This article contrasts Marx’s critical appropriation of Hegel in his mature works with Georg Lukács’s brilliant interpretation of the relation of Marx and Hegel. Hegel and the Hegelian turn in Marxism, as powerfully represented by Lukács, however, have been strongly criticized in recent decades by structuralist and post-structuralist thinkers for whom concepts central to Lukács’s project, such as totality and the historical Subject, are anti-emancipatory, expressions of domination. Nevertheless, the global historical transformations of recent decades – including the crisis of (...) the Fordist/Keynesian welfare state, the collapse of Soviet Communism, and the emergence of a neo-liberal capitalist global order – have called into question the post-Marxist turn. These historical changes, then, suggest the need for a renewed theoretical concern with capitalism. Marx’s critical appropriation of Hegel provides the basis for a critique both of Lukács as well as of post-structuralism in ways that can avoid the weaknesses of each while incorporating their strengths. (shrink)

El presente texto pretende presentar dos propuestas de actualización de la crítica de la economía política marxiana: las de Moishe Postone y Robert Kurz. Sus planteamientos, gestados a partir de los años ochenta, ofrecen claves para superar las insuficiencias del marxismo tradicional y abren perspectivas fructíferas para actualizar la teoría crítica. Partiendo de una reinterpretación común de las categorías de Marx, ambos autores presentan sin embargo diagnósticos diferentes: mientras Postone incide en cómo el capitalismo origina la posibilidad (...) de un nuevo orden social, Kurz señala que el capitalismo contemporáneo habría alcanzado su límite interno y entrado en una fase irreversible de declive y desintegración. (shrink)

El artículo busca trazar una articulación entre la lógica del capital como sujeto de lo social y la formación histórica de la subjetividad. Para ello, proponemos una composición entre la relectura categorial respecto de Karl Marx que desarrolla el intelectual canadiense Moishe Postone y la interpretación filosófica sobre Sigmund Freud que elabora el pensador argentino León Rozitchner. En función de eso emprenderemos tres tareas. Primero, dilucidaremos el aparato conceptual de Postone partiendo del libro Tiempo, trabajo y dominación (...) social. Luego, examinaremos la noción de subjetividad en Rozitchner centrándonos en los textos Freud y los límites del individualismo burgués y Freud y el problema del poder. Y por último, exploraremos las posibles contribuciones al pensamiento contemporáneo. (shrink)

This article examines the relation between the critical theory of Moishe Postone and the philosophy of Theodor Adorno. While the former is clearly influenced by the latter, these influences mostly stay implicit. When explicit, he does not so easily put his own thought in line with Adorno’s and is highly critical of him. I will investigate the ways in which ideas from Adorno made their way into Postone’s work, but also where the latter diverts from them. As (...) will be shown, Postone’s critical theory runs into a problem when one examines the immanent ground of his critical norm, freedom. Adorno, on the contrary, does succeed in employing the same norm in his own immanent critique. I will conclude that the problem Postone encounters can be avoided by being more of an ‘Adornian’, and that his theory allows this. (shrink)

Reviews : C.L.R. James, World Revolution 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International ; Michel Beaud, Socialism in the Crucible of History ; Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Volume 3, 1961- 1979 ; Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination—A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Tbeory.

To make ‘philosophy worldly’ often requires an act of translation. In This Life, Martin Hägglund argues for the relevance of Marx to our contemporary lives. By way of a lively and sophisticated dialogue between philosophical interlocutors – including Hegel and Marx – Hägglund offers a compelling account of the relation between time, value and freedom. This Life translates current issues in academic philosophy into a popular register that does not reduce the complexity of the issues but shows what is at (...) stake for our own lives. Hägglund provides a synthesis of Robert B. Pippin’s normative reading of Hegel and the value-form critical theory of Moishe Postone’s Marxism. Further, Hägglund’s vision of freedom outflanks the political limitations of Pippin’s Hegel and Postone’s Marx while retaining the power of their analyses. I assess his interpretation of Hegel and critically examine the concept of value operative in This Life, and frame this question in terms of value-form theory. (shrink)

"Whether we think history has a definite logic of its own, or is merely the emergent quality of an irreducible contingency – it is usually taken as granted that it the same way in all its course. This is the case with some philosophers who argue against a conception of history as having an inherent logic. In this paper I present Postone’s critical reexamination of Marxian categories and argue that based on his project, we can criticize the presupposition of (...) the “sameness” of history. For although there is no transhistorically valid “logic of history”, something like it is constituted by the functioning of capitalism’s elementary categories. Keywords: history, historical time, logic of history, capitalism, traditional Marxism, Moishe Postone". (shrink)

