Das Werk Michel Foucaults hat das Feld politiktheoretisch informierter Analysen erheblich erweitert und dazu beigetragen, Grundbegriffe der Politischen Theorie neu zu verstehen. Der Band unternimmt erstmalig eine Bestandsaufnahme zum Spektrum der aktuellen Arbeiten mit und zu Foucault in der Politischen Theorie. Die Beiträge thematisieren Foucaults Konzeptionen von Freiheit, Kritik, Wahrheit, Macht oder Staat, verorten Foucault im Verhältnis zu Latour, Bourdieu oder Haraway und problematisieren Foucault u.a. vor dem Hintergrund der Geschichte des Marxismus und der Gegenwart des Neoliberalismus. Der Inhalt• Foucault, (...) die Politische Theorie und das Politische• Reflexion politiktheoretischer Grundbegriffe („Theorie“)• Komparatistische Studien („Vergleich“)• Neuperspektivierung konkreter Handlungsfelder („Problematisierung“) Die ZielgruppenStudierende, Lehrende und WissenschaftlerInnen in Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie, Kulturwissenschaft und Philosophie Die HerausgeberDr. Oliver Marchart ist Professor für Politische Theorie am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Wien.Dr. Renate Martinsen ist Professorin für Politische Theorie am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Duisburg-Essen./div. (shrink)

A systematic treatment of Hume's conception of imagination in all the main topics of his philosophy.

Over the last thirty years, the work of the political theorist Ernesto Laclau has reinvigorated radical political and social theory. Taking concepts previously ignored or unused within mainstream political theory, such as the political, hegemony, discourse, identity, and representation, he has made them fundamental to thinking about politics and social theory. Resisting the dead end of postmodern politics, his work has drawn in stimulating ways on Gramscian, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory. Laclau: A Critical Reader is the first full-length critical appraisal (...) of Laclau's work and includes contributions from several leading philosophers and theorists. The first section examines Laclau's theory that the contest between universalism and particularism provides much of the philosophical background to political and social struggle, taking up the important place accorded to, amongst others, Hegel and Lacan in Laclau's work. The second section of the book considers what Laclau's "radical democracy" might look like and reflects on its ethical implications, particularly in relation to Laclau's post-Marxism and thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas. The final section investigates the place of hegemony in Laclau's work, the idea for which he is perhaps best-known. This stimulating collection also includes replies to his critics by Laclau and the important exchange between Laclau and Judith Butler on equality, making it an excellent companion to Laclau's work and essential reading for students of political and social theory. (shrink)

_Laclau: A Critical Reader_ is the first full-length critical appraisal of Laclau's work and includes contributions from several leading philosophers and theorists. The first section examines Laclau's theory that the contest between universalism and particularism provides much of the philosophical background to political and social struggle, taking up the important place accorded to, amongst others, Hegel and Lacan in Laclau's work. The second section of the book considers what Laclau's 'radical democracy' might look like and reflects on its ethical implications, (...) particularly in relation to Laclau's post-Marxism and thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas. The final section investigates the place of hegemony in Laclau's work, the idea for which he is perhaps best-known. This stimulating collection also includes replies to his critics by Laclau and the important exchange between Laclau and Judith Butler on equality, making it an excellent companion to Laclau's work and essential reading for students of political and social theory. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz kritisiert den unrealistischen Politikbegriff vieler der aktuell boomenden Theorien politischer Imagination. Mit dem Ziel der Entwicklung einer realistischen politischen Theorie der Imagination wird der Begriff der politischen Einbildungskraft mit dem der Entscheidung konterkariert und das Werk von Cornelius Castoriadis mit dem von Ernesto Laclau kontrastiert. Anhand einer Diskussion der Subjekt- und Entscheidungstheorie Laclaus in ihrem Verhältnis zur Imagination erweist sich, dass Dezisions- und Imaginationstheorien im Rahmen eines realistischen Ansatzes aufeinander verwiesen bleiben müssen, denn ihre jeweiligen Defizite, die sich (...) postfundamentalistisch auf die ontologische Defizienz der Gründe zurückführen lassen, können nur im wechselseitigen Verweis von Imagination auf Dezision und von Dezision auf Imagination bearbeitet werden. (shrink)

