung substantieller Handlungsmacht entkoppelt wird. So hilft Verantwortung, eine unternehmerische Logik in die Selbstverhältnisse zunehmend entmachteter Lohnarbeiterinnen und »Arbeitsloser« einzuschmelzen sowie die Bürgerinnen aktiv in die präventiv gewendete Kriminalpolitik einer auf öffentliche Sicherheit fixierten Gesellschaft einzubinden. Die theoretischen Auswirkungen werden anhand der Genealogie von Verantwortung innerhalb der Philosophie analysiert, in der sich Verantwortung vom Instrument in der metaphysischen Debatte um Willensfreiheit zu einem eigenständigen moralischen Problem und schließlich zur Gewissheit wandelt, mit der andere philosophische Fragen erklärt werden. Fixpunkt aller Reflexionen bleibt das ambivalente verantwortliche Selbstverhältnis als aktiver Umgang mit dem Faktum des eigenen Unterwerfens – sowohl dem Unterworfen-sein als auch dem Unterwerfen Anderer. Das zum Faktum erklärte Unterwerfen erlaubt dem Subjekt, sich unabhängig von seiner tatsächlichen Handlungsmacht als souverän zu erleben, und bildet den verborgenen Kern des verantwortlichen Selbstverhältnisses. Weil Verantwortung aber zunehmen gebraucht wird, um die Bindungskraft von Normativität als ureigenes Gebiet der Philosophie zu explizieren, verleitet ihre Attraktivität dazu, diese Selbstobjektivierung zu übersehen oder zu leugnen und den praktischen Gebrauch der philosophischen Legitimierungen von Verantwortung auszublenden. Dagegen setzt dieses Buch eine diagnostische Kritik, die den Bann der Verantwortung wenn nicht bricht, so doch entlarvt. (shrink)

Currently, the rise of science denialism is met by a new positivism that is equally detrimental for the natural and social sciences and humanities. Both paint an unrealistic picture of science in the singular, based on an idealist epistemology. In stark opposition, the article argues for a materialist epistemology that can support a realistic understanding of scientific practices by taking seriously their plurality, historicity and contextuality.

‘Post-truth’ is a failed concept, both epistemically and politically because its simplification of the relationship between truth and politics cripples our understanding and encourages authoritarianism. This makes the diagnosis of our ‘post-truth era’ as dangerous to democratic politics as relativism with its premature disregard for truth. In order to take the step beyond relativism and ‘post-truth’, we must conceptualise the relationship between truth and politics differently by starting from a ‘non-sovereign’ understanding of truth.

Although the various interpretations of Foucault’s model of critique often seem to differ only in minor details, they seriously diverge by situating critique on different levels of abstraction in Foucault’s work. Mapping interpretations of Foucault’s critique according to this criterion shows that none of them pays full attention to all three of Foucault’s methodological imperatives which he calls nihilism, nominalism and historicism. The article offers such a reading of Foucault’s critique, interpreting it as a diagnostic practice of prefigurative emancipation. The (...) task of diagnosing the present explains how Foucault’s critique functions as a philosophical practice, and by making explicit in which ways it emancipates us, it gives us reasons why we might be interested in doing critique like that. (shrink)

How is philosophical knowledge related to the world in which it is produced – and how should it be related? In the article, “world” refers to the whole of historically established, politically contested and materially constituted practices. Three ideal-type relationships are distinguished: affirmatively in the world, negatively against the world, and with the world. The article argues for the latter because it combines the two decisive insights of the first two relationships: the insight into philosophy’s facticity, i. e., it being (...) bound to the world, and the insight into philosophy’s freedom, i. e., that it can, nevertheless, turn against that world. Political epistemology is needed to explicate any philosophy with the world because it holds together, in a productive tension, minimal materialism as the core of the insight into philosophy’s facticity and the irreducibility of thought as the core of the insight into philosophy’s freedom. (shrink)

