The growing exploration of political life from an aesthetic perspective has become so prominent that we can now speak of an "aesthetic turn" in political theory. But what does it mean and why an aesthetic turn? This collection of essays aims to answer such questions from a variety of perspectives, to think in a new way about the possibilities and weaknesses of democratic politics.The book first outlines the theoretical motivations and historical conditions that led to the turn to aesthetics. Essays (...) then call attention to the presence of aesthetic themes and arguments in political theory as well as to parallels between theories of aesthetics and politics, revealing how much political theory can gain from making use of aesthetic modes of thought. They demonstrate that much of what is essential to democratic politics can in fact only be disclosed through aesthetic theorizing.A significant contribution to the contemporary debate in political theory, The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought will appeal to all students interested in the interdisciplinary crossroads of aesthetic and politics. (shrink)

In Critique and Disclosure, Nikolas Kompridis argues provocatively for a richer and more time-responsive critical theory. He calls for a shift in the normative and critical emphasis of critical theory from the narrow concern with rules and procedures of Jürgen Habermas's model to a change-enabling disclosure of possibility and the enlargement of meaning. Kompridis contrasts two visions of critical theory's role and purpose in the world: one that restricts itself to the normative clarification of the procedures by (...) which moral and political questions should be settled and an alternative rendering that conceives of itself as a possibility-disclosing practice. At the center of this resituation of critical theory is a normatively reformulated interpretation of Martin Heidegger's idea of "disclosure" or "world disclosure." In this regard Kompridis reconnects critical theory to its normative and conceptual sources in the German philosophical tradition and sets it within a romantic tradition of philosophical critique.Drawing not only on his sustained critical engagement with the thought of Habermas and Heidegger but also on the work of other philosophers including Wittgenstein, Cavell, Gadamer, and Benjamin, Kompridis argues that critical theory must, in light of modernity's time-consciousness, understand itself as fully situated in its time--in an ever-shifting and open-ended horizon of possibilities, to which it must respond by disclosing alternative ways of thinking and acting. His innovative and original argument will serve to move the debate over the future of critical studies forward--beyond simple antinomies to a consideration of, as he puts it, "what critical theory should be if it is to have a future worthy of its past.". (shrink)

_Philosophical Romanticism _is one of the first books to address the relationship between philosophy and romanticism, an area which is currently undergoing a major revival. This collection of specially-written articles by world-class philosophers explores the contribution of romantic thought to topics such as freedom, autonomy, and subjectivity; memory and imagination; pluralism and practical reasoning; modernism, scepticism and irony; art and ethics; and cosmology, time and technology. While the roots of romanticism are to be found in early German idealism, _Philosophical Romanticism_ (...) shows that it is not a purely European phenomenon: the development of romanticism can be traced through to North American philosophy in the era of Emerson and Dewey, and up to the current work of Stanley Cavell and Richard Rorty. The articles in this collection suggest that philosophical romanticism offers a compelling alternative to both the reductionist tendencies of the naturalism in 'analytic' philosophy, and deconstruction and other forms of scepticism found in 'continental' philosophy. This outstanding collection will be of interest to those studying philosophy, literature and nineteenth and twentieth century thought. (shrink)

Struggles for recognition are at the same time struggles over what it means to recognize and be recognized. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth propose two mutually exclusive ways to understand recognition: either as a matter of justice or as a matter of identity. This article argues against the limitations of both of these construals of recognition, and offers a third way of construing it: as a matter of freedom. Recognition is not reducible, empirically or normatively, to any of these, however. (...) Moreover, it needs to be regarded both more critically and more openly since what we are dealing with is a practice and an ideal that is by its very nature deeply contestable and therefore subject to unforeseeable historical and normative change. Rather than trying to fix the meaning of recognition in order to give it a determinate role in ambitious theories of justice, it would be better to proceed more sceptically, attentive both to the complexities of recognition relations and to alternative ways of conceiving them and going on with them differently from before. (shrink)

This essay takes issue with the way the highly fashionable concept of hybridity has been used to skew our understanding of cultural identity, and render conceptually and normatively indefensible the political claims of culture. It also challenges the current 'anti-essentialist' orthodoxy about what culture 'really is,'and shows that neither 'essentialism'nor 'anti-essentialism'helps us get right the place of culture in politics, because both fail to recognize the identity and nonidentity of culture with itself.

This essay takes issue with the way the highly fashionable concept of hybridity has been used to skew our understanding of cultural identity, and render conceptually and normatively indefensible the political claims of culture. It also challenges the current ‘anti-essentialist’ orthodoxy about what culture ‘really is,’ and shows that neither ‘essentialism’ nor ‘anti-essentialism’ helps us get right the place of culture in politics, because both fail to recognize the identity and non-identity of culture with itself.

In this paper, I take issue with Axel Honneth's proposal for renewing critical theory in terms of the normative ideal of 'self-realisation'. Honneth's proposal involves a break with critical theory's traditional preoccupation with the meaning and potential of modern reason, and the way he makes that break depletes the critical resources of his alternative to Habermasian critical theory, leaving open the question of what form the renewal of critical theory should take.

