Eschewing conventional candidates, like Plato's Republic or Machiavelli's Prince, Richard Rorty praises Aldous Huxley's Brave New World as "the best introduction to political philosophy," because it shows us "what sort of human future would be produced by a naturalism untempered by historicist Romanticism, and by a politics aimed merely at alleviating mammalian pain."1 Huxley's celebrated dystopia is thus a poignant warning to our modern utilitarian political projects. Yet Rorty also suggests that utopian literature can play a positive and inspirational role (...) for liberal politics, and even dubs his own political ideal, "liberal utopia." Rorty's liberal utopia is not an impossible society bereft of political .. (shrink)

The shift in Foucault’s work from genealogy to ethics finds consensus among Foucault scholars. However, the motivations behind this transition remain either misunderstood or understudied in large part. Foucault’s recently published or soon-to-be translated 1977/—9 lectures (published as Security, Territory, Population and as The Birth of Biopolitics) offer new elements for understanding this dense and uncharted period along Foucault’s itinerary. In this article, the author argues that Foucault’s interpretation of the liberal tradition, which is at the core of the (...) 1977—9 lectures, must be examined in combination with Foucault’s other major interests in the late 1970s, namely the Iranian Revolution and Kant. The discovery of spirituality (Iran), the valorization of an autonomous subject (Kant) and the call for a tolerant environment towards minority practices (liberalism) pave the way for the later Foucault’s ethics, which are grounded in spiritual exercises and means of liberating the subject. (shrink)

This paper introduces Richard Rorty’s notion of the liberal ironist and his vision of a liberal utopia and explores the implications of these for philosophical questions concerning morality, as well as morality in general. Rorty’s assertions of the contingency of language, society and self are explored. Under the contingency of language, the figure of the ironist is defined, and Rorty’s conception of vocabularies is discussed. Under the contingency of society, Rorty’s definition of liberalism, his opposition of literary (...) culture to materialist and metaphysical culture, and his notions concerning utopian politics are discussed. Under the contingency of self, Rorty’s critique of Kantian and his appropriations of Deweyan and Freudian conceptions of morality are presented. Other key factors discussed are Rorty’s theory of the separation of the private and public spheres of life and his ideas concerning cruelty and human solidarity. In this way, a critical analysis of Rorty’s proposed balance between private, ironic doubt and public, liberal social hope is presented and assessed in terms of its merit as a system of thought suited to the needs of post-metaphysical, liberal societies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article considers the relationship between modern classical liberalism and utopian theory. The main question we address is: How have key liberal theorists over the past century received utopian visions of the economy, politics, and society? The development of liberalism is commonly associated with strident anti-utopianism, a perception contraindicated by more recent developments in political economy and philosophy. Accommodative liberal engagements with utopia are evident within philosophical discussions addressing the significance of group diversity within free societies, (...) and of maintaining social accord among peoples with divergent beliefs, practices, and other modes of living. This development aligns with a revitalized liberal political economy emphasis upon experimentation and process, which appears congruent with similar tendencies in utopian theory over recent decades. Even liberal critics of utopia, such as Friedrich Hayek, described their own grounded visions of either utopian society, or of piecemeal reforms in a utopian direction. In this article it is argued feasible intellectual opportunities do exist to reconcile liberal theory and utopian conceptions. (shrink)

In view of misguidance found in democratic States concerning their grounding liberal model, some analysts are inclined to declare the bankrupt of liberalism, as well there are others who consider it not yet achieved. This paper aims to indicate in Locke’s political theory some intrinsic limitations of this model itself that has as result its very non-sustainability at long date.

This essay, written in memory of Erik Olin Wright, explores the possibility of liberal socialism. Wright sought to rescue both liberalism and socialism from their demonstrated capacity for depredation. His legacy challenges reformers to proceed with the audacity of real, and realistic, utopianism together with an awareness that, unfortunately, the obverse of an appealing utopianism always beckons.