Most people would agree that we should behave and act in a responsible way. Yet only 200 years ago, ‘responsibility’ was only of marginal importance in discussions of law and legal practice, and it had little ethical significance. What is the significance of the fact that ‘responsibility’ now plays such a central role in, for example, work, the welfare state, or the criminal justice system? What happens when individuals are generally expected to think of themselves as ‘responsible’ agents? And what (...) are the consequences of the fact that the philosophical analysis of ‘responsibility’ focuses almost exclusively on conditions of agency that are mostly absent from real life? -/- In this book, Frieder Vogelmann demonstrates how large parts of philosophy have fallen under responsibility’s spell, and he uses a Foucauldian approach in an attempt to break it. The three axes of power, knowledge, and self are used in a detailed analysis of the practical regimes of labour (including the welfare state), criminality (including policing, punishment practices, and criminal proceedings), and philosophy, and of the two subject positions required by ‘responsibility’ – those of the attributors and bearers of responsibility – within them. The power relations between these positions, which Vogelmann carefully excavates from the grounds of our practices, reveal that the deck is stacked unevenly from the start. (shrink)

In this paper we pose the question what constitutes the originality of governmentality as a state analytical framework by confronting it with alternative contemporary approaches in state theory, suggesting that the latter may already contain many of the insights Foucaultians sometimes tend to ascribe to the governmentality perspective exclusively and thus run the risk of reinventing the state theoretical wheel. Still, we argue that there is something unique to the governmentality perspective, namely a particular kind of unwieldy knowledge about the (...) state it aims to produce. Generating such knowledge would no longer be state theory but rather state philosophy in a specifically Foucaultian sense. (shrink)

Die Behauptung, dass Verantwortung eine Subjektform sowie die Technik zu ihrer Herstellung bezeichnet, wird kaum Erstaunen auslösen. Wozu wären all die auf Verantwortung sich stützenden ethisch-moralischen Normen auch gut, wenn sie nicht unsere Subjektivität formen könnten? Dieses Selbstverständnis als verantwortliche Subjekte ist Nietzsches zentralen Angriffspunkt in der zweiten Abhandlung von "Zur Genealogie der Moral". Doch sein Verständnis von Verantwortung als Subjektivierungstechnik und Subjektform war im Kontext des philosophischen Diskurses, in dem er sich selbst verortet, alles andere als eine Selbstverständlichkeit. Der (...) junge Begriff »Verantwortung« war noch zu eng am Recht orientiert, um ein Selbstverhältnis zu besitzen, und wurde von der Philosophie nur in der metaphysischen Schlacht um die Willensfreiheit gebraucht. (shrink)

In seinen letzten beiden Vorlesungen untersucht Foucault anhand der historischen Praxis des freimütigen Sprechens auch seine eigenen methodologischen Begriffe. An den aus den antiken Quellen herausgearbeiteten Formen der parrhesia – als demokratische Politik, als philosophische Subjektivierungstechnik und als kynische Kritik – prüft Foucault so zugleich sein eigenes Vorgehen, Philosophie als Politik der Wahrheit zu betreiben.

Die Debatte um die Differenz von „Verantwortung“ und „Pflicht“ ist kein bloßer Streit um Wörter, geht es doch um Begriffe, für die der Anspruch erhoben wird, sie seien konstitutiv für moralische Normativität oder gar für Normativität per se. Doch welchen Unterschied macht es, die besondere Bindungskraft von Normativität über Verantwortung oder über Pflicht zu explizieren? Die Genealogie der philosophischen Reflexionen auf Verantwortung lokalisiert die Differenz zwischen Pflicht und Verantwortung in den jeweiligen Selbstverhältnissen, die mit diesen Begriffen verbunden werden. Die Analyse (...) der Struktur dieser Selbstverhältnisse erklärt sowohl, warum Verantwortung häufig als moderner Ersatzbegriff für Pflicht gedacht wird, als auch, welchen Unterschied die Explikation der Bindungskraft von Normativität über Verantwortung oder Pflicht macht: Je nachdem, mit welchem Begriff normative Kraft erläutert wird, wandert das entsprechende Selbstverhältnis in die Verfasstheit von Normativität ein. (shrink)

Zunehmend wird Foucault als »Praxeologe« gelesen und an sein Konzept von Praktiken angeschlossen. Dabei übersehen die meisten dieser Versuche jedoch, welche Anforderungen die foucaultschen Untersuchungen entlang der drei Achsen der Wissensformationen, der Machtbeziehungen und der Selbstverhältnisse an das von Foucault nie selbst explizierte Praktikenkonzept stellen. Der Vortrag skizziert einen Begriff von Praktiken, der ihnen gerecht werden kann, sowie dessen philosophische Implikationen.