In this paper I present a model of receptivity that is composed of ontological and normative dimensions, which I argue answer to the critical-diagnostic and to the possibility-disclosing needs of democratic politics. I distinguish between ‘pre-reflective receptivity,’ understood ontologically as a condition of intelligibility, and ‘reflective receptivity,’ understood normatively as a condition of disclosing new possibilities. Keywords: receptivity; change; possibility; critique; reflective disclosure (Published: 23 December 2011) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 4 , No. 4, 2011, pp. 255-272. DOI: (...) 10.3402/egp.v4i4.14829. (shrink)

In this paper I indicate the reasons why critical theory needs an alternative conception of critique, and then I sketch out what such an alternative should be. The conception of critique I develop involves a time-responsive redisclosure of the world capable of disclosing new or previously unnoticed possibilities, possibilities in light of which agents can change their self-understanding and their practices, and change their orientation to the future and the past.

In this paper I question Amy Allen’s reliance on a Habermasian model of critique and normativity, beyond which her own work points. I emphasize those places in Allen’s book, The Power of Our Selves, where she could set out on a different path, more consistent with the implications of her critique of Habermas, and more congenial with my own reformulation of the project of critical theory.

In this paper I address what Arendt called the “problem of the new”, or, as Castoriadis put it, the problem of how to make the new “the object of our praxis”. I argue that the problem of the new requires thinking about receptivity in a new way, making it normatively and epistemically prior to creativity. I illuminate my new approach to receptivity through detailed engagement with Russell Hoban’s brilliant novel, The Medusa Frequency.

In this paper I examine problems besetting forms of philosophical and social critique that are motivated by the 'hermeneutics of suspicion' and normatively oriented to the goal of 'unmasking'. I argue that there is an urgent need to correct the one-sided emphasis on 'unmasking', and we can do this by reorienting critique to the practice of individual and social transformation. The argument goes like this. The practice of unmasking critique has split off from utopian projects in whose service it was (...) originally placed, and has become the vehicle of a self-consuming, practice-crippling skepticism that - from Friedrich von Schlegel to Paul de Man and Richard Rorty - goes by the name of irony or ironist theory. Postmodernism, in one of its aspects, is the latest form of this skepticism. I interpret postmodernism as the manifestation of a crisis of confidence (in our ideals and in our agency) and as an ironization of critique. Drawing upon Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault, I reformulate the normative demands of critique such that its practice avoids the problem of self-reference while responding to the problem of self-reassurance. Key Words: confidence • critique • irony • postmodernism • reason • skepticism. (shrink)

In this paper I give considerable attention to Richard Rorty's attempt to make plausible a conception of non-rational semantic and cultural change - change which Rorty insists on describing as identical with progress - in order to show the extent to which this attempt is compromised from the start by an unjustifiably narrow and inconsistent view of reason. The point of this immanent critique is not just to make Rorty's view of non-rational change look bad. It is meant to do (...) more justice to his claim that intellectual and moral progress is inseparable from speaking and acting differently by incorporating this claim into a philosophically enlarged picture of reason. So the value of taking Rorty's claims about change seriously lies less in showing the shortcomings of his conception of reason than it does in bringing a sense of urgency to the need to renew the project begun by Kant, Hegel, and German Idealism - the project of conceiving reason as an agency of change by reinterpreting reason in terms of self-determining freedom. (shrink)

Habermas’s recent demand that religious reasons must be translated into secular reasons if they are to play a justificatory role in the political public sphere is a demand that presupposes an undercomplex view of translation and metaphysical view of the unity of reason. Eschewing Habermasian assumptions about the "unity of reason" I present an alternative that makes room for multiple and heterogeneous languages of public reason, which places the stress on language learning rather than on language translation.

Much of what Stanley Cavell wrote following the publication of The Claim of Reason, was preoccupied with making sense of the sudden “outbreaks” of “moments and lines of romanticism” in the final pa...

Global politics is often considered to be an arena of transformation and change, perhaps more so now than ever. The economic crisis, the Arab spring, and the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movements signal dramatic new developments in global politics, inspiring and manifesting new forms of resistance and response around the world. There is a feeling something links these and other events with one another, something pointing to a more profound change in our ways of thinking, being and acting, and in (...) our understanding of, and engagement with, democratic politics. (Published: 23 December 2011) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 4, No. 4 , 2011, pp. 203-205. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v4i4.14831. (shrink)

Global politics is often considered to be an arena of transformation and change, perhaps more so now than ever. The economic crisis, the Arab spring, and the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movements signal dramatic new developments in global politics, inspiring and manifesting new forms of resistance and response around the world. There is a feeling something links these and other events with one another, something pointing to a more profound change in our ways of thinking, being and acting, and in (...) our understanding of, and engagement with, democratic politics. (shrink)

