Empirical data show that members of underrepresented and historically marginalized groups in academia undertake many forms of undervalued or unnoticed labor. While the data help to identify that this labor exists, they do not provide a thick description of what the experience is like, nor do they offer a framework for understanding the different kinds of invisible labor that are being undertaken. We identify and analyze a distinct, undervalued, and invisible labor that the data have left (...) unnamed and unmeasured: ontological labor, the work required to manage one’s identity and body if either or both do not fit into academic structures, norms, and demands. We argue that ontological labor efforts should be understood as a form of labor. We then provide a characterization of ontological labor, detailing the labor as navigating one’s obligations to give and managing entitlements to take. We also highlight the ontological labor that takes place through instances of resistance, such as through complaint or refusals. (shrink)

The labor market is an area with diverse data structures and multiple applications, such as matching job seekers with the right training or job. For this reason, the multilingual classification of European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) is a good example of the central role of ontologies in this area. However, ESCO cannot provide all the details of local labor market needs and does not provide links to other hierarchies of competences. For example, other taxonomies of occupations (...) and skills are widely used in German-speaking countries, but they are not in a state where they are easily accessible for interoperability and reasoning. In this paper, we present a first version of a German Labor Market Ontology (GLMO) that uses ESCO as a top-level ontology for the target domain. This makes it highly interoperable and comparable to existing ontologies by providing details for the regional structures in German-speaking countries. In addition, we present a detailed evaluation of the provided data and applications, as well as an extensive discussion of future work. (shrink)

As Bhaskar (1989:1) argues, we need to take philosophy seriously because it underwrites both what constitutes science and knowledge and which political practices are deemed legitimate. At present, the field of educational research internationally is witnessing a pragmatist trend, whereby practical education research is carried out without reference to ontological and epistemological concerns. For David Reynolds, a leading UK school effectiveness academic, '[p]recisely because we did not waste time on philosophical discussion or on values debates, we made rapid progress' (...) (1998:20). Equally, for Teddlie, '[t]he orientation of many in the US is to do rather than to reflect […] In reality many practitioners are currently interested in what could work at their school […rather…] than in ruminations about social inequalities associated with different socioeconomic classes' (Teddlie and Reynolds 2000:27). The purpose of this chapter is not only to reclaim critical realist social philosophy for educational research, but also to reclaim reality from the positivist and statistical methodology that underpins School Effectiveness Research (SER) and to make clear the difference that realism makes by virtue of its critical explanatory power in unmasking the ideological nature of SER and its adoption by New Labour. (shrink)

This book challenges received notions of ontology in political theory and international relations by offering a psychoanalytically informed critique of depoliticisation in prominent liberal, post-liberal, dialogic and agonistic approaches to pluralism in world politics. Paipais locates the temptation of depoliticisation in their labouring under the fundamental fantasy of various guises of foundationalism (in the form of either political anthropology or ontology as ‘in the last instance’ ground) or, conversely, anti-foundationalism (the denial of all grounds, yet still operating within a foundationalist (...) imaginary). He argues, instead, for a formal political ontology of the void (against historicism) shot through an ‘incarnate’ messianic nihilism (against ethicism and teleological forms of politics). In so doing, the author offers critical readings of the messianic nihilism of Benjamin, Agamben, Taubes and Žižek by problematising the antinomian tendencies in their respective political theologies. The book argues for a version of Žižek’s Badiouian politics of militancy supplemented by a proper participatory understanding of St Paul’s messianic meontology and incarnational Christology as a means to reconceptualise the nexus between subjectivity, universality and political action in world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations theory, political theory, critical social theory and political theology. (shrink)

Lévinas is the philosopher of the absolutely Other, the thinker of the primacy of the ethical relation, the poet of the face. Against the formalism of Kantian subjectivity, the totality of the Hegelian system, the monism of Husserlian phenomenology and the instrumentalism of Heideggerian ontology, Lévinas develops a phenomenological account of the ethical relation grounded in the idea of infinity, an idea which is concretely produced in the experience with the absolutely other, particularly, in their face. The face of the (...) other, irreducible to any ontological structure of being or any epistemological intentionality of representation, reaches out from on high across the abyss of the isolated ego, commanding respect all the while granting the possibility of murder. This experience overflows the subjective capacity of the separated ego, forcing it “beyond being.” This anarchic relation with the Other is the groundless condition of possibility for ethical life, that is, truly human life. The structure of the ethical relation can then be determined in hindsight as the ground of meaning for what it is to be an I at all. -/- This is a pretty uncontroversial reading of Lévinas' work, especially Totality and Infinity. And yet, there is one small problem. If this is what Lévinas is doing, then why does the largest section of Totality and Infinity – section II, “Interiority and Economy” – have nothing to do with ethics, the other, or the face at all? Why is it devoted to an arduous analysis of what he calls separation, egoism, economy, enjoyment, labour, and possession? In other words, why does Lévinas spend so much energy on writing about the egoist at the heart of his magnum opus, which is supposedly a text devoted to the Other? And furthermore, why is this section one of the least discussed in the secondary literature on Lévinas? -/- These questions motivate the present inquiry, which modestly seeks to understand what Lévinas is up to in this section. Once laying out the basic story, I will focus on the concepts of labour and possession, for I think these are the unrecognized pivots upon which the transition from ego to Other turns. I will also make some slight attempts to interpret Lévinas' direct or indirect comments on Plato, Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. For although he distances himself from these giants, he stands on their shoulders as well. (shrink)

