This article focuses on two aspects of contemporary political philosophy. The first one is political philosophy as a philosophy strategy. The second one is political philosophy as an activity that considers the politicity of philosophy and what is political. Our basic claim is the impossibility of separating these two meanings of political philosophy. Rather than maintaining the distinction between the empirical and the speculative in terms of political philosophy, the basic attitude is to look at what is happening within the (...) polis, whether the police remain without polites or whether the polis allow the political community to recognize it. The discovery of the politicity of philosophy is undoubtedly not something new, however, it has become a more evident focus of philosophy after World War II. Many different trends in contemporary philosophy have brought new ideas within this perspective: from Carl Schmitt to Leo Strauss, from Frankfurt School thinkers to many important figures of contemporary French philosophy, such as Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis; they all have developed critical, contemporary and radical philosophical thoughts. It can be easily claimed that this movement in political philosophy comes with a conjuncture in which the crisis has become more evident in the context of political praxis and concept. In the first phase, the fading of ideologies forced the return from 'theory' to philosophy. Secondly, the hopelessness and failures created by the actual communisms forced them to consider different praxis. Thirdly, structural crises and transformations in the world political order have also prepared the crisis of liberal political philosophies seeking answers to the existing crisis with their own concepts. It was no coincidence that after the pursuit of pure philosophy in the Belle Époque period, it was recollected as philosophy's politics. A singular, constituent praxis, and an orientation that desires emancipation, is the sole possibility of the idea of the universal. In this context, political philosophy is not only an abstraction practice on political things, but on the contrary, an activity on the establishment or disruption of the logic of political things. The togetherness of the necessity of understanding political things and research faithful to the idea of truth; reveals the vitality of plurality of political organizations against violence. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to indicate the dimensions of Walter Benjamin’s conception of "technique". It is argued that the only way to understand his problematic technique is by considering the concepts of experience and political action. The present article emphasizes the philosopher’s transitivity of technical understanding through a wide range of reflections including Benjamin’s thoughts on Scheerbarts to "second technique" (zweite Technik), from his idea of collective corpus (Leib) to his understanding of experience (Erfahrung), and from the canonic (...) feature of architecture in modern time to revolutionary action. We focused on the common issues in the texts of Benjamin entitled "Experience and Poverty", "Capitalism as Religion" and "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility". At the same time, we stress why the technical question and technicality are central issues in order to understand other Benjamin texts. We use the thematic continuity and differentiation thesis as a method instead of disengagement in his writings. Our essential thesis in this article is that according to Benjamin, a true political organization is an action which puts an end to the domination of the first technique over the second technique. In other words, Benjamin's conception of technique implies on the one hand a radical criticism of the existing order and on the other hand a political moment where all the phantasmagorias of the masses dissolve. In this context, the phantasmagorias, made visible through urban space, are at the same time possibilities for a revolutionary action in order to actualize the hidden forces of humanity. (shrink)