The article presents a comparative analysis of the theories of capitalism of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus and Moishe Postone’s Time, Labor, and Social Domination. What Postone calls abstract domination is similar to the capitalist axiomatic of the French philosophers. These works introduce theories concerning the historical specificity of capitalism, which, at the same time, make possible an immanent critique of this particular social form. The authors of these works agree on highlighting the historically specific aspects (...) of capitalism that make the latter different from other social forms. Likewise, they maintain a partially affirmative relation to this social form, in which contradictory historical emancipatory possibilities are developed. Therefore, the article draws a parallel between Postone’s idea of abstract social domination and Deleuze and Guattari’s capitalist axiomatic. It also aims at showing that the three authors introduce a critique of capitalism, which is based on their own historical and social developments, and which work in an immanent way and not with abstract normative standards. (shrink)

Reason and Explanation develops a new explanationist account of epistemic justification. Poston argues that the explanatory virtues provide a plausible account of necessary and sufficient conditions for justification. The justification of a subject's belief consists in the explanatory virtue of her entire beliefs compared with other sets of beliefs she could have. Poston's argument for coherentism involves a defense of the epistemic value of background beliefs, the development of a novel framework view of reasons, and the articulation of a mentalism (...) evidentialist account of coherentism. Poston argues against foundationalist views that ground justification in sense experience apart from supporting background beliefs. He extends the argument against foundationalism by examining a coherentist view of a priori knowledge. Finally, he articulates a compatiblist position regarding Bayesianism and inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

Rahel Jaeggi’s theory of alienation has received less attention than her work on forms of life and capitalism. This theory avoids the problems of traditional theories of alienation: objectivism, paternalism, and essentialism. It also sidesteps post-structuralist criticisms of the theory of alienation. However, Jaeggi’s theory is flawed in two ways: it is not historically specific, and so cannot explain why alienation is a problem for modernity rather than other historical periods, and it is difficult to connect to social critique. I (...) argue that Karl Marx’s later theory of alienation, as interpreted by Moishe Postone and others, is able to avoid the problems that Jaeggi’s theory avoids, and is also able to avoid the flaws in her theory. This suggests that critical theory should focus on a theory of capitalism rather than normative social theory. (shrink)

Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson's influential article "Knowing How" argues that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. One objection to their view is that knowledge-how is significantly different than knowledge-that because Gettier cases afflict the latter but not the former. Stanley and Williamson argue that this objection fails. Their response, however, is not adequate. Moreover, I sketch a plausible argument that knowledge-how is not susceptible to Gettier cases. This suggests a significant distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how.

We know facts, but we also know how to do things. To know a fact is to know that a proposition is true. But does knowing how to ride a bike amount to knowledge of propositions? This is a challenging question and one that deeply divides the contemporary landscape. A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-How introduces, outlines, and critically evaluates various contemporary debates surrounding the nature of knowledge-how. Carter and Poston show that situating the debate over the nature of knowledge-how in (...) other epistemological debates provides new ways to make progress. In particular, Carter and Poston explore the question of what knowledge-how involves, and how it might come apart from propositional knowledge, by engaging with key epistemological topics including epistemic luck, knowledge of language, epistemic value, virtue epistemology and social epistemology. New frontiers for research on knowledge-how are also explored relating to the internalism - externalism debate as well as embodied and extended knowledge. A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-How provides an accessible introduction to the main arguments in this important and thriving debate suited for undergraduates and postgraduates in philosophy and related areas. A strength of the book is its methodology which places a premium on placing the debates over knowledge-how in a broader conversation over the nature of knowledge. This book also offers an opinionated discussion of various lines of argument which will be of interest to professional philosophers as well. (shrink)

Intellectualism about knowledge-how is the view that practical knowledge is a species of propositional knowledge. I argue that this view is undermined by a difference in properties between knowledge-how and both knowledge-that and knowledge-wh. More specifically, I argue that both knowledge-that and knowledge-wh are easily transmitted via testimony while knowledge-how is not easily transmitted by testimony. This points to a crucial difference in states of knowledge. I also consider Jason Stanley's attempt to subsume knowledge-how under an account of de se (...) knowledge. I argue that there are crucial differences between de se knowledge and knowledge-how. Thus, this paper advances both the discussion of intellectualism and the literature on the nature of de se knowledge. (shrink)