The article discusses the works of Samara researchers T.N. Sosnina and L.B. Chetyrova in the field of the philosophy of labor. The analysis is carried out in the context of the need to resolve the socio-epistemological situation of the “death of labor” and to rethink the content of the concept of labor. T.N. Sosnina opened this thematic field of research in Samara in the 1970s with the development of philosophical theory of the subject of labor. As (...) a result, the proper activity of the subject of labor was explained, the subject of labor in the system of spiritual production was singled out, and the prospect of a broad interpretation of labor activity that would include spiritual and managerial components was outlined. Methodological potential of the theory of the subject of labor was further used in the framework of noosphere paradigm approach for the analysis of material production flows and life cycles of the formation of products of nature and society. Taking into account the activity of means and subjects of labor, T.N. Sosnina presented the picture of the world as a universal cooperation. L.B. Chetyrova, discussing historical and cultural panorama of conceptions of labor, interpreted labor as a spiritual and practical activity. Obvious diversity of spiritual culture of the society naturally determines plurality of labor interpretations. Of particular interest is the analysis of the labor concept from the position of linguoconceptology as well as from the prospect of the images of labor in the history of mythology, religion, philosophy, and other worldviews. The Samara philosophy has answered the intellectual challenge of the concept the “death of labor,” proposing pan-ergonism – a worldwiew asserting the totality of labor. This worldview ontologizes the concept of the “labor of the being” and continues the tradition of ergodicy, various versions of which were developed by thinkers of the Silver Age of Russian culture. (shrink)

Should the regulation of production and distribution in a socialist society be based on the law of value? In this article we ask (1) Is this question not based on an ontological understanding of labour, on a rational and therefore conceptual understanding of abstract labour and, ultimately, a transhistorical understanding of value and the so-called ‘law of value’?; (2) is it not precisely this deception and power of the fetishism of commodities that, by eternalising value and the ‘law of (...) value’, limits the horizon and perspective of ‘realistic politics’ (Realpolitik)?; and (3) whether this question does not treat socialism as a political situation where the solution to its ‘economic’ problem is unrelated to its very identity? In order to answer these questions, we provide a novel understanding of Marx’s fundamental category of value, its substance, form and magnitude, with the help of the German expression Formgehalt, translated as form-content. (shrink)

In both continental and analytical philosophy, social ontology has emerged as a particularly lively and increasingly sophisticated area of debate. This essay explores the potential contribution that social-ontological thinking can make to the continued development of critical theory via a critical reading of Georg Lukács and the Possibility of Critical Social Ontology – a collection of essays edited by Michael J. Thompson and published by Brill as part of the Studies in Critical Social Sciences series. The essay argues that (...) whilst social ontology as such no doubt offers a fruitful avenue for contemporary critical theory, the later philosophy of Georg Lukács represents an untenable and antiquated theoretical resource for such endeavours. The conceptual and systematic barriers to the revitalisation of the late Lukács are explored with specific reference to Lukács’ specific interpretation of the paradigm of labour and, closely related to this, his philosophy of history. (shrink)

The question of the division of cognitive labor has given rise to various models characterizing the way scientists should distribute their efforts. These models often consider the scientific community as a self-governed sphere constituted by rational agents making choices on the basis of fixed rules. Such models have recently been criticized for not taking into account the real mechanisms of science funding. Hence, the question of the utility of the DCL models in guiding science policy remains an open one. (...) In this paper, we show that two unconsidered dimensions would have to be taken into account. First, DCL studies miss the existence of distinct levels of epistemic objectives organizing the research process. Indeed, the scientific field is structured as a system of hierarchical, interconnected practices which are defined both by their inherent purposes and by various superposed external functions. Second, I criticize the absence of ontological considerations, since the epistemological significance of pluralism is highly dependent on the nature of the object under study. Because of these missing dimensions, current DCL models might have a limited usefulness to identify good practices of research governance. (shrink)

O artigo busca esclarecer a distinção fundamental entre a positividade ontológica da objetivação e da alienação segundo György Lukács e a negatividade intrínseca a estes conceitos entre uma enorme gama de pensadores. Para tanto, o artigo toma por eixo as diferenças entre o filósofo húngaro e Hegel, que postulou de forma clássica a negatividade dos momentos da alienação e da objetivação.This article aims to clarify the fundamental distinction between the ontological positivity of objectivation and alienation according to György Lukács (...) and the intrinsic negativity of these concepts among an enormous series of writers. To do so, the article focuses, on this particular, between the Hungarian philosopher and Hegel, who set the classical prototype of the negative concepts of alienation objectivation. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I the world's essence: Rational or irrational? II labor, imprisonment, and christianity III the world as will and representation and“Self‐Consciousness” in hegel's phenomenology Notes Further reading.