Introduction Perhaps more than any other member of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse articulated a hope for a radically transfigured world. He imagined a world characterized by receptive, generous relationships rather than domination and violence. Yet Marcuse's philosophy of liberation has been placed on trial within various critical circles. Michel Foucault's rejection of the “repressive hypothesis” and his concomitant analysis of power as generative is typically interpreted as an indirect response to Marcuse's tendency to treat the social order as a (...) primarily repressive force vis-à-vis our instincts and desires.1 Martin Jay has expressed concerns about the…. (shrink)

Our reproductive imaginaries have changed considerably in the XX century. This cultural change can be described as a transition from Utopia to Dystopia. Plato imagined that in his perfect State women and children were in common, and that adequately matched couples would yield a perfect breed. On the contrary, Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) is based on a modern liberal view of the family, where divorce is allowed and relationships are free. Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun (...) (1602) understands relationships exactly in terms of a eugenic policy. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626) also conceives of generation as a public good. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1934) creates a vision of reproduction as a total nightmare. The whole process of reproduction has been taken into control by an ideology. We must distinguish liberal utopias from totalitarian ones, which evolve into dystopias. (shrink)

As utopias nascem do profundo desejo humano de que o mundo seja diferente, seja melhor. As distopias, por sua vez, nascem do reconhecimento-pavor de que esse mundo possa ser pior. De todo modo, utopia e distopia, partem do que se tem, do mundo como aí está, das “coisas como elas são”, em direção a uma possibilidade. A Literatura e a Filosofia – especialmente a Filosofia Política –, andam sempre juntas no caminho que perpassa as utopias e distopias, descrevendo e (...) redescrevendo a condição humana, construindo e desconstruindo a ideia de homem e de boa vida. Grandes nomes da história do pensamento, desde Platão a Thomas Morus, Campanella, Francis Bacon, Aldous Huxley e George Orwell dedicaram-se à tarefa imaginativa de pensar o mundo que temos em face daquele que poderíamos ter – para o bem ou para o mal. Mas ainda haveria espaço para utopias e distopias no pensamento político contemporâneo? Ainda faz sentido autilização de tais vocabulários no âmbito da reflexão política? O filósofo estadunidense Richard Rorty (1931-2007) desenvolveu, no século XX e início do XXI, uma concepção de utopia cosmopolita social democrática e liberal. Reconhecidamente etnocêntrico, Rorty vislumbrava a construção de uma ampla sociedade democrática a partir da reforma das instituições consolidadas nas sociedades democráticas reais, rumo ao objetivo da extinção da crueldade e da humilhação dos homens por outros homens e da contínua substituição da força pelo diálogo. Por outro lado, em defesa do pessimismo, e denunciando os perigos da falsa esperança, o filósofo e literato inglês Roger Scruton (1944-2020) apresenta-se como uma voz crítica face às utopias, incluindo aquilo que denomina “falácia utópica” em seu rol de sofismas correntes na contemporaneidade que contribuem para uma leitura inapropriada do nosso tempo. Apresentamos neste artigo um passeio pelos sentimentos de utopia e distopia, assinalando os escritos fundamentais de Huxley, Rorty e Scruton e traçando um paralelo entre suas retóricas, destacando algumas controvérsias que entre elas se pode verificar. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

Utopias from ancient times to the present have come and gone. They remain as a part of literary, philosophical and historical texts and communal practices. Yet this subject has never ceased to inspire contemporary minds as well. My aim in this paper is to consider the communities known as favelas that have formed on the edges of the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro as a contemporary form of utopian community. The paper begins with a brief analysis of the concept (...) of utopia. Then follows a discussion of the Favela as an urban utopia as seen from the perspective of Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation as represented in his book, The Philosophy of Liberation. The remainder of the paper will consider in what sense the Favela settlements can be understood as a form of utopia. Among additional sources for this paper, I will refer to the research on the favelas by such scholars as Janice Perlman and Catalytic Communities. Other sources will include art projects in the favelas, the novel and film City of God made on site, and photographs of Miguel Rio Branco taken in the Favelas. All of these artists’ representations reflectactual experiences of life in the Favelas. An underlying question throughout will be the role that art might play in understanding utopias. (shrink)