The article seeks to stress the importance of two main innovations in Ernesto Laclau's recent work: what his theory of populism in On Populist Reason provides in terms of theoretical innovations is , a political theory of naming, and , a political theory of the heterogeneous. Furthermore, it is asked what it means to name, as Laclau himself does, the subject of the political "the people" and to define populism as the logic of all politics. It is argued against potential (...) criticism that these rather strong claims, far from being overstretched, in fact must be understood in the light of Laclau's new ideas on political naming and the heterogeneous, since his notions of populism and "the people" are the outcome of political nomination, that is, a political wager on Laclau's part , and the name of "the people," like every political name, will always cast a shadow on the heterogeneous as that which cannot be named. (shrink)

Among theorists associated with the first generation of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse’s position is singular in that he provides us with an unabashedly affirmative theory of politics as liberatory practice. The article discusses Marcuse’s contribution to political thought by pointing out how, in particular, three aspects remain highly pertinent to contemporary thought: (a) his account of freedom as potentiality, to be actualized in political practice; (b) his conception of the political pre-figuration or pre-enactment of a liberated society; and (c) (...) his rehabilitation of the human faculty of imagination that allows us to overcome the reality principle of the status quo by venturing, qua practice, into the realm of the revolutionary surreal, thereby enlarging the horizon of what is politically imaginable. In a final step Marcuse’s contribution is contrasted with contemporary theories of the political. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 1 Seiten: 94-99.

Der Sammelband nimmt seinen Ausgang in einer der prominentesten und lebendigsten Debatten inner-halb der neueren Politischen Theorie, die seit uber einer Dekade intensiv auch in der deutschsprachigen Politischen Theorie gefuhrt wird. Im Zentrum der Diskussion steht die Unterscheidung von Politik und Politischem, in deren Licht die Beitrage des Bandes Fragen der radikalen Demokratie, dem Widerstandigen des Politischen und den Rezeptionslinien dieser wichtigen Debatte nachspuren. Mit Beitragen von Werner Friedrichs, Mareike Gebhardt, Anastasoiya Kasko, Oliver Marchart, Martin Nonhoff, Hagen Scholzel, (...) Karsten Schubert, Manon Westphal und Markus Wolf. (shrink)

Oliver Marchart constructs an elaborate ontologization of the political that builds on theories developed by the Essex School while relying on Heideggerianism and Hegelianism. This original thought is a powerful and convincing attempt to think the ontology of the political without lapsing into a celebration of essentialist grounding or complete groundlessness, which are equally metaphysical and mutually supporting positions. Tensions arise within Marchart’s own thought when the notion of instrumentality appears to be inscribed solely on the side (...) of politics or the ontic. I suggest that a theory of practical judgment that is inchoate in Marchart’s own position can resolve the tensions toward constructing a genuinely materialist ontology. (shrink)

The concept of political difference concerns the distinction between politics and the political. The political refers to the ontological making possible of the different domains of society, including the domain of politics in the narrow sense. Political difference was introduced as a reaction to the theoretical controversy between foundationalism and anti-foundationalism. This reaction took the form of post-foundationalism. According to Marchart, post-foundationalism does not entirely deny the possibility of grounding. It denies only the possibility of an ultimate transcendent foundation (...) insofar as this ontological impossibility makes possible the historical and contingent grounds in plural.The Heideggerian concept of ontological difference also undermines the possibility of an ultimate ontical ground which establishes the presence of all the other beings. If one wants to think beyond the concept of ground, one should obtain a clear understanding of Being as Being, namely one should grasp the Being in its difference from beings. All the same, Heidegger tends to replace the ontical grounds of metaphysics with Being itself as a new kind of ultimate ontological foundation.On the other hand, one can detect in many points of Heideggerian argumentation traces of a second alternative understanding of ontological difference which does not belong in Heidegger’s intentions and which undermines the primordiality of Being. This alternative understanding establishes a reciprocity between Being and beings. In our view, political difference not only is based in this second way of understanding but, at the same time, develops more decisively the mutual interdependence between Being and beings.In political difference the grounding part, namely the political, possesses both a grounding character and a derivative one. Politics and political both grounds and dislocate each other in an incessant and oscillating, historical procedure which undermines any form of completion of the social. (shrink)

Unsicherheit und Kontingenz sind zu paradigmatischen Kategorien für die Interpretation des sozialen und politischen Raumes geworden. Sie wecken Hoffnung auf Veränderung, werden aber auch für gegenwärtige Herausforderungen wie die sogenannte Postfaktizität und den Populismus verantwortlich gemacht. Lucas von Ramin legt den Kern einer postmodernen Sozialphilosophie frei und rekonstruiert damit, wie aus der Kontingenz der Welt doch Zuversicht geschöpft werden kann. Er zeigt auf, dass der normative Anspruch einer solchen Philosophie nicht hoch genug geschätzt werden kann, ihre Grenzen jedoch an der (...) Gegenwart gemessen werden müssen. (shrink)

This paper reviews the hole argument as an argument against spacetime substantivalism. After a careful presentation of the argument itself, I critically review possible responses.