Working from the post-Workerist tradition, this essay re-specifies the phenomenon of immaterial labor. Immaterial labor is not simply a mode of work relevant to the information-based global economy. Instead, immaterial labor is inherent to the human condition: human beings materialize realities through the immaterial means of communication. This ontological approach to immaterial labor enables us to rethink the radical project: rather than trying to “change the world,” we are now called to create alternative realities that (...) resist the subjugation of our immaterial laboring. Since we are all immaterial laborers, we all have a stake in revolutionizing our realities. This essay provides a preliminary sketch of this political philosophy. (shrink)

The question of the division of cognitive labor has given rise to various models characterizing the way scientists should distribute their efforts. These models often consider the scientific community as a self-governed sphere constituted by rational agents making choices on the basis of fixed rules. Such models have recently been criticized for not taking into account the real mechanisms of science funding. Hence, the question of the utility of the DCL models in guiding science policy remains an open one. (...) In this paper, we show that two unconsidered dimensions would have to be taken into account. First, DCL studies miss the existence of distinct levels of epistemic objectives organizing the research process. Indeed, the scientific field is structured as a system of hierarchical, interconnected practices which are defined both by their inherent purposes and by various superposed external functions. Second, I criticize the absence of ontological considerations, since the epistemological significance of pluralism is highly dependent on the nature of the object under study. Because of these missing dimensions, current DCL models might have a limited usefulness to identify good practices of research governance. (shrink)

_Ontology of Production_ presents three essays by the influential Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, translated for the first time into English by William Haver. While previous translations of his writings have framed Nishida within Asian or Oriental philosophical traditions, Haver's introduction and approach to the texts rightly situate the work within Nishida's own commitment to Western philosophy. In particular, Haver focuses on Nishida's sustained and rigorous engagement with Marx's conception of production. Agreeing with Marx that ontology is production and production is (...) ontology, Nishida in these three essays—"Expressive Activity", "The Standpoint of Active Intuition", and "Human Being" —addresses sense and reason, language and thought, intuition and appropriation, ultimately arguing that in this concept of production, ideality and materiality are neither mutually exclusive nor oppositional but, rather, coimmanent. Nishida's forceful articulation of the radical nature of Marx's theory of production is, Haver contends, particularly timely in today's speculation-driven global economy. Nishida's reading of Marx, which points to the inseparability of immaterial intellectual labor and material manual labor, provokes a reconsideration of Marxism's utility for making sense of—and resisting—the logic of contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

_Ontology of Production_ presents three essays by the influential Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, translated for the first time into English by William Haver. While previous translations of his writings have framed Nishida within Asian or Oriental philosophical traditions, Haver's introduction and approach to the texts rightly situate the work within Nishida's own commitment to Western philosophy. In particular, Haver focuses on Nishida's sustained and rigorous engagement with Marx's conception of production. Agreeing with Marx that ontology is production and production is (...) ontology, Nishida in these three essays—"Expressive Activity", "The Standpoint of Active Intuition", and "Human Being" —addresses sense and reason, language and thought, intuition and appropriation, ultimately arguing that in this concept of production, ideality and materiality are neither mutually exclusive nor oppositional but, rather, coimmanent. Nishida's forceful articulation of the radical nature of Marx's theory of production is, Haver contends, particularly timely in today's speculation-driven global economy. Nishida's reading of Marx, which points to the inseparability of immaterial intellectual labor and material manual labor, provokes a reconsideration of Marxism's utility for making sense of—and resisting—the logic of contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

Some scholars claim that Critical Realism promises well for the unification of the social sciences, e.g., "Unifying social science: A critical realist approach" in this volume. I will first show briefly how Critical Realism might unify social science. Secondly, I focus on the relation between the ontology and methodology of Critical Realism, and unveil the politics of metaphysics. Subsequently, it is argued that the division of labour between social scientific disciplines should not be metaphysics-driven, but rather question-driven. In conclusion, I (...) will therefore defend a question-driven pluralism as a guide for interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

Discussions of group knowledge typically focus on whether a group’s knowledge that p reduces to group members’ knowledge that p. Drawing on the cumulative reading of collective knowledge ascriptions and considerations about the importance of the division of epistemic labour, I argue what I call the Fragmented Knowledge account, which allows for more complex relations between individual and collective knowledge. According to this account, a group can know an answer to a question in virtue of members of the group knowing (...) parts of that answer, when the whole answer is available to group-level action. I argue that this account explains a swathe of central cases of group knowledge, as well as explaining some central features of group knowledge. (shrink)