For critical legal scholars, the ongoing far-right assault upon the liberal status quo poses a distinct dilemma. On the one hand, the desire to condemn the far-right is overwhelming. On the other hand, such condemnations are susceptible to being appropriated as a validation of the very liberalism that critical theorists have long questioned. In seeking to transcend this dilemma, my focus is on the discourse of ‘white genocide’ — a commonplace belief amongst the far-right/white nationalists that ‘whites’, as a (...) discrete group, are facing demographic destruction as a result of deliberate policy choices. Such a belief has motivated acts of extreme violence. While libel to dismissal by experts on mainstream understandings of genocide, namely international criminal lawyers, I argue that this ‘white genocide’ discourse deserves careful scrutiny as a jurisprudential and socio-legal phenomenon that reveals key weaknesses in present modalities of liberal justification. Drawing upon an array of recent critical theories, I show how a liberalism unable to face its own decline enables the very far-right assertions it purports to oppose. Thus, given liberalism’s failure to act as a neutral arbiter, an alternative approach for those opposing the far-right is to develop a vision of politics and society that confront believers in ‘white genocide’ on a more substantive level. This, I argue, forces the far-right’s opponents to disavow liberal scepticism towards utopian transformation as well as the juridical understandings and institutions that allow this scepticism to durably persist. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between utopian production and reception via a reading of the work of the great utopian author and theorist William Morris. This relationship has invariably been defined by an inequality: utopian producers have claimed unlimited freedom in their attempts to imagine new worlds, while utopian recipients have been asked to adopt such visions as their own without question. Morris’s work suggests two possible responses to this inequality. One response, associated with theorist Miguel Abensour, is to liberate (...) reception, with Morris’s utopianism containing an invitation to readers to reformulate the vision proffered. However, this response, despite its dominance in contemporary utopian theory, not only misreads Morris but also undermines the political efficacy of utopianism. Consequently, I suggest that Morris responds to the problem of utopian inequality by constraining production, proposing a historical control on utopianising; new utopias are directed by an archive of visions articulated in past struggles. (shrink)

The question of whether a (queer) politics of utopia can be located in the past, the future or the present conjures a set of ambivalences and dichotomies, of which the creativity–negativity debate and the (non)future of neoliberalism are cogent for feminist praxis. Convergences can be traced between understandings of utopia grounded in everyday experimentation and queer feminist critiques of normativity as a life project as well as an ongoing educational project. This article dissects social critic, psychologist, poet, novelist (...) and anarchist Paul Goodman’s essay ‘The politics of being queer’ (1969), reading it through a queer feminist lens in order to shed new light on his ‘buried conversations’ with feminism. Mindful of and in opposition to Goodman’s controversial avowal of ‘masculinities’—most notably in his Growing Up Absurd (1960)—the article situates his idea(s) of freedom-autonomy and the disidentifications he proposed—with gay liberation agendas/movements, with bisexuality, with ‘masculinity’—within a wider feminist educational/pedagogical project of experimenting with utopia in the here and now. Goodman’s calls for a liberated society left us a utopian imaginary for engaging with an embodied politics for the present—for teaching, educating, loving and living differently. (shrink)

Radical political thought of the 20th century was dominated by utopia, but the failure of communism in Eastern Europe and its disavowal in China has brought on the need for a new model of utopian thought. This book thus seeks to redefine the concept of utopia and bring it to bear on today's politics. The original essays, contributed by key thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo and Jean-Luc Nancy, highlight the connection between utopian theory and practice. The book reassesses (...) the legacy of utopia and conceptualizes alternatives to the neo-liberal, technocratic regimes prevalent in today's world. It argues that only utopia in its existential sense, grounded in the lived time and space of politics, can distance itself from mainstream ideology and not be at the service of technocratic regimes, while paying attention to the material conditions of human life. Existential Utopia offers a new and exciting interpretation of utopia in contemporary culture and a much-needed intervention into the philosophical and political discussion of utopian thinking that is both accessible to students and comprehensive. (shrink)