n diesem Beitrag zum Scherpunkt "Politische Theorie in der Krise" untersuche ich das von liberalen Theorien produzierte Wissen. Der Beitrag folgt dazu drei Selbstbeschreibungen des politischen Liberalismus, der sich erstens selbst als dominierendes Zentrum der gegenwärtigen Politischen Theorie sieht, der zweitens Anspruch darauf erhebt, mit seinem Wissen die politischen Selbstverständnisse von Bürger_innen anleiten und verändern zu können, und der schließlich drittens seine eigene Wirksamkeit in der Wirklichkeit im Rahmen der Diskussion um ideale und nicht-ideale Theorie verhandelt. Im affirmativen Nachvollzug dieser (...) drei Selbstbeschreibungen zeigt der Artikel, wie das Wissen des politischen Liberalismus eine von politischen Konflikten befreite Wirklichkeit erzeugt und zugleich die politischen Selbstverständnisse der Bürger_innen mithilfe dieser Wirklichkeitskonstruktion lenkt. Damit zielt das Wissen des politischen Liberalismus darauf ab, eine Subjektivität zu formen, die sich zugunsten einer rechtsförmigen Verwaltung von Politik verabschiedet. (shrink)

Does truth have a history? Whereas Bernard William denies it and only allows a history of truthfulness, I defend the possibility of a critical history or genealogy of truth. Because a trifling relativistic historicization of truth leads to a paradoxically a-historic and pacifistic conception of truth, one must first establish the methodological concepts with which a genealogy of truth can avoid both problems. Three first steps towards such concepts can be found in some of Michel Foucault’s lectures, which lead the (...) genealogy of truth to focus on the origins of truth’s force. (shrink)

This review of Bernard Harcourt’s "Critique & Praxis" focuses on the book’s two guiding ideas that (a) critical theory has been on an “epistemological detour” which has separated it from critical praxis, and that (b) the lesson critical theory should learn from its “epistemological detour” is a heightened reflexivity in its action imperative, that Harcourt reformulates as “What more am I to do?” The review suggests that this historical account of critical theory is not quite right and that the reformulated (...) action imperative runs into well-known objections from the feminist debate about representation or the abolishment thereof. (shrink)

Does Habermas have the conceptual resources to not only rationally reconstruct the political shape of the European Union as a supranational democracy with a “shared sovereignty” between European citizens and member states, but to also rationally reconstruct the economic practices and processes? My answer will be in the affirmative, and my argument takes the form of an exemplary sketch how such a reconstruction might look like. It is, however, nothing more than a sketch because both rational reconstructions are so far-reaching (...) that they amount to reconstructive revolutions. Obviously, some presuppositions need to be addressed. My question is triggered by an asymmetry in Habermas’ writings on Europe, an asymmetry I will explicate together with the methodological premises of those writings. Hence, I will first turn to the method of rational reconstruction which Habermas uses for his analysis of the European Union. My third step will be to suggest that the economy is unnecessarily excluded from these considerations and I will present one possibility how a rational reconstruction of economic practices might look like – and where it gets a footing in those practices even if we strive to uphold the distinction between system and lifeworld. Finally, I will answer two obvious objections. (shrink)

Foucault’s concept of ‘biopolitics’ has sparked a lively debate within critical theory, although Foucault himself rarely used it after The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. In this chapter I argue that the reasons both for the way ‘biopolitics’ stirred Foucault’s readers and for his subsequent abandonment are to be found in the relation between Foucault’s model of critique and the role ‘biopolitics’ plays in it: it names the counter-truths derived from Foucault’s critical diagnosis of the dispositif of sexuality. Since ‘biopolitics’ (...) was introduced as a notion with a specific critical function closely tied to Foucault’s model of critique, I first explicate this model of critique as a diagnostic practice of prefigurative emancipation before re-reading Le Volonté de Savoir from this methodological perspective. After Le Volonté Savoir, Foucault tried turning ‘biopolitics’ into a descriptive term, no longer naming the critical diagnosis but the object to be criticised. Yet within Foucault’s model of critique, this required him to produce a new critical diagnosis which he never did. The implication for contemporary usages of ‘biopolitics’ in critical theory is that it either needs to develop its own counter-truths from a critical analysis of biopolitics or use a different model of critique. (shrink)