This paper proposes that we read a late work of Georg Lukács, The Ontology of Social Being, as an indispensable contribution to ontological investigation in general and particularly to the understanding of social reality. As the ontology of Lukács tends not to be familiar even to those who have foregrounded ontological issues in recent decades, it seems to be extremely fruitful to bring it into discussion. Comparing the analysis of Lukács with the ontology of critical realism, we argue (...) that it is not only possible to identify obvious convergences but also to shed light on many questions that still demand a proper treatment from an ontological perspective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE ONTOLOGICAL OBSESSIONS OF RADICAL THOUGHT1 Stephen Gardner University ofTulsa Rather than make an inventory ofthis hodgepodge ofdead ideas, we should take as our starting point the passions that fueled it. François Furet (4) Any synthesis is incomplete which ends in an object or an abstract concept and not a living relationship between two individuals. René Girard (Deceit 178) Karl Marx offers two observations which I take as (...) the point of departure for a critique ofthe anti-liberal historicism in thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Marx himself. The first is that the modern project of emancipation presupposes that "man is the supreme being for man," and the second is that modern equality gives rise to its own type of relations of /«equality, indeed of "master and slave." I will not interpret these observations as Marx himself did, in economic terms. Instead, I use them as clues to uncover the kind of human relation implicit in but also hidden by the ontology of freedom on which radical historicism rests. By ontology offreedom, I mean the view that "being" is historical and grounded in radical freedom or contingency. For this theory, history is a process ofcreation ex nihilo, a power traditionally reserved for God. Such atheory is advanced in different forms by Heidegger, Nietzsche, ' I thank the Earhart Foundation and the University ofTulsa for their support for the project of which this is a part. I also thank Jim Williams and Jake Howland their comments. 2 The Ontologica! Obsessions ofRadical Thought and Marx, as the key to a radical critique of bourgeois society. Thus the ontological obsessions ofanti-bourgeois ire. I suggest that the fascination ofthe radical critique ofbourgeois society with historical "being" reflects the transformation of human relations by "equality of conditions," in the sense of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French sociologist and student ofthe democratic soul.2 As modern equality subverts the old orthodoxies, human beings tend to seek their gods in each other, as models of "freedom." And so there arises a "master-slave" psychology from the impact of equality, legitimized by romanticism and the modern cult ofEros. This, I suspect, is the effectual truth offreedom in Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Marx.3 René Girard offers a classic description of this psychology in his analysis ofthe modern novel, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, to which I am indebted throughout this paper. As regards that book, my general thesis—applicable not only to Marx but also to Heidegger and Nietzsche—may be stated as follows.4 Girard's analysis of the literary characters Don Quixote, Julien Sorel, Emma Bovary, Raskolnikov, and others is in effect a devastating if indirect critique of modem radical thought, or the pursuit ofradical freedom. Modern novels, he argues, tend to divide into two types: either "romantic" or "romanesque." The latter reveal the romantic illusions of the modern psyche, rather than merely reflect them like the former. "Romanesque" novelists such as Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Proust are great because they uncover the human relations behind romantic passions and the theories that legitimate them. The "romanesque" novel is a Socratic labor of selfknowledge in which the author emancipates himself from his own past romantic illusions. In effect, it exposes the fictions associated with the modern novel itself. The "romantic" novel, to the contrary, abandons self2 By "equality of conditions" is meant the de-legitimation of accidents of birth such as aristocratic lineage (or today race, gender, or ethnicity) as limits on one's social ambition or destiny. It is equivalent to the rise of vocational choice. 3 For a development of this theme in the context of early modern thought (Descartes to Hegel) as an indirect critique of the radical critics from Marx to Heidegger and after, see Stephen Gardner, Myths of Freedom- Equality, Modern Thought, and Philosophical Radicalism. 4 Cesareo Bandera, in The Sacred Game The Role ofthe Sacred in the Genesis ofModern Literary Fiction, also makes a "mimetic" critique of Marx, stressing his work as seeking to restore a sacrificial mythology as the bond ofsociety, an attempt at the basis oftotalitarianism (see his Appendix). The Ontologica! Obsessions ofRadical Thought3 knowledge for the platonic pursuit of "authentic being."5 It offers us "romantic... (shrink)

This article reviews the little examined early work of the Greek Marxist and state theorist, Nicos Poulantzas (1936–1979). In his first book, Nature du choses et droit of 1965, the young scholar developed a sociology of law culled from the insights of philosophical ontology. The article sets out the central claims of that book and reflects on its place in Poulantzas's intellectual development. Drawing on Heidegger, Sartre and Marx, Poulantzas proposed a species of Natural Law theory that unified ‘facts’ and (...) ‘values’ by grounding legal concepts in a theory of social praxis centred on material labour. Legal categories were thus irreducible to ahistorical essences but were, rather, expressions of mankind's struggle to realize its intrinsic freedom. As we shall see, although flawed and in key respects radically at odds with his later anti-humanism, Poulantzas's legal ontology nevertheless anticipated his mature theory of the state by setting out a philosophical sociology of the political order rooted in an anti-essentialist mode of inquiry. (shrink)

