Continental Philosophy

Columbia University Press is pleased to announce the publication of Axel Honneth’s Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, a major reassessment of the Frankfurt School and its continuing legacy.

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School’s core concerns.

Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth’s essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions.

Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we’re subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new “reconstructive” form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School.

Praise for the book:

“This volume makes a very significant contribution to the continuing relevance of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School for contemporary forms of social criticism.” — Kenneth Baynes, Syracuse University

“This volume is a significant contribution to the debates over the history of the Frankfurt School and the contemporary relevance of critical social theory. Axel Honneth’s work provides a subtle reading of history that is less concerned with putting its products in their place—though he does do that in an exemplary fashion—than in highlighting what is living and vibrant in those products for contemporary thought.” — Christopher F. Zurn, University of Kentucky

A review of Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future by Fred Dallmayr:

The fate of reason today hangs in the balance. This is no small matter. Ever since its historical beginnings, reason or rationality has been the central focus and point of honor of Western modernity — a focus enshrined in Descartes’ cogito, Enlightenment rationalism, and Kantian (and neo-Kantian) critical philosophy. The result of this focus was an asymmetrical dichotomy: separated from the external world of “matter” (or nature), the cogito assumed the role of superior task master and overseer — a role fueling the enterprise of modern science and technology. During the past century, the edifice of Western modernity has registered a trembling, due to both internal and external contestations. Subverting the modern asymmetry, a host of thinkers – with views ranging from American pragmatism to European life philosophy and phenomenology — have endeavored to restore pre-cognitive “experience” (including sense perception and affect) to its rightful place. In the context of French “postmodernism,” a prominent battle cry has been to dislodge “logocentrism” (the latter term often equated with anthropocentrism). In the ambiance of recent German philosophy, the battle lines have been clearly marked: pitting champions of modern rationalism, represented by Jürgen Habermas, against defenders of experiential “world disclosure,” represented by Martin Heidegger. In his book, Nikolas Kompridis endeavors to shed new light on this controversy, with the aim not so much of bringing about a cease fire but of providing resources for arriving at better mutual understanding.

Read the rest of the review

Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Responsibility: Darwall and Levinas on the Second Person, Michael D. Barber

Locke, Kierkegaard and the Phenomenology of Personal Identity, Patrick Stokes

Belief and Self-consciousness, David Hunter

Postmetaphysical Thinking or Refusal of Thought? Max Horkheimer’s Materialism as Philosophical Stance, J. C. Berendzen

Seebohm’s Hermeneutics and Gadamer, Robert Dostal

Schutz, Seebohm, and Cultural Science, Lester Embree

Seebohm, Husserl, and Dilthey, Thomas Nenon

Three Responses, Thomas M. Seebohm

Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation

TOC

On Iris Young’s subject of inclusion: Rethinking political inclusion — Marina Falbo

Free speech or equal respect?: Liberalism’s competing values — John William Tate

The status struggle: A recognition-based interpretation of the positional economy — Rutger Claassen

Alain Badiou: the event of becoming a political subject — Antonio Calcagno

Marcuse’s critical theory of modernity — Espen Hammer

Recent articles in Reset:

The Primacy of Perception in the era of communication

A “post-secular” society – What does that mean?, by Habermas

On the Public Spehere, Deliberation, Journalism and Dignity, an interview with Benhabib

Reading Habermas in Tehran

New Left Review

Paris, 23 March 1940

Dear Monsieur Horkheimer,

It is over a year since I sent you my last résumé of French literature. Unfortunately it is not in literary novelties that the past season has proved most fertile. The noxious seed that has sprouted here obscures the blossoming plant of belles-lettres with a sinister foliage. But I shall attempt in any case to make you a florilegium of it. And since the presentation that I offered you before did not displease, I would like to apologize in advance for the ways in which the form of the following remarks may differ.

Via Ready Steady Book

We are pleased to release the June 2008 Issue of KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy

The journal website: http://www.kritike.org
Current issue: http://www.kritike.org/Current_Issue.html
Call for papers: http://www.kritike.org/Call_for_Papers.html

KRITIKE VOLUME TWO NUMBER ONE (JUNE 2008)

1. Editorial: Marking the First Year of KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy – The Editor

Articles:

2. Interruptions: Derrida and Hospitality – Mark W. Westmoreland

3. Iris Murdoch’s The Bell: Tragedy, Love, and Religion – Kenneth Masong

4. ‘To Philosophize is to Learn How to Die?’ – Saitya Brata Das

5. A Comparative Study on the Theme of Human Existence in the Novels of Albert Camus and F. Sionil Jose – F. P. A. Demeterio

6. The War on Concepts: The Thought of Jan Patocka and the War on Terror – Katy Scrogin

7. Mass Mentality, Culture Industry, Fascism – Saladdin Said Ahmed

8. The Causal Relevance and Heterogeneity of Program Explanations in the Face of Explanatory Exclusion – Wilson Cooper

9. A Freewheeling Defense of Kant’s Resolution of the Third Antinomy – Todd D. Janke

10. The Structures of Perception: An Ecological Perspective – Michael James Braund

Book Reviews :

11. Powell, Jason, Jacques Derrida: A Biography – Marko Zlomislic

12. Evans, C. Stephen, Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Collected Essays – Robert C. Cheeks

13. Drake, David, Sartre and Bernasconi, Robert, How to Read Sartre – Marella Ada Mancenido

Part 2 and Part 3

And also his Culture Industry

Interview with Axel Honneth, in Le Monde, obviously in French.

Link