Contemporary concerns about the increase in untruths in politics have renewed interest in the relationship between truth and politics. Is democracy losing its foundations in a ‘post-truth era’ because it is becoming disconnected from reality? Or are facts, to which a technocratic mindset cannot tolerate alternatives, threatening to suppress political debate? In twelve contributions, political theorists investigate the relationship between truth and politics against the background of the current discussion. With contributions by Floris Biskamp, Oliver Flügel-Martinsen, Eva Marlene Hausteiner, Oliver (...) Hidalgo, Anna Hollendung, Dominik Klein, Gundula Ludwig, Franziska Martinsen, Johannes Marx, Martin Nonhoff, Frank Nullmeier, Samuel Salzborn, Hagen Schölzel, Frieder Vogelmann and Lucas von Ramin. (shrink)

Political epistemology is the name of an ambitious task. In order to aptly conceptualise the internal relationship between truth and knowledge on one side, and politics and society on the other side, political epistemology must reformulate the concepts of epistemology and social and political theory. For the concept of knowledge, this task implies to consider the truth and the force of knowledge equally. Frieder Vogelmann shows in his book the far-reaching consequences of this endeavour: for the contemporary debate about untruth (...) in politics, for the possible forms of social critique, and for the reflection upon philosophy and its history. (shrink)

"Foucault lesen" [Reading Foucault] proposes a systematic and philosophical readig of Foucaut’s work: Systematically, I emphasize Foucault’s methodological perspective as a nihilistic, nominalistic and historicistic analysis of practices and the realities produced by them. This analysis proceeds along the three axes of knowledge, power and self-relations. I explore the consequences of this interpretation regarding the debates about Foucault’s concept of critique, his attack on the science humaines and his stance vis-à-vis neoliberalism. My interpretation amounts to a philosophical reading because it (...) demonstrates that the ‘history of truth’ is at the core of Foucault’s philosophy. (shrink)

Review of the following books (in German): -/- Michael Ruoff: Foucault-Lexikon, München 2007. Fink/UTB. -/- Clemens Kammler, Rolf Parr und Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Hrsg.): Foucault-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, Stuttgart 2008. Metzler. -/- Paul Veyne: Foucault. Der Philosoph als Samurai, Stuttgart 2009. Reclam. -/- Thomas Lemke: Gouvernementalität und Biopolitik, Wiesbaden 2007. VS Verlag. -/- Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer und Yves Winter (Hrsg.): Gouvernementalität und Sicherheit. Zeitdiagnostische Beiträge im Anschluss an Foucault, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Daniel Hechler und Axel Philipps (...) (Hrsg.): Widerstand denken. Michel Foucault und die Grenzen der Macht, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Jeffrey T. Nealon: Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifi cations since 1984, Stanford 2008. Stanford University Press. -/- Amy Allen: The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, New York 2008. Columbia University Press. -/- Wendy Brown: Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, Princeton 2006. Princeton University Press. -/- Giorgio Agamben: Was ist ein Dispositiv?, Zürich-Berlin 2008. Diaphanes. -/- Philipp Sarasin: Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie, Frankfurt/M. 2008. Suhrkamp. (shrink)

Although the governmentality literature has occasionally acknowledged the importance of the concept of a liberal truth-regime, there has never been a thorough investi-gation of the role it plays in Foucault’s governmentality lectures. Therefore, this paper begins with an examination of the lectures’ “archaeological dimension” that leads to two claims: First, it shows that the crucial conceptual tool in the lectures is the question about the relation to truth that a particular political rationality possesses. Only by looking at the changing truth-regimes (...) of the liberal governmentalities will their differences and continuities come into full contrast. The article’s second claim is that this conceptually sharpened understanding of the political rationalities is required for a diagnosis of the present, which reveals that today’s dominant governmentality is no longer neo-liberalism but a new liberal rationality: neosocial market economy. (shrink)

