Continental Philosophy

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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

Harvard’s Political Theory magazine, The Utopian, is of interest to the readers of the site. This piece on Habermas is particularly good.

POWER, CONFLICT, AND COMMITMENT: RETHINKING THE POLITICAL

Second Workshop in Social and Political Thought at Michigan State University

March, 28/29, Saturday: 9am-6pm, Sunday: 9:30am-12:30pm

http://www.msu.edu/~lotz/workshop2009/index.htm

Description:

During recent decades philosophers from diverse perspectives have extensively discussed the problem of the public sphere and the language, conflicts, and outcomes it can organize.  Liberal understandings of politics and public life have been challenged by feminists, critical race theorists, and radical democrats.  In view of structural change and the crisis of dominant political institutions, it has become clear that our understanding of politics needs careful reformulation.  We need to develop new conceptions of what it means to be political, how the individual and the self are politically situated in the world, and how political action and resistance (or transformations) are possible. This second workshop for social and political thought at Michigan State University will bring these perspectives together and discuss new perspectives for understanding the political sphere within our current social situation.

Speakers

Amy Allen (Dartmouth College); Feminism, Foucault, Continental Philosophy; author of The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory

Todd Hedrick (Michigan State University); Critical Theory, Habermas, Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy

Simon Critchley (New School); Poststructuralism, Continental Philosophy, author of Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance, Things Merely Are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, On Humor

Kristie Dotson (Michigan State University); Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Epistemology, Social and Political Philosophy, editor of  Race, Hybridity and Miscegenation

Robert Gooding-Williams (University of Chicago), Critical Race Theory, Nietzsche, Social and Political Philosophy, author of Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism, Look, a Negro!: Philosophical Essays on Race, Culture and Politics

Roberto Nigro (Michigan State University); Foucault, Marx, Social and Political Philosophy; editor/translator of Foucault, Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology

Organization and RSVP

Prof. Christian Lotz

Michigan State University

Dept. of Philosophy

503 South Kedzie Hall

East Lansing, MI 48824

517.353.9392 (Office)

517.355.4490 (Dept.)

http://www.msu.edu/~lotz

lotz@msu.edu

This year it is exactly 60 years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Krisis’ new issue is therefore dedicated to philosophy and human rights. Regina Kreide, Ernst van den Hemel and Marc de Wilde write about a wide range of philosophical issues connected with human rights, and Thomas Poell and Sudeep Dasgupta review two recent publications about human rights.

Ernst van den Hemel: ‘Included but not Belonging. Badiou and Rancière on Human Rights’.
In this article the standpoints on Human Rights by two contemporary French philosophers, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière are explored. Their criticalreading of the project of Human Rights moves away from the reading that we can see in the work of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben.Instead both Badiou and Rancière offer a critical version of Human Rights thatcan be subsumed under the phrase ‘included but not belonging’. Theirinterventions on Human Rights reveal, besides important similarities,significant differences. For Badiou, notions likehuman rights, and democracy, should be rejected altogether, whereas Rancièrestill sees critical potential for both the project of human rights and democracy.This difference can be attributed to the divergent notions of truth that thetwo philosophers apply. The article ends with a sketch of the critical andmilitant potential of the work of these two theorists.
http://krisis.eu/content/2008-3/2008-3-03-hemel.pdf

Regina Kreide: ‘Power and Powerlessness of Human Rights. The International Discourse on Human Rights’.
The goal of this article is to reconstruct the arguments brought forward in international political discourse and political theory discourse, and to present a suggestion for the conditions of a context-sensible foundation and juridification of human rights. In this course neither the objections of opponents of a universalistic human rights conception are overlooked, nor claims to universally valid human rights, equally effective for all humans, are given up.
http://krisis.eu/content/2008-3/2008-3-02-kreide.pdf

Colin Koopman
University of California, Santa Cruz

PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM, Forthcoming

Abstract:
I propose a major reassessment of Foucault’s philosophico-historical account of the basic problems of modernity. I revise our understanding of Foucault by countering the misinterpretations proffered by influential European critics such as Habermas and Derrida. Central to Foucault’s account of modern was his work on two crucial concept pairs: freedom/power and reason/madness. I argue against the view of Habermas and Derrida that Foucault understood modern power and reason as straightforwardly opposed to modern freedom and madness. I show that Foucault held a much more complex view of these pairs, a view encapsulated in his term “reciprocal incompatibility.” By revising our interpretation of Foucault’s work on modernity in this way, we open the way to much more effective deployments of his critical apparatus.

