In _The Immaterial_,_ _French social philosopher André Gorz argues, in his finely-tuned and polemical style, that the economic boom that accelerated in the 1990s and crashed so spectacularly in 2008 was based largely on an immaterial consumption of symbols and ideas, as capitalism tried to overcome the crisis of the formally industrial regime by throwing itself into a new, so-called knowledge economy. In this, the last full-length theoretical work Gorz completed before his death, he argues instead for (...) the creation of a true knowledge economy. This economy would be based on zero-cost exchange and pooled resources, and knowledge would be treated as humanity’s common property. Currently, in order to exploit knowledge and turn it into capital, the capitalist enterprise privatizes specialized knowledge and claims ownership through private licenses and copyright. But as Gorz shows, the traditional foundations of such capitalist economics have begun to crumble because of the immaterial nature of this new form of product, which makes it almost impossible to measure in monetary terms. The knowledge economy, Gorz declares, _is_ the crisis of capitalism. Thought-provoking and divisive, _The Immaterial _is the perfect book for our time, as we begin to reimagine the structures of our economic system in order to rebuild and move forward. “It is to Gorz... that readers should turn for a compelling combination of sharp analysis, well-wrought polemic, and suggestions for the future.”—_Red Pepper_ “A great figure of the intellectual Left.”—Nicolas Sarkozy “Gorz’s intelligence strikes you at the very first glance: it is one of the nimblest, acutest intelligences I know.”—Jean-Paul Sartre. (shrink)

The present crisis threatens most of the values, certainties and institutions on which industrial societies have been built for a century and a half. The nature of work, social relations, the place of professional work is the life of the individual, the foundations of the economy, the function of capital and that of trade unions, etc. are all being critically reexamined. No traditional political party has yet evaluated the threat and the promise implied by this crisis. All have yet to (...) define a long term vision and politics — and that should surprise no one: long term perspectives are basically different from the urgencies and cares of the moment. (shrink)

This collection of five articles and two interviews, compiled by the author himself as a kind of political testament, focuses on the ecological thinking he pioneered in Europe.

In this interview with Yann Moulier Boutang and Carlo Vercellone, André Gorz elaborates on three crucial points of his analysis of the significance of the mutation inherent in the concept of cognitive capitalism: first, the redefinition of the mechanisms of exploitation and the processes of emancipation, since when labor is no longer measurable in units of time, and when self-exploitation takes on a central function in the process of valorization, the production of subjectivity becomes a central site of (...) conflicts; second the importance of snaking a precise distinction between the notion of knowledge, which is objective and formalizable by essence, and the notion of « know-how » or intellectual capability, which is by essence something alive and experienced; third the subjective and objective reasons why cognitive capitalism appears as a crisis of capitalism, containing the seed of another model of society. (shrink)

In the face of a technological revolution which massively reduces the quantity of work demanded, there are the following alternatives: 1) Either a smaller and smaller core of full-time workers monopolizes the interesting jobs and marginalizes the majority of the population, with the unions degenerating into corporatism elitist and conservative organizations; or, 2) wage labor is redistributed in such a way that all people can work less; work then ceases to be the central focus of life and the main source (...) of identity. To survive, then, the union movement must transform itself so as to encompass the totality of human expectations (mainly cultural, non-economic, ecological), and no longer just expectations related to wage-labor. (shrink)