Although seldom examined and not explained by Robert Brandom himself, the concept of responsibility is as important as the concept of inference for Brandom’s account of discursivity. Whereas ‘inference’ makes explicit the propositional content of concepts as the inferentially structured totality of their relations of material incompatibility, ‘responsibility’ makes explicit the normative force of these relations. ‘Responsibility’ thus becomes the paradigm of understanding normativity’s binding force – and my critical reading demonstrates that it fosters a moralizing, juridifying and economizing understanding (...) of normativity’s binding force. Furthermore, a diagnostic interpretation of Nietzsche’s genealogy of ‘responsibility’ reveals that Brandom’s concept of ‘responsibility’ is not an exception but exemplary for how ‘responsibility’ is used in philosophy. (shrink)

Klaus Günther’s discourse theory of law links the concept of criminal responsibility with the legitimacy of democratic law. Because attributions of criminal responsibility are always aimed at a person, they contain an implicit conception of the person. In a democracy under the rule of law, Günther argues, this conception of a person must be understood, as a “deliberative person”, a free and autonomous person capable of being both the addressee and the author of legal norms. The “deliberative person” is the (...) conceptual core of criminal responsibility, yet Günther develops it using a concept of “communicative accountability” modeled on the concept of criminal responsibility that it is designed to explicate. My aim is to bring this circular grounding of criminal responsibility into view and argue that Günther’s discourse theory of law is based on a legalized picture of discourse. (shrink)

Review of the following books: -/- Michael Ruoff: Foucault-Lexikon, München 2007. Fink/UTB. -/- Clemens Kammler, Rolf Parr und Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Hrsg.): Foucault-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, Stuttgart 2008. Metzler. -/- Paul Veyne: Foucault. Der Philosoph als Samurai, Stuttgart 2009. Reclam. -/- Thomas Lemke: Gouvernementalität und Biopolitik, Wiesbaden 2007. VS Verlag. -/- Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer und Yves Winter (Hrsg.): Gouvernementalität und Sicherheit. Zeitdiagnostische Beiträge im Anschluss an Foucault, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Daniel Hechler und Axel Philipps (Hrsg.): Widerstand (...) denken. Michel Foucault und die Grenzen der Macht, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Jeffrey T. Nealon: Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifi cations since 1984, Stanford 2008. Stanford University Press. -/- Amy Allen: The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, New York 2008. Columbia University Press. -/- Wendy Brown: Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, Princeton 2006. Princeton University Press. -/- Giorgio Agamben: Was ist ein Dispositiv?, Zürich-Berlin 2008. Diaphanes. -/- Philipp Sarasin: Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie, Frankfurt/M. 2008. Suhrkamp. (shrink)

This introduction diagnoses two tendencies among Foucaultian scholars with regard to Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: While the book was initially enthusiastically embraced and its central concepts – above all “discipline” and “panopticism” – were used almost too frequently, these very concepts were often thought to be superseded by Foucault’s own development in the governmentality lectures and beyond. The articles in the special issue, however, demonstrate that Discipline and Punish, read carefully with neither uncritical enthusiasm nor progressivist dismissal, has still (...) a lot to offer for today’s critical theory and cultural analysis. (shrink)

Starting with the observation that transparency has become a concept so familiar that one hardly ever stops to consider the presuppositions and consequences of its usage, the chapter analyses transparency demands as a specific way of exercising power. By doing so, the author shows that the intrinsic logic of transparency leads to paradoxical effects. Any attempts to realize complete transparency undermine its own preconditions. As Vogelmann argues, instead of providing more visibility and clarity, transparency makes its objects “invisible” and the (...) intensification of transparency demands produces self-censorship. The chapter concludes that transparency claims undermine the distinction between the private and the public and threaten the individual autonomy. (shrink)

Introduction to the Special Issue "Responsibility - a Contested Concept".

Most conceptual analyses of responsibility fail to sufficiently account for the historicity of the concept – both within philosophical reflections and within non-philosophical practices. Three frequently encountered problems are: First, “responsibility” is often read retrospectively in texts where the concept is not present; second, the necessary and sufficient conditions that account for responsibility’s meaning are often derived from contemporary usage alone; and third, the non-philosophical usage of “responsibility” is often dismissed as “defective” too quickly. To avoid all three problems, I (...) argue for a Foucauldian analysis of practices in which “responsibility” is used. (shrink)