Philosophers have long distinguished between appearance and reality, and the opposition between a supposedly deceptive surface and a more profound truth is deeply rooted in Western culture. At a time of obsession with self-representation, when politics is enmeshed with spectacle and social and economic forces are intensely aestheticized, philosophy remains moored in traditional dichotomies: being versus appearing, interiority versus exteriority, authenticity versus alienation. Might there be more to appearance than meets the eye? In this strikingly original book, Barbara Carnevali offers (...) a philosophical examination of the roles that appearances play in social life. While Western metaphysics and morals have predominantly disdained appearances and expelled them from their domain, Carnevali invites us to look at society, ancient to contemporary, as an aesthetic phenomenon. The ways in which we appear in public and the impressions we make in terms of images, sounds, smells, and sensations are discerned by other people's senses and assessed according to their taste; this helps shape our ways of being and the world around us. Carnevali shows that an understanding of appearances is necessary to grasp the dynamics of interaction, recognition, and power in which we live-and to avoid being dominated by them. Anchored in philosophy and traversing sociology, art history, literature, and popular culture, Social Appearances develops new theoretical and conceptual tools for today's most urgent critical tasks. (shrink)

Dans cet article, je retrace et discute l’itinéraire philosophique d’Axel Honneth, depuis La Lutte pour la reconnaissance jusqu’à ses récents essais Le Droit de la liberté et L’Idée du socialisme. Dans la première partie, le concept programmatique de pathologie sociale sera mis en relation avec celui de « sécularisation de la théodicée » formulé par Ernst Cassirer – à savoir, l’attribution de la responsabilité de la souffrance humaine à la société – et avec l’héritage des Lumières légué par Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (...) Dans la deuxième partie, une fois précisée la position occupée par Honneth dans la tradition de la théorie critique francfortoise, j’aborderai ses propositions théoriques ; je distinguerai notamment deux modèles normatifs correspondant à deux phases successives de la pensée honnethienne : la lutte pour la reconnaissance d’une part, qui s’appuie sur une anthropologie formelle à valeur universelle ; et la théorie de la liberté sociale d’autre part, qui réactualise la doctrine hégélienne de l’éthicité en s’appuyant sur un modèle historique et internaliste de critique sociale reconstructive. Dans la troisième partie, je me pencherai sur la « divinisation du social » inhérente au projet d’une critique des pathologies sociales, ainsi que sur la confiance excessive qu’Honneth semble accorder à la force normative de l’intersubjectivité. (shrink)

This article retraces and discusses the philosophical itinerary of Axel Honneth, from the groundbreaking book Struggle for Recognition up to the recent essays Freedom’s Right and The Idea of Socialism. In the first section, I examine Honneth’s programmatic concept of social pathology in relation to Ernst Cassirer’s idea of the secularisation of theodicy (i. e. the attribution of responsibility for human suffering to society) and to the enlightenment legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the second section, after assessing Honneth’s position in (...) the tradition of critical theory, I analyse his philosophical views. I identify two different theoretical frameworks in Honneth’s work: on the one hand, the theory of the struggle for recognition; on the other hand, the recent theory of social freedom. While the first is grounded in a formal and allegedly universal anthropology, the second draws on the Hegelian doctrine of the ethical life and develops a historicist and internalist model of reconstructive social criticism. Finally, in the third section, I critically address the “divinisation of the social” entailed in Honneth’s project of social pathologies’ critique, and argue that Honneth’s trust in the normative power of intersubjectivity might be excessive. (shrink)

L’aura est un souffle — étymologiquement — une atmosphere, un étatparticulier qui accompagne tous les tournants, toutes les crises, toutes lesmodifications profondes, tous les ébranlements soudains de cette chosefragile qui est la personnalité.Leon Daudet Nel 1928 il medico-scrittore Léon Daudet pubblica a Parigi il saggio Melancholia. Al titolo metonimico, leggermente sviarne, corrisponde un’originale riflessione sul rapporto psichico e fisico che lega l’uomo al suo ambiente. Il vero tema de...