This book follows postwar Germany's leading philosopher and social thinker, Jürgen Habermas, through four decades of political and constitutional struggle over the shape of liberal democracy in Germany. Habermas's most influential theories - of the public sphere, communicative action, and modernity - were decisively shaped by major West German political events: the failure to de-Nazify the judiciary, the rise of a powerful Constitutional Court, student rebellions in the late 1960s, the changing fortunes of the Social Democratic Party, NATO's decision to (...) station nuclear weapons, and the unexpected collapse of East Germany. In turn, Habermas's writings on state, law, and constitution played a critical role in reorienting German political thought and culture to a progressive liberal-democratic model. Matthew Specter uniquely illuminates the interrelationship between the thinker and his culture. (shrink)

Vioxx and the fear of science -- Vaccines and the great denial -- The organic fetish -- The era of echinacea -- Race and the language of life -- Surfing the exponential.

This article seeks to historicize both the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the debate on realism occasioned by Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014. Using the research of Gerard Toal on Russia’s construction of its security interests in the post-Soviet spaces that include Ukraine, the article argues that neorealist geopolitical explanations fail to do justice to the roles of contingency and culture in setting Russia’s so-called ‘red lines.’ It also identifies an agency problem in realism: realists not only (...) fail to do justice to the agency of small states like Ukraine in this conflict but elide the moral and practical agency of decisionmakers like Russian President Vladmir Putin. The article also suggests that the current realism debate is the tip of an iceberg: realism has long had a problem specifying the relation of its theory to its practice. The article concludes by discussing the long shadow of 19th century imperial history over contemporary discussions of spheres of influence and great power status. (shrink)

Spectres of False Divinity presents a historical and critical interpretation of Hume's rejection of the existence of a deity with moral attributes. In Hume's view, no first cause or designer responsible for the ordered universe could possibly have moral attributes; nor could the existence of such a being have any real implications for human practice or conduct. Hume's case for this 'moral atheism' is a central plank of both his naturalistic agenda in metaphysics and his secularizing program in moral theory. (...) It complements his wider critique of traditional theism, and threatens to rule out any religion that would make claims on moral practice. Thomas Holden situates Hume's commitment to moral atheism in its historical and philosophical context, offers a systematic interpretation of his case for divine amorality, and shows how Hume can endorse moral atheism while maintaining his skeptical attitude toward traditional forms of cosmological and theological speculation. (shrink)

The first publication of seminal early writing by Louis Althusser. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Louis Althusser enjoyed virtually unrivalled status as the foremost living Marxist philosopher. Today, he is remembered as the scourge and severest critic of "humanist" or Hegelian Marxism, as the proponent of rigorously scientific socialism, and as the theorist who posited a sharp rupture—an epistemological break—between the early and the late Marx. This collection of texts from the period 1945-1953 turns these interpretations of Althusser on their (...) head: we discover that there was a "young Althusser" as well as the "mature Althusser" we are already familiar with. In his fascinating Master's thesis, "On Content in the Thought of G.W.F. Hegel" (1947), Althusser developed a position which he was later to attack ferociously: namely, that the revolutionary potential of the Hegelian dialectic could be defended against Hegel's own political conservatism. We see Althusser still wrestling with the spectres of Hegel and of Catholicism in another long text, his letter to Jean Lacroix, and, finally, we see his own "epistemological break" in the piece "On Marxism" from 1953. Other texts included are his critique of Alexander KojÅve (whose interpretation Francis Fukoyama has recently revived) and his attack on the French Church's teachings on women, sex and the family. Widely recognized as an intellectual giant of the late twentieth century, Althusser has left a towering legacy. This collection not only gives a unique insight into the formation of such a personality, but will also restore the "unknown Althusser" to the centre of the history of Marxism and of philosophy since the Second World War. (shrink)

A spectre haunts the semantics of natural language — the spectre of Triviality. Semanticists (in particular Rothschild 2013; Khoo and Mandelkern 2018a,b) have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre. None, I will argue, have yet succeeded.