What is morality? How many moral values are there? And what are they? According to the theory of morality-as-cooperation, morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. This theory predicts that there will be as many different types of morality as there are different types of cooperation. Previous research, drawing on evolutionary game theory, has identified at least seven different types of cooperation, and used them to explain seven different (...) types of morality: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Here we explore the conjecture that these simple moral ‘elements’ combine to form a much larger number of more complex moral ‘molecules’, and that as such morality is a combinatorial system. For each combination of two elements, we hypothesise a candidate moral molecule, and successfully locate an example of it in the professional and popular literature. These molecules include: fraternity, blood revenge, family pride, filial piety, gavelkind, primogeniture, friendship, patriotism, tribute, diplomacy, common ownership, honour, confession, turn taking, restitution, modesty, mercy, munificence, arbitration, mendicancy, and queuing. These findings indicate that morality – like many other physical, biological, psychological and cultural systems – is indeed a combinatorial system. Thus morality-as-cooperation provides a principled and powerful theory, that explains why there are many moral values, and successfully predicts what they will be; and it generates a systematic framework that has the potential to explain all moral ideas, possible and actual. Pursuing the many implications of this theory will help to place the study of morality on a more secure scientific footing. (shrink)

Despite its importance in the history of philosophy, the work of the Spanish thinker Averro"es (1126-1198) has been left largely unexplored in this century. This book is the only general account of Averro"es' philosophy in English. Leaman analyzes his thought and influence, particularly his metaphysics and theory of meaning, arguing that while his work belongs within the cultural and political context of medieval Islam, it remains of considerable philosophical and historical significance.

I chart the philosophical development of neglected figure Margaret Macdonald and situate that development in the context of mid-century analytic philosophy more broadly. I examine Macdonald’s changing attitude towards verificationism, and show that these changing views led her, in 1950 and beyond, to a very thorough appreciation of language use as capable of being employed in the execution of distinctive kinds of performative act. I compare Macdonald’s views with the far better known work of J. L. Austin, and I emphasise (...) the extent to which she has, despite her insightful contributions, been omitted from the history of philosophy. (shrink)

One of postmodernism's toughest challenges to Christian thought is its wholesale rejection of metaphysics. This profound book meets the challenge squarely, offering a surer foundation for the idea of being and a new theological perspective of supreme relevance to today's world. In a brilliant turn of postmodern thought itself, Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics based on a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. His repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in (...) the divine self-naming in Exodus -- which, for the rabbis, identified God's presence in the world with God's compassionate acts -- and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the deepest histories of the contemporary world, Davies offers a renewed systematic theology focused on divine speech and God's compassionate relation to human culture. (shrink)

No longer is pregnancy a repulsive or shameful condition in Hollywood films, but an attractive attribute, often enhancing the romantic or comedic storyline of a female character. Kelly Oliver investigates this curious shift and its reflection of changing attitudes toward women's roles in reproduction and the family. Not all representations signify progress. Oliver finds that in many pregnancy films, our anxieties over modern reproductive practices and technologies are made manifest, and in some cases perpetuate conventions curtailing women's freedom. (...) Reading such films as _Where the Heart Is_ (2000), _Riding in Cars with Boys_ (2001), _Palindromes_ (2004), _Saved!_ (2004), _Quinceañera_ (2006), _Children of Men_ (2006), _Knocked Up_ (2007), _Juno_ (2007), _Baby Mama_ (2008), _Away We Go_ (2009), _Precious_ (2009), _The Back-up Plan_ (2010), _Due Date_ (2010), and _Twilight: Breaking Dawn_ (2011), Oliver investigates pregnancy as a vehicle for romance, a political issue of "choice," a representation of the hosting of "others," a prism for fears of miscegenation, and a screen for modern technological anxieties. (shrink)

Introduction: The role of animals in philosophies of man -- Part I: What's wrong with animal rights? -- The right to remain silent -- Part II: Animal pedagogy -- You are what you eat : Rousseau's cat -- Say the human responded : Herder's sheep -- Part III: Difference worthy of its name -- Hair of the dog : Derrida's and Rousseau's good taste -- Sexual difference, animal difference : Derrida's sexy silkworm -- Part IV: It's our fault -- The (...) beaver's struggle with species-being : De Beauvoir and the praying mantis -- Answering the call of nature : Lacan walking the dog -- Part V: Estranged kinship -- The abyss between humans and animals : Heidegger puts the bee in being -- Strange kinship : Merleau-Ponty's sensuous stickleback -- Stopping the anthropological machine : Agamben's tick-tocking tick -- Psychoanalysis and the science of kinship -- Psychoanalysis as animal by-product : Freud's zoophilia -- Animal abjects, maternal abjects : Kristeva's strays -- Conclusion: Sustainable ethics. (shrink)