Praxis is the identifying signature of the most prevalent contemporary versions of the reception and interpretation of Marx and of the movements of thought inspired or provoked by him. This view seems to accord well with the early “Theses on Feuerbach” and is frequently mobilized in support of the further claim that the “mature” or “scientific” Marx, the Marx of Das Kapital, above all had left behind his former preoccupations with philosophy in anything like a traditional sense, in order to (...) pursue single-mindedly and whole-heartedly his critical diagnosis of bourgeois political economy, the opening wedge in his “practical” campaign to establish first socialism and then communism. In this essay, I want to call into question some of the central commitments of this consensus. In particular, I shall suggest that Marx’s understanding of praxis, of human activity and interaction, is pervasively shaped by his conception of poiesis, the production of hitherto non-existing objects and, therewith, the ongoing transformation of external Nature. Accordingly, appreciations of Marx’s supposedly revolutionary transfiguration of the relation between theoria and praxis need to be recast and reconstrued in light of his reduction of praxis to technical production. Poiesis is the cardinal, indeed the unique, category in the ontological vocabulary Marx adopted in his earliest works and never abandoned afterwards, even when he went on to treat ontological issues much more economically. This monochromatic vocabulary so colored Marx’s analysis of the nature and civic places of labor and human interrelations, that both tended to lose the variegated contours by which pre-modern, if not all pre-Marxist, thinkers recognized them. Marx’s elliptical, not to say sibylline, allusions to the condition and the telos of “socialized humanity” in the Grundrisse and in the final volume of Das Kapital prove so perplexing exactly because ‘labor’ itself has become paradoxical—does it figure with equal prominence in both the ‘realm of necessity’ and the ‘realm of freedom’?—while praxis, once it seems finally set free from the spell cast on it by the presumptive ultimacy of poiesis, appears to lose its bearings, its pre-modern orientation to a goal such as achieved and mutually-acknowledged human excellence. The claims and promises of praxis turn out to be deeply enigmatic. (shrink)

Here is the first book to present Karl Marx as one of the great systematic philosophers, a man who went beyond the traditional bounds of the discipline to work out a philosophical system in terms of a concrete social theory and politico-economic critique. Basing her work on the Grundrisse (probably Marx's most systematic work and only translated into English for the first time in 1973), Gould argues that Marx was engaged in a single enterprise throughout his works, specifically the construction (...) of a systematic and philosophical theory of society. Gould examines five basic themes of Marx's social ontology: society, labor, causality, freedom, and justice, in five separate chapters, preceded by an introductory chapter explicating thesis and methods. The book shows how Marx's ontology, or theory of social reality, may be reconstructed from concrete details of his account of the historical stages of social development and from his analyses and critiques of capitalist economy. It clarifies further the value theory underlying Marx's critique of modern society and explores the question of how philosophy can play a major role in understanding and resolving social issues. This book will be of interest to all students of society, since it raises issues of the relationship of technologies to society and of the forms and prospects for socialism as a possible future society. It has deliberately been written in a style that makes the difficult, technical issues accessible to undergraduates just beginning to read Marx, as well as, of course, graduate students of social theory and specialized scholars. The lay reader will also be drawn to the particular content of this book and will enjoy the lucid, straightforward presentation. Marx's Social Ontology proposes a solution to a long-standing problem in interpretations of Marx: the apparent dilemma of his insistence on the ideal of full self-realization of the individual and his equal insistence on the ideal of full self-realization of the community. This is a book of major significance dealing with topics of enduring and current interest. (shrink)

Abstract:Curiously, Marxist literary and art criticism often historicizes everything but the artist's labor. This essay articulates "techne-Marxism" as a critical standpoint that locates the ontological core of the artwork in conceptual and technical labor. It posits techne as the materialist substrate of art forms often explained away as part of an ideology of bourgeois taste rather than the proper bedrock of a Marxism that avoids alienating labor in a symptomology of historical structure. Ultimately, the value of (...) techne-Marxism is its ability to synthesize socially objective knowledge about art and the critic's ability to build labor-oriented evaluative judgments out of that knowledge. (shrink)

The studying of Marx, said Gyorgy Lukäcs at the beginning of the 1920s, does not mean the uncriticised recognition of the results of his researches, nor the set in well-defined theses, the interpretation of a book. One has to become absorbed in the ceuvre of Marx, so that then, as a second step, one can commence the systematic elaboration of the problems of our age. It is unjust that in western philosophies, especially in the Anglo-Saxon concerning literature the name of (...) the old-age Lukäcs does not appear, or is present as that of some Stalinist inquisitor, the indisputable pillar of Marxism and the Bolshevik movement. Yet his late piece of labour, his vast ontology experiment convincingly shows how one can penetrate the original texts of Marx and at the same time preserve one's conceptual souvereignity, sense of reality, and one's capacity, at least in a latent way, to judge or surpass the thoughts of one's master. This study aims to interpret the problem of Lukäcs's relation to Marx through the analysis of the labour concept of Lukäcs, and would like to prove that the rereading of Lukäcs (and Marx) can serve with surprises, new meanings and morals even today. (shrink)

The studying of Marx, said Gyorgy Lukäcs at the beginning of the 1920s, does not mean the uncriticised recognition of the results of his researches, nor the set in well-defined theses, the interpretation of a book. One has to become absorbed in the ceuvre of Marx, so that then, as a second step, one can commence the systematic elaboration of the problems of our age. It is unjust that in western philosophies, especially in the Anglo-Saxon concerning literature the name of (...) the old-age Lukäcs does not appear, or is present as that of some Stalinist inquisitor, the indisputable pillar of Marxism and the Bolshevik movement. Yet his late piece of labour, his vast ontology experiment convincingly shows how one can penetrate the original texts of Marx and at the same time preserve one's conceptual souvereignity, sense of reality, and one's capacity, at least in a latent way, to judge or surpass the thoughts of one's master. This study aims to interpret the problem of Lukäcs's relation to Marx through the analysis of the labour concept of Lukäcs, and would like to prove that the rereading of Lukäcs (and Marx) can serve with surprises, new meanings and morals even today. (shrink)