With the recent deaths of both Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida, it is an opportune moment to consider their respective contributions to social and cultural theory. The purpose of this article is not to establish an unbridgeable gap which allows no communication between Baudrillard and Derrida's thought. Rather, I will argue that there is an underlying assumption which brings them into close proximity: the idea that the dialectical order of the social, and its relationship to human mortality, has been radically (...) altered by the media-technological systems through which `the real' is represented. Baudrillard's concept of simulation attempts to show how the mass media have become the exclusive condition through which the social is staged, and that there is nothing outside of their operational logics. Derrida's conception of the spectre, on the contrary, presents a `quasi-messianic' figure which haunts the system of simulation; it is s/he who arrives through the intensification of social performativity which Baudrillard understands as completely self-referential. My aim is to show that the most political way of approaching Baudrillard is to read him as a kind of `evil genius' of simulation; as a provocation to acknowledge the spectral bodies who hover between life and death within the system of the hyperreal. (shrink)

I argue that race -- the European Spectre of the title -- has received insufficient attention within Marxist theory. Liberal and Marxist accounts of modernity differ on various points, but agree in characterizing modern society/capitalism as marked by the collapse of ancient and medieval status distinctions and the corresponding emergence of moral and juridical egalitarianism. But this basically Eurocentric narrative ignores the new system of ascriptive hierarchy established by European expansionism: white supremacy. Particularly in the United States, I suggest, (...) race has been the primary social division, in that racial identity has generally trumped other kinds of group identity. Ironically, then, the Marxist model works better for race than class, and if the concept of a bourgeois revolution is expanded to mean the overturning of ascriptive hierarchy of all kinds, it has yet to be fully carried out. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage se penche sur l'évolution des attitudes anti-humanistes.

« Le spectacle auquel nous assistons sur les théâtres de l’économie financière internationale est-il pure déraison? » Dans un contexte de crise financière omniprésente et durablement installée, Joseph Vogl interroge le système capitaliste, ses arcanes, ses modes de fonctionnement, la manière dont il se perpétue. Censé reposer sur une confiance multilatérale, le système des marchés est en réalité traversé d’inquiétude et d’instabilité. Tel un spectre agitant dans l’ombre les flux de capitaux, le monde financier se voit entouré d’une aura (...) mystérieuse, aussi incompréhensible qu’imprévisible. L’enjeu est de saisir comment l’économie financière tente de comprendre un monde qu’elle a elle-même engendré. (shrink)

« Le spectacle auquel nous assistons sur les théâtres de l’économie financière internationale est-il pure déraison? » Dans un contexte de crise financière omniprésente et durablement installée, Joseph Vogl interroge le système capitaliste, ses arcanes, ses modes de fonctionnement, la manière dont il se perpétue. Censé reposer sur une confiance multilatérale, le système des marchés est en réalité traversé d’inquiétude et d’instabilité. Tel un spectre agitant dans l’ombre les flux de capitaux, le monde financier se voit entouré d’une aura (...) mystérieuse, aussi incompréhensible qu’imprévisible. L’enjeu est de saisir comment l’économie financière tente de comprendre un monde qu’elle a elle-même engendré. (shrink)

Priest, poet and broadcaster Rachel Mann believes the world is charged with a divine spark. She explains how in our encounters with what she terms 'the spectres of God', one can become at peace with limitation, precariousness, lack of certainty, and one's fragility and fractures - and at the same time find in divine fragility the hope of the world. Drawing on her own experiences, in three short chapters (on the body, on love, and on time) Mann explores how God (...) invites us, repeatedly, to live in a rich three-dimensional mystery that subverts the depressing flat-earth of modern life. (shrink)