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) seeks to produce explanations for those machine learning methods which are deemed opaque. However, there is considerable disagreement about what this means and how to achieve it. Authors disagree on what should be explained (topic), to whom something should be explained (stakeholder), how something should be explained (instrument), and why something should be explained (goal). In this paper, I employ insights from means-end epistemology to structure the field. According to means-end epistemology, different means ought to be (...) rationally adopted to achieve different epistemic ends. Applied to XAI, different topics, stakeholders, and goals thus require different instruments. I call this the means-end account of XAI. The means-end account has a descriptive and a normative component: on the one hand, I show how the specific means-end relations give rise to a taxonomy of existing contributions to the field of XAI; on the other hand, I argue that the suitability of XAI methods can be assessed by analyzing whether they are prescribed by a given topic, stakeholder, and goal. (shrink)

English has plural terms as well as singular terms. But our standard formal languages, e.g., the predicate calculus, feature only singular terms. How can the plural idiom be formalized?‘Changing the subject’ is by far the most common plurals strategy among both philosophers and linguists: a plural term is replaced by a singular term standing for some complex object that ‘contains’ the individuals to which the plural term alludes. For example, one might simply replace ‘A, B imply C’ with ‘{A, B} (...) implies [singular] C’. We uncover a surprising variety of ways to change the subject, of ever‐increasing complexity and ingenuity. Our question is whether any can made to work. (shrink)

Substantivalists believe that spacetime and its parts are fundamental constituents of reality. Relationalists deny this, claiming that spacetime enjoys only a derivative existence. I begin by describing how the Galilean symmetries of Newtonian physics tell against both Newton's brand of substantivalism and the most obvious relationalist alternative. I then review the obvious substantivalist response to the problem, which is to ditch substantival space for substantival spacetime. The resulting position has many affinities with what are arguably the most natural interpretations of (...) special and general relativity. I move on to consider and reject two recent antisubstantivalist lines of thought. The interim conclusion is that the best argument for relationalism is an appeal to Ockham's razor. However, for this to be successful there must be genuine relationalist theories that share the theoretical virtues of their substantivalist rivals but without the additional ontological commitment. The bulk of the paper is therefore an investigation of various concrete relationalist proposals. I distinguish three options for the relationalist in the face of the success of Galilean invariant physics and trace how these generalise to relativistic physics. One of the options is particularly promising but, since its basic objects end up being spacetime points, this does not help the prospects of relationalism as traditionally conceived. I end with some reflections on the fate of substantivalism in the aftermath of the Hole Argument, concluding that we have as yet to be given good reasons to abandon the natural, substantivalist interpretation of current physics. (shrink)

The problems of evil and suffering have been extensively discussed in Jewish philosophy, and much of the discussion has centred on the Book of Job. In this study Oliver Leaman poses two questions: how can a powerful and caring deity allow terrible things to happen to obviously innocent people, and why have the Jewish people been so harshly treated throughout history, given their status as the chosen people? He explores these issues through an analysis of the views of Philo, (...) Saadya, Maimonides, Gersonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and post-Holocaust thinkers, and suggests that a discussion of evil and suffering is really a discussion about our relationship with God. (shrink)

The notion of a migration system is often invoked but it is rarely clearly defined or conceptualized. De Haas recently provided a powerful critique of the current literature highlighting some important flaws that recur through it. In particular, migration systems tend to be identified as fully formed entities, and there is no theorization as to how they come into being and how they break down. The internal dynamics which drive such changes are not examined. Such critiques of migration systems relate (...) to wider critiques of the concept of systems in the broader social science literature, where they are often presented as black boxes in which human agency is largely excluded. The challenge is how to theorize system dynamics in which the actions of people at one time contribute to the emergence of systemic linkages at a later time. This article focuses on the genesis of migration systems and the notion of pioneer migration. It draws attention both to the role of particular individuals, the pioneers, and also the more general activity of pioneering which is undertaken by many migrants. By disentangling different aspects of agency, it is possible to develop hypotheses about how the emergence of migrations systems is related to the nature of the agency exercised by different pioneers or pioneering activities in different contexts. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 413-437 DOI 10.1558/jcr.v11i4.413 Authors Oliver Bakewell, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford Hein De Haas, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford Agnieszka Kubal, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 4 / 2012. (shrink)

Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can be used as interrogation tools, as evidenced in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos, plays on age-old fears of women as sexually threatening weapons, and therefore the literal explosion of women onto the war scene should come as no surprise. From the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women suicide bombers, women and their bodies (...) have become powerful weapons in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In _Women as Weapons of War_, Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the administration frequently use metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a deliberate link between notions of vulnerability and images of violence. Focusing specifically on the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver analyzes contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex, and gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war. For example, the administration's call to liberate "women of cover," suggesting a woman's right to _bare_ arms is a sign of freedom and progress. Oliver also considers what forms of cultural meaning, or lack of meaning, could cause both the guiltlessness demonstrated by female soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the profound commitment to death made by suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the passion for death exhibited by these women and what kind of contexts created them. In conclusion, Oliver diagnoses our cultural fascination with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and stymies critical reflection. This process, she argues, further compromises the borders between fantasy and reality, fueling a kind of paranoid patriotism that results in extreme forms of violence. (shrink)

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality. These findings are of no little consequence for theology, given that a nonhuman animal as a free moral agent would beg the question if human beings are indeed uniquely created in God's image. I argue that apes and some other mammals have moral agency and that a traditional interpretation of the imago Dei is incorrectly equating specialness with exclusivity. By (...) framing the problem in terms of metaphor, following the work of Paul Ricoeur and Sallie McFague, I propose that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is often considered to be the source of the contemporary idea of human dignity, but his conception of human dignity and its relation to human value and to the requirement to respect others have not been widely understood. Kant on Human Dignity offers the first in-depth study in English of this subject. Based on a comprehensive analysis of all the passages in which Kant uses the term ;dignity, as well as an analysis of the most prominent arguments for (...) a value of human beings in the Kant literature, the book carefully examines different ways of construing the relationship between dignity, value and respect for others. It takes seriously Kant s Copernican Revolution in moral philosophy: Kant argues that moral imperatives cannot be based on any values without yielding heteronomy. Instead it is imperatives of reason that determine what is valuable. The requirement to respect all human beings is one such imperative. Respect for human beings does not follow from human dignity for this would violate autonomy but is an unconditional command of reason. Following this train of thought yields a unified account of Kant s moral philosophy. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to debates in philosophy within the medieval Islamic world. It discusses a number of themes which were controversial within the philosophical community of that period: the creation of the world out of nothing, immortality, resurrection, the nature of ethics, and the relationship between natural and religious law. The author provides an account of the arguments of Farabi, Avicenna, Ghazali, Averroes and Maimonides on these and related topics. His argument takes into account the significance of the (...) conflict between faith and reason, religion and philosophy. The book sets out to show how interesting these philosophical debates are, and criticizes the view that these arguments are of no more than historical interest. (shrink)

As a linguist, Julia Kristeva has pioneered a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation; as a practicing psychoanalyst, she has produced work on the nature of the human subject and sexuality, and on the "new maladies" of today's neurotic. _The Portable Kristeva_ is the only fully comprehensive compilation of Kristeva's key writings. The second edition includes added material from Kristeva's most important works of the past five years, including _The Sense and Non-Sense of (...) Revolt_, _Intimate Revolt_, and _Hannah Arendt_. Editor Kelly Oliver has also added new material to the introduction, summarizing Kristeva's latest intellectual endeavors and updating the bibliography. (shrink)

From Abhidharma to Zurvan, this important new resource identifies and defines the principal concepts and individuals in Asian philosophy throughout the world. The comprehensive geographic coverage encompasses China, Japan, India, the Middle East, the United States and Australasia, with an emphasis on contemporary developments and movements. Featuring 650 signed A-Z entries, the Encyclopedia emphasises the present-day vitality of Asian philosophy, and provides extensive coverage of trends such as the reciprocal exchange of theories between East and West, and new schools of (...) thought such as orientalism. Entries include: * Confucius and Confucianism * karma * shamanism * no-self * Madhyamaka School of Buddhism * hungry ghosts * orientalism * Ramanuja * simplicity * Yi Yulgok * Wantokism * Chuang-tzu/Zhuangzi * tantra * harmony * Sufism * Yin-Yang * Mulla Sadra * Zen * and much more. Cross-references; bibliographies and annotated suggestions for further reading; variants provided for all foreign terms (e.g. Pali/Sanskrit, Arabic/Persian). (shrink)