Keywords: Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, Modernity, Discipline

Link

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

Link

Reading Habermas in Tehran

Nach dem irischen Nein zum Vertrag von Lissabon sind die Regierungen mit ihrem Latein am Ende: Sie müssen die Bevölkerung über Europa entscheiden lassen.

Link

TOC

The time of hybridity — Simone Drichel

Arendt and Nietzsche on responsibility and futurity — Rosalyn Diprose

Levinas, Habermas and modernity — Nicholas H. Smith

Antinomies of transcritique and virtue ethics: An Adornian critique — Giuseppe Tassone

A law’s tale: John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance — Gertrud Koch

From avenging to revolutionary force: John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance — Hauke Brunkhorst

The site is back and working!

An appropriate video: Habermas on technology and politics:

Link

Truth and Justification.

TOC 

When was 9/11? Philosophy and the terror of futurity — Stella Gaon
    
Foucault's Kantian critique: Philosophy and the present — Christina Hendricks

Deliberation interrupted: Confronting Jürgen Habermas with Claude Lefort — Stefan Rummens

Collapsing categories: Fraser on economy, culture and justice — Chris Armstrong

Religion and capitalism: Weber, Marx and the materialist controversy — Juan Manuel Forte

Review essay: Postphenomenology: 'Festschrift' for Don Ihde (Under consideration: Evan Selinger's Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde) — Søren Riis

The University of Utah has many Tanner lectures available on pdf.

Of possible interest: Appiah, Benhabib, Cavell, Foucault, Fraser, Geertz, Habermas, Honneth, Lear, Nussbaum, Rorty, and many more.

Link

". . . And to define America, her athletic democracy." The Philosopher and the Language Shaper:In Memory of Richard Rorty(part 1)

by Jürgen Habermas 

[The following is the first part of an address delivered by Jürgen Habermas at Stanford University on Friday, November 2, 2007. Part 2 will appear on Saturday, and part 3 on Monday. It is reproduced here by kind permission of the journal New Literary History, which will publish it in early 2008, in an issue devoted to Richard Rorty.]

Dear Mary, dear Friends and Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Given the highly personal occasion that brings us together here today, please allow me to start with a private memory.

I first met Richard Rorty in 1974 at a conference on Heidegger in San Diego. At the beginning of the convention, a video was screened of an interview with the absent Herbert Marcuse, who in it described his relationship to Heidegger in the early 1930s more mildly than the sharp post-War correspondence between the two men would have suggested. Much to my annoyance, this set the tone for the entire conference, where an unpolitical veneration of Heidegger prevailed. Only Marjorie Green, who had likewise studied in Freiburg prior to 1933, passed critical comment, saying that back then at best the closer circle of Heidegger students, and Marcuse belonged to it, could have been deceived as to the real political outlook of their mentor.

Link

(h/t: Azadeh Erfani) 

TOC

Critical theory and the traps of conspiracy thinking — Volker Heins

What’s wrong with hypergoods — Charles Blattberg

Marx and the gendered structure of capitalism — Claudia Leeb

Tragedy and politics — Neal Curtis

Rawls and Habermas on religion in the public sphere — Melissa Yates

TOC

Playing games/playing us: Foucault on sadomasochism: Bob Plant

Sacrificial pasts and messianic futures: Religion as a political prospect in René Girard and Giorgio Agamben: Christopher A. Fox

The inner experience of living matter: Bataille and dialectics: Asger Sørensen

Charles Taylor’s `imaginary’ and `best account’ in Latin America: Gustavo Morello

Systematically distorted subjectivity?: Habermas and the critique of power: Amy R. Allen

Comments on Amy Allen’s `Systematically distorted subjectivity?’: James Swinda

Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 of the lecture

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 of the Q and A