In this paper I trace and explain the changes in Nietzsche’s conception of the Dionysian ideal. I identify five attributes of the Dionysian ideal, and claim that they are constitutive of it. I also claim that Nietzsche’s early conception of the Dionysian ideal owes less to his speculations concerning the origin of Greek tragedy than to his encounter with the mature music of Richard Wagner. It was through his encounter with Wagner’s music that Nietzsche believed he first discovered the key (...) to Dionysian experience, which key concerned one of the five attributes of the Dionysian ideal: ecstasy. On route to his later conception, Nietzsche excised one of these constitutive attributes and altered the meaning of Dionysian ecstasy. I argue that the later conception of the Dionysian surrenders the psychological complexity of the earlier conception, and diminishes considerably the viability ofthe Dionysian ideal as a cultural ideal.Dans le présent article, j’esquisse et j’explique les changements de conception chez Nietzsehe de I’ideal dionysiaque, dont j’identifie cinq attributs constitutifs. J’y affirme que la première conception nietzschéenne de I’ideal dionysiaque découle moins de ses spéculations relatives a l’origine de la tragédie grecque qu’à son experience de la musique achevée de Richard Wagner. À travers la musique wagnérienne, Nietzsehe crut découvrir pour la première fois la clé de I’experience dionysiaque, à savoir I’extase, soit I’un des cinq attributs constitutifs de I’idéal dionysiaque. Cependant, Nietzsche supprima par la suite I’un de ces attributs constitutifs et modifia le sens de I’extase dionysiaque. Je soutiens que cette conception plus tardive du dionysiaque se dépouille de la complexité psychologique de lapremière conception et diminue consiéerablement la viabilite de I’ideal dionysiaque en tant qu’ideal culturel. (shrink)

Axel Honneth has recently proposed a reformulation of the task of social philosophy as the 'diagnosis of social pathologies'-i.e. as the critical diagnosis ofprocesses of social decline, fragmentation, and alienation. In this paper I evaluate Honneth's proposed reformulation, supplementing my criticisms with an alternative of my own.

Axel Honneth has recently proposed a reformulation of the task of social philosophy as the 'diagnosis of social pathologies'-i.e. as the critical diagnosis ofprocesses of social decline, fragmentation, and alienation. In this paper I evaluate Honneth's proposed reformulation, supplementing my criticisms with an alternative of my own.

Axel Honneth has recently proposed a reformulation of the task of social philosophy as the 'diagnosis of social pathologies'-i.e. as the critical diagnosis ofprocesses of social decline, fragmentation, and alienation. In this paper I evaluate Honneth's proposed reformulation, supplementing my criticisms with an alternative of my own.

In this dissertation I develop a theoretical partnership between Adorno's aesthetic theory and Habermas's theory of communicative rationality. I argue against a model of art and aesthetic experience which I have designated the ecstatic model. This model sets off aesthetic experience in opposition to reason, functioning as reason's other. The ecstatic model belongs to one of the two distinct traditions of aesthetic theory, both of which have originated in Kant and Hegel, but which have developed in two entirely different directions. (...) The most dominant tradition is represented by Nietzsche and Heidegger. It has produced the ecstatic model. Adorno represents a model of aesthetic experience I have designated the interactive model. Reconstructed from the perspective of Habermas's more capacious conception of communicative reason, Adorno's aesthetics becomes a viable alternative to the ecstatic model, by going beyond the limitations of an unnecessarily narrow conception of reason. ;The first chapters treats the shortcomings of the ecstatic model through an analysis of Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant, Lyotard and Rorty. The final chapter develops Adorno's concept of mimesis as a form of symbolically mediated interaction. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between power and reflective disclosure in Nikolas Kompridis' book "Critique and Disclosure." Although the concept of power is not explicitly theorized in great detail in this book, I argue that power is highly relevant for Kompridis' account of reflective disclosure. I offer a few ways in which a thematization of power relations might complicate and enrich Kompridis' understanding of disclosure.

Nikolas Kompridis has recently argued that the future of critical theory depends upon a critical appropriation of Heidegger’s concept of ‘world disclosure’, and hence on a transformation of critical theory into a form of ‘world-disclosing critique’ oriented towards the future. This article engages in a critical dialogue with Kompridis' account of world-disclosing critique, arguing that critical theory should embrace it as an innovative way of retrieving the forgotten tradition of aesthetic critique of modernity.

In Tulving’s initial characterization, episodic memory was one of multiple memory systems. It was postulated, in pursuit of explanatory depth, as displaying proprietary operations, representations, and substrates such as to explain a range of cognitive, behavioural, and experiential phenomena. Yet the subsequent development of this research program has, paradoxically, introduced surprising doubts about the nature, and indeed existence, of episodic memory. On dominant versions of the ‘common system’ view, on which a single simulation system underlies both remembering and imagining, there (...) are no processes unique to memory to support robust generalizations with inductive potential. Eliminativism about episodic memory seems to follow from the claim that it has no dedicated neurocognitive system of its own. After identifying this under-noticed threat, we push back against modern eliminativists by surveying recent evidence that still indicates specialized mechanisms, computations, and representations that are distinctly mnemic in character. We argue that contemporary realists about episodic memory can retain lessons of the common system approach while resisting the further move to eliminativism. (shrink)