This paper proposes that we read a late work of Georg Lukács, The Ontology of Social Being, as an indispensable contribution to ontological investigation in general and particularly to the understanding of social reality. As the ontology of Lukács tends not to be familiar even to those who have foregrounded ontological issues in recent decades, it seems to be extremely fruitful to bring it into discussion. Comparing the analysis of Lukács with the ontology of critical realism, we argue (...) that it is not only possible to identify obvious convergences but also to shed light on many questions that still demand a proper treatment from an ontological perspective. (shrink)

Abstract“Science Is Politics By Other Means” (SIPBOM) was coined in The Pasteurization of France, Latour’s 1984 empirical study of the birth of microbiology. Yet, it encapsulates an outstanding political theory of science that Latour has never formalized and that has remained unnoticed to this day. The theory is comprised of two dimensions. The first one is the ontological labor performed by science, that is, the laboratory production of new nonhumans. The second one is the ability of science to (...) devise and implement novel policies targeted at the new beings it produces. These “other means” are incorporated in political projects and contribute to the shaping of society. Fifteen years later, Latour published Politics of Nature ([1999] 2004), a full-blown political treatise equally devoted to the political character of science. It would be mistaken, however, to assume that it falls in the same SIPBOM paradigm as the Pasteur study. The compositionist theory it offers redefines politics as the institution of the nonhumans that make up external reality, a task that has traditionally been monopolized by Science. In this sense, “science is politics by other means” has become “politics is science by other means,” these “other means” now referring to “cosmopolitics,” that is, the due process advocated by compositionism. The first claim of the present paper is that the respective weight ascribed to politics and ontology is different in The Pasteurization of France and in Politics of Nature. The second claim is that compositionism is not as successful as Latour’s early theory to account for the politicity of science. (shrink)

The article raises the question of constant violent acts, primarily military, despite the longtime general condemnation thereof. This turns us to the problem of ontology of violence. The approach suggested here is based on understanding violence as labor with the excessive use of force. This is related to the understanding of force as the truth. Thus, for the archaic mind, force (and violence), the sacred, and truth were different projection-implementations of one entity. The civilizational world model contains in its (...) basis not the principles of a single truth, but the principles of collaboration and coexistence of different stances instead of the submission to one entity. The old model of violence as a way to participate in the object’s truth and to confirm the subject’s sacred status stays effective. This paper argues that violence has an ontological dimension in the old model of a single truth, but cannot have it within a civilizational approach. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric and Capitalism:Rhetorical Agency as Communicative LaborRonald Walter GreeneIt is a commonplace to describe rhetorical agency as political action. From such a starting point, rhetorical agency describes a communicative process of inquiry and advocacy on issues of public importance. As political action, rhetorical agency often takes on the characteristics of a normative theory of citizenship; a good citizen persuades and is persuaded by the gentle force of the better (...) argument. More radical visions of argument might include strikes, sit-ins, and boycotts in the rhetorical arsenal of good citizenship, and some might even flirt with violence as rhetorical action. This model of rhetorical agency requires a translation of the conceptual apparatus of rhetoric and its alignment with the problematics of democratic theory and actually existing democratic regimes. Classical models that hoped to harness rhetorical agency to the making of the "orator-statesman" (sic) must reimagine political participation in terms of publics and counterpublics, social movements, electoral campaigns, communication media and technologies, as well as supra- and sub-national institutional settings. As the classical norms of citizenship rub against (post) modern realities, a permanent anxiety over the meaning and potential of rhetorical agency seems destined to be lodged in the critical imagination of rhetorical studies. If politics today is, in Jodi Dean's words, "a domain of financially mediated and professionalized practices centered on advertising, public relations, and the means of mass communication," then actually existing rhetorical agency manifests itself in efforts to "raise the money, buy the television time, register the domain names, build the website, and craft the accessible, user-friendly, spectacular message" (2003, 96).If we recognize Dean's description of the political as an accurate description of the rhetorical situation today, rhetorical studies is left with three strategies: It can refashion a deliberative vision of rhetorical agency into a normative ideal for critiquing the structural conditions (capital, media [End Page 188] concentration) of political participation. Second, it can enlarge the field of normatively acceptable ways and means of political participation, for example, by embracing the more spectacular politics associated with visual and body rhetorics. Finally, rhetorical studies can work on the "demand" side and design new strategies and tactics for activating the rhetorical participation of citizens, for example, by encouraging the creation of communicative norms necessary for reinvigorating voluntary and civic organizations. However, while each of these approaches provides a research agenda, none of them gets at the root cause of the anxiety over agency: the attachment of rhetorical agency to a vision of political change. The anxiety over agency pushes rhetorical critics and theorists into becoming moral entrepreneurs scolding, correcting, and encouraging the body politic to improve the quality and quantity of political participation.The purpose of this paper is to offer an escape route from theorizing rhetorical agency as a model of political communication.1 In opposition to a political-communicative vision of rhetorical agency, this paper suggests a different materialist ontology, one that imagines rhetorical agency as a form of living labor. I will argue that rhetorical agency belongs to the domain of communicative labor, a form of labor increasingly necessary to the workings of contemporary capitalist production. In other words, I want to replace a political-communicative model of rhetorical agency with a materialist-communicative model. To highlight the similarities and differences between the two models, I will focus on how the interface between politics, communication, and economics plays out in the Marxist tradition of rhetorical studies. I will organize this tradition into two sections: the first, represented by James Aune, advocates a hermeneutic approach to rhetorical agency, and the second, represented by Dana Cloud, argues for imagining rhetorical agency as a class-based social movement. By focusing on the work of my comrades, the paper risks being received as a "left sectarian" polemic.2 As I will demonstrate in each section, the problem with these two approaches has less to do with Marxism and more to do with how they turn to hermeneutics and social movements to imagine rhetorical agency in the idiom of communication theory. In the third section of the paper I will resituate rhetorical agency into a materialist ontology of labor and capitalist production. In so... (shrink)