" Lorsque les hasards de la naissance et de l'histoire font qu'aucune culture, place, conduite ou valeur ne vous apparaissent comme vôtres, en vertu de quels critères pouvez-vous préférer telle place, action, valeur ou conduite? En vertu de quoi l'esclave révolté vaut-il mieux que l'esclave soumis, le joueur que l'avare, le rebelle sans cause que l'inquisiteur?Telles sont les questions, vécues et vitales, qui ont motivé cet ouvrage. Parce que rien n'était donné à son auteur comme allant de soi pas même (...) l'adhésion à la vie du corps, il lui fallut produire lui-même ses préférences et certitudes ; et comme le sol ni les instruments culturels de cette production ne lui étaient pas non plus donnés, il lui fallait fonder - au sens radical que la phénoménologie donne à ce terme - une axiologie ou hiérarchie des possibles, et une théorie de l'aliénation qui expliquât pourquoi cette hiérarchie peut être niée ou non respectée en pratique.Le point de départ devait nécessairement être une ontologie existentielle : sans elle il n'y a pas d'anthropologie (philosophique) ni de morale possibles. On verra comment la seule ontologie existentielle qui existe, celle de Sartre, a pu être pliée aux besoins de cette entreprise : elle a permis de dégager les trois directions fondamentales de valorisation d'où découlent trois possibilités fondamentales d'éthique : les valeurs et attitudes vitales, puis esthétiques, puis, imprescriptible et jamais acquise, la valorisation de la valorisation elle-même par quoi la liberté, au terme d'une rupture (ou "conversion"), se déprend de toutes les valeurs au profit de sa propre activité souveraine.Pour moitié environ, ce volume est constitué d'analyses existentielles visant à vérifier la valeur opératoire de cette classification a priori : phénoménologie des valeurs corporelles, sensorielles, esthétiques, psychanalyse existentielle des attitudes de la "Vie aliénée", puis de celles, "esthétiques", de l'instantanéiste, de l'aventurier, du poète, du saint.La dernière partie porte sur l'articulation et l'intégration des trois niveaux axiologiques dans la perspective d'une éthique de la libération. On y trouvera un essai d'élaboration des instruments et de la méthode d'une compréhension de soi par soi, base de toute libération possible.Ce livre qui est par certains côtés une "somme" de l'existentialisme, en indique en même temps l'articulation avec le marxisme et son indispensable mais encore impossible dépassement pratique. Il fournit non point une morale, mais les instruments et les repères permettant d'en inventer une, de comprendre pourquoi la morale est impossible et de suppléer à son impossibilité. "A. G.SOMMAIRE : INTRODUCTION : ÊTRE ET VÉRITÉ I. L'IDÉE DE VÉRITÉ ABSOLUE II. L'ÉVIDENCE III. LE SENS IV. VÉRITÉ ET AUTHENTICITÉ PREMIÈRE PARTIE : AUTHENTICITÉ ET LIBERTÉ I. RÉFLEXION ET CONNAISSANCE DE SOI II. LA RÉFLEXION PURIFIANTE DEUXIÈME PARTIE : Chapitre 1, LA VIE ET LES ATTITUDES VITALES I. LA VIE NATURELLE II. LA VIE ALIÉNÉE III. LA VIE CONSCIENTE DE SOI Chapitre 2, LES ATTITUDES ESTHÉTIQUES I. LA CONVERSION ESTHÉTIQUE II. L'INSTANTANÉISTE III. L'AVENTURIER, LE JOUEUR IV. LE RÉVOLTÉ, LE POÈTE, LE SAINT TROISIÈME PARTIE : LE CHOIX DE LA LIBERTÉ I. LA CONVERSION MORALE II. LA MORALISATION DE LA SITUATION III. AXIOLOGIE ABSOLUE ET RELATIVE. (shrink)

Security police, state security services, security measures, security politics…a dreadful semantic chain. Everything stubbornly conservative, repressive, antithetical to freedom is expressed in the concept of security. The meaning always implies security for an established order against whatever seems to threaten, disturb or endanger it from without or from within. One can secure, reassure, insure or protect Movements, associations and networks within which a part of the population unites spontaneously can be channeled, controlled or combatted. Peace, order and security are implied. (...) Negativity is to be negated in the name of the “actually existing.” The striving for security is in fact opposed to the striving of all living beings toward self development. (shrink)

The economic policies of the French Left are based on the hypothesis that the modernization of the industrial apparatus and the resurgence of the spirit of business enterprise are indispensable preconditions for the resumption of economic growth and a major reduction of unemployment. To support this line of argument, many experts (of all shades of political opinion), refer to Reagan's America. What exactly is this experience about? Is it a possible model? Can capitalism resolve its employment and distribution problems when, (...) due to the impact of automation and computerization, the production process requires less and less work, and pays out less and less in wages? (shrink)

FOREWORD Of Rats and Men 'They corrected his strabismus with glasses, his lisp with a metal loop, his stammer by mechanical exercises, ...