This paper articulates a way to ground a relatively high prior probability for grand explanatory theories apart from an appeal to simplicity. I explore the possibility of enumerating the space of plausible grand theories of the universe by using the explanatory properties of possible views to limit the number of plausible theories. I motivate this alternative grounding by showing that Swinburne’s appeal to simplicity is problematic along several dimensions. I then argue that there are three plausible grand views—theism, atheism, and (...) axiarchism—which satisfy explanatory requirements for plausibility. Other possible views lack the explanatory virtue of these three theories. Consequently, this explanatory grounding provides a way of securing a nontrivial prior probability for theism, atheism, and axiarchism. An important upshot of my approach is that a modest amount of empirical evidence can bear significantly on the posterior probability of grand theories of the universe. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that attention to the intricacies relating to belief illustrate crucial difficulties with Schellenberg's hiddenness argument. This issue has been only tangentially discussed in the literature to date. Yet we judge this aspect of Schellenberg's argument deeply significant. We claim that focus on the nature of belief manifests a central flaw in the hiddenness argument. Additionally, attention to doxastic subtleties provides important lessons about the nature of faith.

Functionalism about truth is the view that truth is an explanatorily significant but multiply-realizable property. According to this view the properties that realize truth vary from domain to domain, but the property of truth is a single, higher-order, domain insensitive property. We argue that this view faces a challenge similar to the one that Jaegwon Kim laid out for the multiple realization thesis. The challenge is that the higher-order property of truth is equivalent to an explanatorily idle disjunction of its (...) realization bases. This consequence undermines the alethic functionalists’ non-deflationary ambitions. A plausible response to Kim’s argument fails to carry over to alethic functionalism on account of significant differences between alethic functionalism and psychological functionalism. Lynch’s revised view in his book Truth as One and Many ( 2009 ) fails to answer our challenge. The upshot is that, while mental functionalism may survive Kim’s argument, it mortally wounds functionalism about truth. (shrink)

In this new explanationist account of epistemic justification, Poston argues that the explanatory virtues provide all the materials necessary for a plausible account of justified belief. There are no purely autonomous reasons. Rather reasons occur only within an explanatory coherent set of beliefs.

This paper responds to Ernest Sosa's recent criticism of Richard Fumerton's acquaintance theory. Sosa argues that Fumerton's account of non-inferential justification falls prey to the problem of the speckled hen. I argue that Sosa's criticisms are both illuminating and interesting but that Fumerton's theory can escape the problem of the speckled hen. More generally, the paper shows that an internalist account of non-inferential justification can survive the powerful objections of the Sellarsian dilemma and the problem of the speckled hen.

There is an interesting and instructive problem with Richard Fumerton's acquaintance theory of noninferential justification. Fumerton's explicit account requires acquaintance with the truth-maker of one's belief and yet he admits that one can have noninferential justification when one is not acquainted with the truthmaker of one's belief but instead acquainted with a very similar truth-maker. On the face of it this problem calls for clarification. However, there are skeptical issues lurking in the background. This paper explores these issues by developing (...) a dilemma for an acquaintance theory. (shrink)

If there is life elsewhere in the universe and its level of development is as backward as its terrestrial counterpart, they will probably have sociologists and political scientists constructing and deconstructing social reality. If and when they finally make contact with earth, these pundits will have great difficulty making sense of American race relations, no matter how many studies the Federation will commission to make sense out of the subject. The earth's most developed country, whose success is largely due to (...) its heterogeneity, pragmatism and common sense, does not seem able to deal with differences in skin pigmentation, to the point that its best intellectuals systematically make fools of themselves in explaining it. (shrink)

The main feature of Whitebook's reply is that he does not give an inch and, more convinced than ever, keeps charging the windmills of redemption and revolution with the same lame theoretical weapons he had previously deployed. Only this time, he seeks reinforcements by appealing to the “heavies”: Habermas, Castoriadis and Heller. Since multiplying zero by any figure still yields zero, no substantive progress has been made. It would be futile to reiterate the same objections once again. Rather, to move (...) the debate beyond dead center it may be helpful to pose new questions, e.g., in terms of the status of the concepts employed and the political consequences they entail. (shrink)

With an unusually well-orchestrated PR campaign worthy of the slickest mass commodity, Tikkun presents itself as a newjewish progressive magazine to challenge Commentary. But it is well known that many progressive U.S. magazines are largely staffed by Jews and most Jewish intellectuals are generally liberal. This striking redundancy immediately raises suspicion about either its Jewish or its liberal pedigree — or both. The obvious clash between the traditional secularism of progressive thought and the archaic religious appeal casts a shadow both (...) ways. Is it really Jewish or is it really liberal? And if it somehow manages to be both, what does it mean for present Jewish and liberal thought? (shrink)