Attention is given to a background idea that is often invoked in discussions about reasonable partiality: the idea of a moral division of labour. It is not only a right, but also a duty for professionals to attend (almost) exclusively to the interests of their own clients, because their partial activities are part of an impartial scheme providing for an allocation of professional help to all clients. To clarify that idea, a difference is made between two kinds of division of (...) labour, a technical one and a social one. In order to assess the applicability of the idea of a moral division of labour to professional ethics, journalism is contrasted with other professions. (shrink)

A fierce critique of productivity and sovereignty in the world of labor and everyday life, Bruno Gullì’s Earthly Plenitudes asks, can labor exist without sovereignty and without capitalism? He introduces the concept of dignity of individuation to prompt a rethinking of categories of political ontology. Dignity of individuation stresses the notion that the dignity of each and any individual being lies in its being individuated as such; dignity is the irreducible and most essential character of any being. Singularity (...) is a more universal quality. Gullì first reviews approaches to sovereignty by philosophers as varied as Gottfried Leibniz and Georges Bataille, and then looks at concrete examples where the alliance of sovereignty and capital cracks under the potency of living labor. He examines contingent academic labor as an example of the super-exploitation of labor, which has become a global phenomenon, and as such, a clear threat to the sovereign logic of capital. Gullì also looks at disability to assert that a new measure of humanity can only be found outside the schemes of sovereignty, productivity, efficiency, and independence, through care and caring for others, in solidarity and interdependence. (shrink)

This paper looks at a recent challenge to the liberal inclusivist view that everyone on the state’s territory should have a path to citizenship. Economists have argued that giving immigrants an inferior legal status would persuade wealthy countries to admit more, with beneficial consequences for global justice. Whilst this trade-off might seem appealing from the impersonal perspective of the policymaker it generates incoherence from the perpective of the collective of democratic citizens, since it requires them to treat their own unjust (...) attitudes as an objective constraint. The paper also rejects the idea that a voluntary choice to migrate can be taken as consent to an inferior status. (shrink)

In this article I use Baudrillard’s claim that systems of exchange are ontologically and historically prior to systems of production, and Arendt’s understanding of birth as the arrival of something both quite familiar and quite new into the world as the starting-points for a theory of labour as relation. Such a theory has the virtue of avoiding the problem, found in Marx, Arendt and elsewhere, that labour is both a vital feature of being human and yet a drudgery that will (...) be absent from post-revolutionary society (in the case of Marx) or strictly relegated to the private realm (for Arendt). It also involves repositioning the work of social reproduction – of which women’s labour in giving birth is exemplary – as paradigmatic. (shrink)

Between the affirmative and the negative, the compositional and the oppositional, we need to rethink the difference between difference and contradiction. In this regard, the concept of ‘diplomacy’, as developed by Isabelle Stengers, is of particular significance. Whereas many adherents of an affirmative ontology of difference reduce contradiction to a caveat – ‘of course, antagonism is inevitable, but …’ – diplomacy makes contradiction its fundamental concern. This article explicates the significance of such a conception, via close readings of Stengers’ work (...) in relation to that of Gilles Deleuze, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. However, it also develops diplomacy in new directions, particularly relating the diplomatic ‘fold’ to the sovereign ‘cut’. The fold of coexistence, then, is achieved through diplomacy as a ‘labour of difference’, against ‘facile pluralism’, which takes worldly cohabitation as given. A diplomatic political ontology is neither bellicose nor pacific; rather, it dramatizes the possibility of peace from within a coercive historical reality. (shrink)

Much of the debate around temporary foreign worker programs in recent years has focused on full or partial access to rights, and, in particular, on the extent to which liberal democratic states may be justified in restricting rights of membership to those who come and work on their territory. Many accounts of the situation of temporary foreign workers assume that a full set of rights will remedy moral inequities that they suffer in their new homes. I aim to show two (...) things: first, and based on experiences reported by former Live-in-Caregivers in Canada who now have access to the full set of citizenship rights, and German citizens who are descendants of Kurdish guestworkers in Germany, I have proposed that even after gaining citizenship, many of them experience social stigma and a sense of exclusion. Second, I have argued that this neglects a basic need that individuals have, which is to have access to relational resources within society in order to be protected against social deprivation. This need is seemingly immune to be effectively protected through the known catalogue of social, civic and political rights. Instead, I argue that social deprivation needs to be analyzed through the lens of institutional vulnerability to yield an analysis of the moral obligations of liberal democratic states. (shrink)