Résumé André Gorz n’avait pas seulement une conception politique de l’écologie qui nous relie à l’histoire et aux luttes sociales, il proposait une véritable alternative écologiste au service de l’autonomie individuelle. S’il a pu paraître trahir son camp plusieurs fois, c’était à chaque fois pour y être plus fidèle malgré tout. Sa critique de l’aliénation du travail l’a mené à vouloir sortir du productivisme salarial grâce au revenu garanti et des « cercles de coopération », avant peut-être le (...) règne de la gratuité dans l’économie immatérielle... (shrink)

Not only did André Gorz have a political conception of ecology that links it to history and social struggles, he also proposed a full-fledged ecological alternative at the service of individual autonomy. Though he may have appeared a traitor to his own camp on several occasions, it was always to remain faithful over the long run. His critique of the alienation of labor led him to look for an exit from salaried productivism in the forms of guaranteed income (...) and « cooperation circles » – perhaps as a prelude to the free interchange of the immaterial economy. (shrink)

André Gorz (1923-2007), pionnier de l'écologie politique, est en voie de reconnaissance.

Résumé Sans André Gorz, on n’aurait jamais assisté à la greffe réussie entre la gauche anti-institutionnelle issue de Mai 1968 et l’écologie antiproductiviste, donc a-socialiste, dont est issu peu ou prou tout ce qui cherche encore une gauche digne de ce nom.

Résumé Sans André Gorz, on n’aurait jamais assisté à la greffe réussie entre la gauche anti-institutionnelle issue de Mai 1968 et l’écologie antiproductiviste, donc a-socialiste, dont est issu peu ou prou tout ce qui cherche encore une gauche digne de ce nom.

Gorz’s Reform and Revolution was published in 1969, and it taught me to mistrust the « all or nothing » of the mythical Big Day when the relations of production would be changed all at once. I learned there was an enormous range of possible transformations inside capitalism, as we would demonstrate with the research program of the Regulation School. As a politician, I have always upheld this radical reformism.

Résumé Dans Réforme et Révolution, que Gorz avait publié en 1969, j’avais appris — et ce n’était pas très facile, dans l’exaltationpost-soixante-huitarde — à me défier du « tout ou rien », du mythe du grand soir par lequel on changerait d’un coup les rapports de production. J’avais appris qu’il y avait d’énormes marges de transformation à l’intérieur même du capitalisme : ce que nous allions montrer, en tant que chercheurs, avec l’approche de la régulation, et ce à quoi (...) je suis toujours resté fidèle en tant qu’homme politique, le réformisme radical. (shrink)

A comprehensive and scholarly exploration of the personal and philosophical origins of André Gorz's work, this book includes a unique analysis of his early untranslated texts, as well as critical discussions of his relationship to the work of Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Marx, and Habermas. Reassessing pivotal notions such as the "lifeworld" and the "subject," it argues that Gorz has pioneered a person-centred social theory in which the motive and the meaning of social critique is firmly rooted in people's (...) lived experience. (shrink)

Andre Gorz is one of the most important contemporary socialist thinkers, acquiring the reputation of an iconoclastic theorist who poses radical questions about the future of the Left. This full length assessment of his work is the first to critically evaluate all of his writings from the 1950s to the '90s. Highlighting the eclectic nature of Gorz's intellectual heritage beginning with his existentialist-Marxist roots in post-war France, Adrian Little creates a unique perspective, arguing that Gorz is primarily (...) a theorist of individual freedom and autonomy. In this context he can be regarded not only as a post-Marxist thinker but as a unique purveyor of individualistic socialism. This view offers a challenge to all on the Left who are concerned with the reproduction of welfare capitalism and the future of democratic socialism. (shrink)

Labour, Liberty and Necessity in the Communist Utopia : André Gorz and his Reading of Marx What are the relations engaging labour and liberty, when the former is no longer essentially experienced as the social mark of the alienation of liberty in the economic order ? It was Marx who first formulated these questions consistently and rigorously. He did so by formulating the theory of the two orders, necessity and liberty, in the framework of the communist utopia. For (...) all this, Marx’s formulation of the issue failed to dissipate a whole series of ambiguities concerning the relation between these two orders. Drawing on André Gorz’s critical reworking of the Marxian framework of the project of social transformation, our aim is to show that a project of emancipation requires a philosophy of liberty, one which recognises a degree of irreducible density in all human collective groups. Or, to put things differently, which acknowledges a certain ineluctable heteronomy of the human condition. (shrink)