This article studies the Islamic State's only remaining periodical, Al-Naba, identifying the most common tropes and patterns in the periodical's Sub-Saharan Africa coverage, and on Mozambique in particular. The Islamic State's increasingly important coverage of Africa focuses on terror attacks, military campaigns and on the fight against Christianity. However, it also employs more traditional anti-colonial arguments that have been used by other, more accepted, political actors during the struggle for decolonisation. Al-Naba also functions as a 'shamer' of non-African Muslims, to (...) get them to join jihad by pointing to the African successes of the organisation and set these successes up as examples to be followed. In this sense, the article illustrates how African jihadist branches can have global agency. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe German state permitted about one million refugees to enter Germany in 2015–2016, although many were subsequently denied refugee status. Germany adopted an ‘integration’ and ‘welcome’ politics, an important, if imperfect, model for a European refugee policy. The integration of refugees required the joint activity of state, of civil society, of the public sphere and of refugees themselves. Civil society initiated a vast amount of essential care work and solidarity with refugees pursued especially, but not only, by women, yet civil (...) society and refugees had no say in refugee policies. German refugee policy and practice raised many normative issues, producing an intense and vigorous national debate about them, in which philosophers and theorists were active. Among the questions debated were whether Germany had accepted ‘too many’ refugees, the acceptability of the costs of the policy, the risks of harm to the least well off, the purported risks to safety, security and the social order and the purported threats to German culture. I first describe German state policies, practices and civil society efforts and then turn to normative debates. I discuss the limits of the German discourse and suggest how it needs to be expanded. (shrink)

Abstract I take up the important notion of “spectres,“ addressed by Jacques Derrida in Spectres of Marx and elsewhere, and argue that the very notion of spectres makes absolutely central the question of interpretation, or hermeneutics. Using what I find to be the spectre of Socrates throughout Derrida's work, and Socrates' own engagement with various spectres, I develop a reflection on the conception of philosophy that might adequately think the question of interpretation.

Jessy Giroux | : J’aborde dans cet article un problème que je nomme le « spectre épistocratique ». Le problème se présente ainsi : s’il existe des vérités politiques, c’est-à-dire des positions politiques qui soient véritablement bonnes, ne devrait-on pas faire de l’atteinte de ces vérités politiques l’objectif central de notre système politique, ce qui pourrait nous conduire à limiter le pouvoir populaire afin de laisser les individus « éclairés » prendre toutes les décisions politiques ? J’explore différentes stratégies (...) possibles afin de défendre la démocratie contre l’attrait d’une telle épistocratie, et je conclus que la meilleure stratégie consiste à souligner qu’une démocratie délibérative bien organisée démontre un potentiel épistémique supérieur à tout autre système politique. Je termine en montrant comment une telle conclusion parvient à nous informer sur le phénomène de la contestation politique. | : In this paper, I consider a problem that I call the “epistocratic specter”. The problem goes as follows : if there are political truths, by which I mean political positions that are truly good, shouldn’t we make the attainment of such truths the central goal of our political system, which could lead us to restrict popular power and let only truly “enlightened” individuals make every political decision ? I explore various possible strategies in order to defend democracy against the appeal of such an epistrocratic system, and I conclude that the best available strategy is one that emphasizes that a well-organized deliberative democracy possesses an epistemic potential that is superior to that of any other political system. I conclude by showing how this fact can inform our understanding of the phenomenon of political dissent. (shrink)

The article examines the concept of duty with reference to Ibsen's play "Ghosts." It offers a brief genealogy of duty while linking the concept of duty to a deconstructive approach.

The late reflections of G.W. Leibniz on eternal return have often been dismissed as insignificant as regards his wider philosophy. This may be due to the prevalent championing of his optimistic views on the continual progress of humanity, which seem to contradict the notion of eternal return. Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze both put forward concepts of eternal return that form part of their respective critiques of historical progress, yet these have rarely been read in conjunction with their views on (...) Leibniz. This article argues, first, that for Leibniz progress and return are not contradictory, and second, that Benjamin’s and Deleuze’s concepts of return were informed, in different ways, by their readings of Leibniz, and specifically by his conception of multiple worlds as the spatial equivalent of eternal return. In doing so I will shed light on the contribution of Leibniz’s philosophy not only to the progressive theories of history put forward during the Enlightenment, but also to the critique of these very visions. (shrink)

A place in the sun -- A human revolution -- Dwelling poetically on this earth -- Epilogue.