Frustrated radicals who have managed, over the last 20 years of chaotic growth and revolutionary restructuring of higher education, to translate their “revolutionary rhetoric” only into tenured academic positions, tend to have an ambivalent relation to critical theory. On the one hand, they are irresistibly attracted to it. In a sophisticated scholarly fashion especially appropriate to their new professional status, critical theory addresses all those troublesome cultural questions that were becoming increasingly urgent but which traditional brands of Marxism could not (...) readily tackle through standard materialist approaches. But, on the other hand, they were never able to digest critical theory's discouraging political implications which, for all practical purposes, effectively undermined most radical conventional wisdom and assumptions — assumptions that even such critical theorists as Adorno and Marcuse could not always do without. (shrink)

Terminally associated with drugs, unbridled hedonism and general irresponsibility, since the late 1960s “radicalism” has been systematically discredited. Today no one thinks of it as having anything to do with “going back to roots” but, at best, as a youthful indiscretion, usually pushed into oblivion by a 30-year mortgage, a couple of kids or, for academics, tenure. Yet the re-examination of foundations remains essential to any critical perspective seeking to transcend the immediacy of the given and to avoid a comfortable (...) conformism which distorts the present by idealizing and hypostatizing it to the level of a universal standard against which all other possible alternatives are judged. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that there is — or at least there ought to be — a correspondence between theoretical and political positions. But the very labelling of it as conventional wisdom already betrays its falsity. Sure enough, any careful examination of the record readily reveals that this correspondence hardly ever obtains. No such parallel can be drawn for the Hegelians who split into Right and Left wings with qualitatively different positions, e.g., the German Young Hegelians and the British neo-Hegelians (...) at the end of the last century. Nor is that true for Marxists who bifurcated into Social Democrats and Bolsheviks, or for the existentialists who produced Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, as well as Kierkegaard and Marcel. (shrink)

It is a widespread intuition that the coherence of independent reports provides a powerful reason to believe that the reports are true. Formal results by Huemer, M. 1997. “Probability and Coherence Justification.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 35: 463–72, Olsson, E. 2002. “What is the Problem of Coherence and Truth?” Journal of Philosophy XCIX : 246–72, Olsson, E. 2005. Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification. Oxford University Press., Bovens, L., and S. Hartmann. 2003. Bayesian Epistemology. Oxford University Press, prove that, under (...) certain conditions, coherence cannot increase the probability of the target claim. These formal results, known as ‘the impossibility theorems’ have been widely discussed in the literature. They are taken to have significant epistemic upshot. In particular, they are taken to show that reports must first individually confirm the target claim before the coherence of multiple reports offers any positive confirmation. In this paper, I dispute this epistemic interpretation. The impossibility theorems are consistent with the idea that the coherence of independent reports provides a powerful reason to believe that the reports are true even if the reports do not individually confirm prior to coherence. Once we see that the formal discoveries do not have this implication, we can recover a model of coherence justification consistent with Bayesianism and these results. This paper, thus, seeks to turn the tide of the negative findings for coherence reasoning by defending coherence as a unique source of confirmation. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a coherentist account of reasons. I develop three core ideas for this defense: a distinction between basic reasons and noninferential justification, the plausibility of the neglected argument against first philosophy, and an emergent account of reasons. These three ideas form the backbone for a credible coherentist view of reasons. I work toward this account by formulating and explaining the basic reasons dilemma. This dilemma reveals a wavering attitude that coherentists have had toward basic reasons. More (...) importantly, the basic reasons dilemma focuses our attention on the central problems that afflict coherentist views of basic beliefs. By reflecting on the basic reasons dilemma, I formulate three desiderata that any viable coherentist account of basic beliefs must satisfy. I argue that the account on offer satisfies these desiderata. (shrink)

The coherence of independent reports provides a strong reason to believe that the reports are true. This plausible claim has come under attack from recent work in Bayesian epistemology. This work shows that, under certain probabilistic conditions, coherence cannot increase the probability of the target claim. These theorems are taken to demonstrate that epistemic coherentism is untenable. To date no one has investigated how these results bear on different conceptions of coherence. I investigate this situation using Thagard’s ECHO model of (...) explanatory coherence. Thagard’s ECHO model provides a natural representation of the evidential significance of multiple independent reports. (shrink)

Bradford Hill (1965) highlighted nine aspects of the complex evidential situation a medical researcher faces when determining whether a causal relation exists between a disease and various conditions associated with it. These aspects are widely cited in the literature on epidemiological inference as justifying an inference to a causal claim, but the epistemological basis of the Hill aspects is not understood. We offer an explanatory coherentist interpretation, explicated by Thagard's ECHO model of explanatory coherence. The ECHO model captures the complexity (...) of epidemiological inference and provides a tractable model for inferring disease causation. We apply this model to three cases: the inference of a causal connection between the Zika virus and birth defects, the classic inference that smoking causes cancer, and John Snow’s inference about the cause of cholera. (shrink)