If we look at the titles of your works, from Strategy for Labor, to The Actuality of Revolution up to Farewell to the Working Class, all pose political and sociological questions which do not immediately reveal the philosophical dimension of your thought. Do you see yourself primarily as a sociologist, revolutionary theorist, political strategist or philosopher?You are right. I perceive myself as a stranded philosopher trying to smuggle my original philosophic reflections into seemingly political or sociological matters. I understand “philosophy” (...) as die original question which Western philosophy has posed since die Greeks. When am I truly myself, diat is, not a tool or die product of outside powers and influences, but radier die originator of my acts, dioughts, feelings, values, etc? (shrink)

Au tournant des années 2000, André Gorz (1923-2007) rencontre avec enthousiasme le courant marxiste hétérodoxe de la Critique de la valeur et semble y trouver de quoi appuyer sa propre critique radicale du capitalisme. L’article interroge le statut philosophique de ce rapprochement et défend la thèse que le marxisme existentialiste de Gorz n’est au fond pas compatible avec le structuralisme de ce courant marxiste.Codes JEL : B14, B24, B5.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DisaffiliationsBeauvoir and Gorz on Masculinity as AgingPenelope DeutscherThe same drama of flesh and spirit, and of finitude and transcendence, plays itself out in both sexes; both are eaten away by time, stalked by death.The Second Sex, 763Simone de Beauvoir wrote her second large theoretical work in 1970, La Vieillesse (V), some nine years after André Gorz published a two-part article, “Le Vieillissement,” in Les Temps Modernes, (...) in 1961 and 1962. These were essays in which Gorz did not hesitate to refer to the “conflict between generations.” He found unremarkable the constant transitions involved in what he saw as a combat between younger and older age groups, unremarkable that the young would resent the domination of the aged and find themselves resented in turn. The aged would bear heavily on the young, but eventually find themselves demeaned if not subordinated by them.Since Gorz was one of the many references in La Vieillesse, Beauvoir was using resources that could have prompted her to think of youth and aging as a further domain of group-based conflict and hostility. Instead, she preferred a different language. Stories that might have seemed to be those of inter-generational conflict were present in her work—she mentions a story from the Brothers Grimm of three generations: son, father, and grandfather. The father treats the grandfather abusively until he learns that his son accordingly anticipates repeating the same treatment toward him. But Beauvoir does not narrate the story as one of conflict between groups who should be understood as “generations.”1 For Gorz, by contrast, such relations seem inevitable. He writes [End Page 88] of young men frustrated by their disenfranchisement by older men, who are in turn disenfranchised as young men eventually manage to usurp them.Just as the language of group-based conflict seems to Gorz obvious to describe such relations, so does the tacit (though not overtly noted) masculinity of their experience. But because he does not directly note that the conflict, on his own account, occurs between the younger and older generations of males, it is not clear how a vision of generational conflict might be inflected by a sense that such relations are also those of sexual difference. How might that affect relations between the sexes or relations among women of different ages?For her part, Beauvoir did refer to tensions between younger and older women, both in The Second Sex (SS) and Old Age(OA), but these were largely references to relations between mothers and daughters. They were familial stories. Certainly, they were refracted through structure and social context: It is the impoverished status and history of women that, in Beauvoir’s view, inhibits their lives to the point that mothers and daughters resent each other. But describing such tensions, Beauvoir does not present them as competition between groups. Her visions are those of individual experiences occurring in family contexts, not those of a generation of women of a particular age group, understanding each other as engaged in some kind of potentially conflictual group relations with a group of women understood as generationally younger or older. This is not to say that Beauvoir ought to have preferred the language of generational conflict in considering aging. But in understanding that she turned away, without saying so, from a model that might well have seemed most plausible, we can think further about the interpretation that did seem more plausible to her.How, then, do aging and sex interact for Beauvoir? Her presentation of aging in The Second Sex is characteristically ambivalent. She describes middle-aged women who have bet on the norms of femininity—“She has counted on her sexual attributes far more than man has” (SS, 620)—only to be confronted with the dilemmas of the transformation brought by time. Beauvoir takes this transformation to be largely negative—comprehended in terms of loss rather than possible gain. She describes the physical transformation of aging in terms of degeneration and the passing of youth, beauty, health, innovation, capacity. She also claims, albeit with an important exception, that it is experienced by the woman negatively, with accompanying effects of shock, discontinuity, crisis, anxious concern, denial... (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