This book argues that philosophical pessimism can offer vital impulses for contemporary cultural studies. Pessimist thought offers ways to interrogate notions of temporality, progress and futurity. When the horizon of future expectation is increasingly shaped by the prospect of apocalypse and extinction, an exploration of pessimist thought can help to make sense of an increasingly complex and uncertain world by affirming rather than suppressing the worst. This book argues that a cultural logic of the worst is at work in a (...) substantial section of contemporary philosophical thought and cultural representations. Spectres of pessimism can be found in contemporary ecocritical thought, antinatalist philosophies, political thought, and cultural theory, as well as in literature, film, and popular music. In its unsettling of temporality, this new pessimism shares sensibilities with the field of hauntology. Both deconstruct linear narratives of time that adhere to a stable sequence of past, present and future. Mark Schmitt therefore couples pessimism and hauntology to explore the spectres of pessimism in a range of theories and narratives—from ecocriticism, antinatalism and queer theory to utopianism, from afropessimism to the fiction of Hari Kunzru and Thomas Ligotti to the films of Camille Griffin, Gaspar Noé, Denis Villeneuve and Lars von Trier. (shrink)

Inbreeding introduced by R. Bakewell (1725-1795) in England for creating new animal races, was opposed by animal breeders on the Continent on religious grounds, and was soon introduced in sheep breeding for wool production in Moravia. In 1790-1840 the protagonists repeatedly rejected 'the spectre of inbreeding' and included consanguineous matching in scientific breeding. In 1836 they even formulated the research question of heredity and next year proposed the inductive method for its investigation. The achievements of sheep breeders instigated German (...) breeders to reject the dogma of the constancy of race and to elaborate the theory of individual potency. Treating heredity as the force under the influence of environment they could not solve the enigma. The question formulated in 1836 was explained in 1865 by Gregor Mendel. His theory was not perceived by animal breeders as well as by biologists up to the end of the century. (shrink)

Conformément au projet qui anime l’ensemble de sa pensée, Derrida aborde la psychanalyse afin de saisir en elle aussi bien ce qui ressortit au règne du logos de la métaphysique que ce qui s’y soustrait. Aussi la lecture derridienne de la psychanalyse est-elle double : tout en dénonçant le bricolage conceptuel de son fondateur, Derrida s’attache à ce qui en elle, dans son affinité avec la critique du sujet comme substance et la déconstruction, échappe au primat de la présence. De (...) ce point de vue et paradoxalement, c’est avant tout à elle-même que la psychanalyse doit s’efforcer de ne pas « résister » si elle veut survivre. (shrink)

Moving into the space of tension and contradiction between philosophy and psychoanalysis, I reflect on the spectral way in which Marx and his legacy appear in the Lacanian Left. I explain this spectrality through the impossible mourning of Marxism. I bring in three authors who prescribe mourning here and ignore its impossibility: Özselçuk, Stavrakakis and Alemán. I resort to Benjamin, Lacan, Allouch and Traverso to problematise the Freudian distinction between mourning and melancholy in its application to Marxism. Instead of mourning (...) with its post-Marxist bet, I defend an openly melancholic position based on the militant historical commitment to the dead and what Lacan has represented as the insurmountable directions indicated by Marx. I distinguish three great idealist attempts by the Lacanian Left to overcome the materially insurmountable directions: Laclau’s anti-essentialist discursive postmodernism, Žižek’s pessimistic Lacanian Hegelianism and Badiou’s Jacobin political Platonism. I contrast the Laclauian democratic populist concessions with the Badiouan-Žižekian fidelity to Marxism and communism. (shrink)

In this article, we reassess two of Mises’ core methodological claims. The first claim is that action is necessarily rational. The second claim is that all human minds share a logical structure. Neither claim can be unreservedly accepted but, we argue, both contain truth: Mises’ reflections remain important contributions to our understanding of action and the mind, hence to economics.

Rencontre d’un homme et d’un lieu. Le lieu est la ville de Strasbourg, lieu de passage, ville-frontière, foyer européen à l’intersection de la France et de l’Allemagne. L’homme est Jacques Derrida, philosophe cosmopolite s’il en est, reconnu dans le monde entier comme l’un des penseurs les plus importants du xxe siècle, dont l’œuvre suscite encore et toujours de nombreux commentaires en France et à l’étranger. Des liens très forts l’ont rattaché à Strasbourg pendant plus de trente ans : à plu...