Critically discussing the causal social ontologies presented by Dave Elder-Vass and John Searle, the article argues that these views implausibly identify the causal ontological source of human sociality in collectively known, recognized and accepted statuses, criteria, norms and the like. This is implausible, for it ignores human sociality as occurring in temporally and spatially dispersed on-going processes of human interaction of differently placed, often unequal, and thus epistemically differently equipped actors in division of labour. Human scientific concepts are best (...) seen as picking out (aspects of) such complex and heterogeneous processes, not what the participating actors allegedly collectively know, accept or recognize about them. The article observes that similar appeals to collective recognition are also common in Wittgensteinian literature that, however, have claimed to reject the causal ontological view. It is argued that the ultimate value in rejecting the causal ontological view, and the accompanying idea of collective recognition, resides in that we thereby avoid epistemically homogenizing and over-intellectualizing the diverse mass of dispersed, often unequal, but interacting actors. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from ‘society’, and political theory from the social sciences. This conventional view has had the effect of distracting attention from many of Arendt’s most important insights concerning the constitution of ‘society’ and the significance of the social sciences. In this article, I argue that Hannah Arendt’s distinctions between labor, work and action, as these are discussed in The Human Condition and elsewhere, are best understood as (...) a set of claims about the fundamental structures of human societies. Understanding Arendt in this way introduces interesting parallels between Arendt’s work and both classical and contemporary sociology. From this I draw a number of conclusions concerning Arendt’s conception of ‘society’, and extend these insights into two contemporary debates within contemporary theoretical sociology: the need for a differentiated ontology of the social world, and the changing role that novel forms of knowledge play in contemporary society as major sources of social change and order. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:More Is Required of Us: Complicating an Ontology of Experience at the Heart of Community-Based ResearchJerry Rosiekit is both unsurprising and reassuring that the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy would host an invited lecture on community-university research collaborations. One of the most distinctive features of the tradition of philosophy on this continent has been the insistence that lived experience is the ultimate source of knowledge, and, more (...) importantly, amelioration of individual and collective community experience is the ultimate criterion for validation of knowledge relations. Dr. Ira Harkavy and the Netter Center at which he works represent a version of that ideal made institutionally manifest.In his 2022 Coss Lecture, Harkavy offers a vision for how the ideal of knowledge generation grounded in community experience and serving community priorities could be institutionalized in major US research universities. Furthermore, he makes the case that this transformation of research universities would revitalize our collective commitment to democratic citizenship and governance. It is an appealing vision, earnestly offered. In what follows, I celebrate the merits of this vision but raise concerns that it does not adequately consider questions about the ontology of experience. I review some of those questions and offer suggestions about what an updated ontology of experience, one that could revitalize democracy in the manner Harkavy says is needed, would look like.Experiential Basis for My ResponseA short personal introduction will provide context for (and perhaps lend credibility to) my response comments. I am a Professor of Education at the University of Oregon with affiliate appointments in the Department of Philosophy and in the Department of Ethnic Studies. My empirical research [End Page 81] focuses on how we prepare anti-racist educators to work in public schools (Pratt and Rosiek; Rosiek, “School Segregation”; Mitchell and Rosiek; Sconiers and Rosiek). My area of theoretical specialization is the development of new qualitative methodologies for research on educational equity. The latter involves working out the implications of different epistemologies and ontologies for educational inquiry and practice. Specifically, I have spent most of my career looking at the way teachers’ classroom experiences can be a valid source of general knowledge about educational practice and policy (Rosiek and Atkinson; Rosiek and Gleason).Both branches of my scholarship exist in a dialectic with my community activism around educational equity issues. My largest project to date was a ten-year study of the racial resegregation of a public school district, looking at how students and teachers navigated its aftermath (Rosiek and Kinslow). My most recent project involved two years of working with teachers all over the world to identify the ways they addressed equity challenges during the pandemic and to identify the institutional conditions that helped or hindered such work (DeRosia et al.). In a less academic context, I have worked with local educational activist organizations in my home community to support the needs of immigrant families and students, to create safer spaces for LGBTQIA students, and to get more equity-minded school board members elected.I share all of this just to clarify that I am familiar with the challenge of putting university expertise in the service of community improvement and, more specifically, promoting equity in educational institutions. I am familiar with approaching research in a manner that respects practitioners and non-academic community members as sources of knowledge, not just objects of knowledge.Praise for the Work at the Netter CenterFrom the vantage point that experience provides me, I want to offer energetic praise for the work that Harkavy and the Netter Center have been doing these last three decades. We should all recognize the difficulty of integrating the university’s knowledge-producing role with local education and service work (Brewer; Harkavy et al.). It is even more difficult to do so when aspiring to the ideal of collaborative knowledge production with the community in a manner that genuinely commits to epistemic egalitarianism. Service learning can be trivialized and can become the exploitative enlistment of unpaid labor in the service of an agenda exogenous to both the participants and the community (Santiago-Ortiz; Stoecker). [End Page 82]Sharing the power of designing the focus and means of service projects... (shrink)