This reconsideration of Hume’s classic essay “Of Miracles” via the lens of American pragmatist ways of thinking about history and power shifts our attention from Hume’s epistemic concerns about the legitimacy of witnesses and testimony to his distaste for sacred history, his critical stance regarding the social force of revelation, and his disdain for religious authority. To view Hume’s essay both as an articulation of a critical philosophy of history and as an exercise in moral dynamism (social power or, authority, (...) is a result of epistemic transactions), is to intervene in both Hume studies and Contemporary Pragmatism. (shrink)

Under the lig ht of Being and Nothingness’s the o re t ical body – Sartre’s master piece –, it is intended to discuss the essential source of human reality as “n i h i l a t i o n” and ontological lack, as well as manifestations and cons e q u e nces from this primordial human passion to be transformed to coagulated transcendence, to be transformed in Being In-itself-For-itself: to be consciousness and, at the same t i (...) me, to be a complete and finished Being, with infinite de nsity and witho u t fissures. (shrink)

An examination of David Hume's philosophy of religion that situates his conception "true religion" within the context of his overall science of human nature, his rejection of popular religion, and his Ciceronian influence"--Provided by publisher.

Drawing on recent findings, this study examines whether valence concordant electromyography (EMG) responses can be explained as an unconditional effect of mere stimulus processing or as somatosensory simulation driven by task-dependent processing strategies. While facial EMG over the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major was measured, each participant performed two tasks with pictures of album covers. One task was an affective evaluation task and the other was to attribute the album covers to one of five decades. The Embodied Emotion Account (...) predicts that valence concordant EMG is more likely to occur if the task necessitates a somatosensory simulation of the evaluative meaning of stimuli. Results support this prediction with regard to Corrugator supercilii in that valence concordant EMG activity was only present in the affective evaluation task but not in the non-evaluative task. Results for the Zygomaticus major were ambiguous. Our findings are in line with the view that EMG activity is an embodied part of the evaluation process and not a mere physical outcome. (shrink)

Étude sur deux pensées philosophiques de l'existence qui furent influencées par le romantisme au milieu du XIXe siècle. L'auteur s'interroge sur la conception de l'homme que chacun des deux philosophes propose. D'après lui, leurs postulats sont parents par bien des aspects. L'existence est envisagée dans ses dimensions littéraires, philosophiques et religieuses.--Résumé de l'éditeur.

There would be, beyond the work carried out with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe on the Jena Romantics—the first phase of German Romanticism—in The Literary Absolute (1978; trans. 1988), a “romanticism”, recurrent and yet problematised, of Jean-Luc Nancy. Set forth in a little-known text on Flaubert, this “romanticism” reveals itself to be, not of a school of thought nor of a fantasy, but of a form insofar as it is conveyed by a very new regime of thinking. Moreover, it must itself be overcome, (...) by following the infinity of sense that the fragmentation of totalities qua the world imposes. (shrink)

Le rôle de David Hume dans la philosophie moderne, par A. L. Leroy.--The enlightenment of David Hume, by E. C. Mossner.--Hume and Jurieu: possible Calvinist origins of Hume's theory of belief, by R. H. Popkin.--Hume: philosopher or psychologist? A problem of exegesis, by T. E. Jessop.--L'astrazione nella filosofia di Hume, di M. Dal Pra.--Infinite divisibility in Hume's "Treatise," by A. Flew.--Note a "La rgola del gusto," di E. Migliorini.--Kant, Hamann-Jacobi and Schelling on Hume, by P. Merlan.--Bibliografia humiana dal 1937 al (...) 1966, di E. Ronchetti. (shrink)