In The Nationality of Utopia, Maxim Shadurski considers the utopian writings of H. G. Wells within the context of cultural Englishness and the British liberal tradition. Shadurski, an associate professor of literary theory and comparative studies at Siedlce University, has edited The Wellsian, the journal of the H. G. Wells Society, since 2016 and published Utopiia kak model mira: granitsy i pogranichiia literaturnogo iavleniia in 2016. Curiously, given Shadurski's multinational heritage—a Belorussian by birthright who has published in Russian (...) and English and teaches at a Polish university—his secondary sources are overwhelmingly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 128-134 [Access article in PDF] Anderson's Utopia Partha Chatterjee Imagined Communities was, without doubt, one of the most influential books of the late twentieth century. In the years since it was published, as nationalism unexpectedly came to be regarded as an increasingly unresolvable and often dangerous "problem" in world affairs, Benedict Anderson has continued to analyze and reflect on the subject, adding two brilliant chapters (...) to his highly acclaimed book and writing several new essays and lectures. Some of these have been brought together, along with a series of essays on the history and politics of Southeast Asia, in The Spectre of Comparisons. The publication of this volume provides an opportunity for other scholars in the field to reassess the work of, and pay tribute to, a major intellectual of our time. 1 Theoretically, the most significant addition that Anderson has made to his analysis in Imagined Communities is his attempt to distinguish between nationalism and the politics of ethnicity. He does this by identifying two kinds of seriality that are produced by the modern imaginings of community. One is the unbound seriality of the everyday universals of modern social thought: nations, citizens, revolutionaries, bureaucrats, workers, intellectuals, and so on. The other is the bound seriality of governmentality: the finite totals of enumerable classes of population produced by the modern census and the modern electoral systems. Unbound serialities are typically imagined and narrated by means of the classic instruments of print-capitalism, namely, the newspaper and the novel. They afford the opportunity for individuals to imagine themselves as members of larger than face-to-face solidarities, of choosing to act on behalf of those solidarities, of transcending by an act of political imagination the limits imposed by traditional practices. Unbound serialities are potentially liberating. As Anderson quotes from Pramodeya Ananta Toer's novel Dia Jang Menjerah, which describes such a moment of emancipation experienced by one of its characters:By now, Is knew the society she was entering. She had found a circle of acquaintances far wider than the circle of her brothers, sisters and parents. She now occupied a defined position in that society: as a woman, as a typist in a government office, as a free individual. She had become a new human being, with new understanding, new tales to tell, new perspectives, new attitudes, new interests--newnesses that she managed to pluck and assemble from her acquaintances. [qtd. in Spectre 41] Bound serialities, by contrast, can operate only with integers. This implies that for each category of classification, an individual can count only as one or zero, never as a fraction, which in turn means that all partial or mixed affiliations to a category are ruled out. One can only be black or not black, Muslim or not Muslim, tribal or not tribal, never only partially or contextually so. Bound serialities, Anderson suggests, are constricting and perhaps inherently conflictual. They produce the tools of ethnic politics. [End Page 128]I am not sure that the distinction between bound and unbound seriality, despite its appearance of mathematical precision, is the appropriate way to describe the differences in political modalities that Anderson wants to demarcate. It is not clear why the "unbound" serialities of the nationalist imagination cannot, under specific conditions, produce finite and countable classes. Explaining unbound seriality, Anderson says it is that which "makes the United Nations a normal, wholly unparadoxical institution" [29]. But surely, at any given time, the United Nations can have only a finite number of members. And that is because, with its explicitly laid-down procedures and criteria of membership, the imagining of nationhood has been reduced to the institutional grid of governmentality. Again, if by revolutionaries we mean those who are members of revolutionary political parties, then the number of revolutionaries in a country, or even in the whole world, will also be finite and countable, in the same way that the census claims to provide a figure for, let us say, the number of Hindus in India. It is also not clear in what sense the serialities of governmentality are "bound." The series for Christians or English... (shrink)

He escogido como tema de mi última lectio “Pneumatología política: la utopía renace”. He querido retomar el tema de mi tesis doctoral, presentada y defendida en el año 1973, que se titulaba “La teología política y Félicité Lamennais ”1. En aquel trabajo estudié el proceso intelectual y teológico de aquel inquieto presbítero francés, que primero fue tradicionalista, después liberal y finalmente socialista apocalíptico, y lo confronté con una de las teologías emergentes del inmediato posconcilio: la “teología política”. Hoy quisiera (...) presentar el tema de la teología política en un nuevo contexto, cuarenta y un años después. Creo que habría que cambiar algunos acentos importantes. El título escogido lo refleja: Pneumatología Política: la utopía renace. (shrink)

During the past fifty years, utopian studies solidified a functional definition of utopia in the Marxist tradition, which has encouraged a broad focus on social process rather than on content. In the liberal-humanist tradition, however, utopia is often treated as strictly a matter of form and content, particularly genre. I argue that the key to a functional definition of utopia in the liberal-humanist tradition is the Western tradition of rhetoric. Since its beginnings in ancient culture, (...) rhetoric has been concerned with verbal or symbolic persuasion using values and ideals of the audience. I explain how the utopian impulse is inherent in rhetorical theory from ancient to modern times, including examples from Plato, Cicero, eighteenth-century rhetoricians Hugh Blair and George Campbell, and modern rhetorician Kenneth Burke. I give a rhetorical reading of Mannheim and Bloch and suggest other areas of cross-pollination between rhetoric and utopian studies. (shrink)

Writing the history of anything is a challenge, but endeavoring to write the history of an idea, particularly one as enduring, chimeric, emotive, and misunderstood as “utopia,” is truly a task only to be undertaken by either an intellectual giant or an utter fool. Fortunately for readers, Professor Gregory Claeys, from the University of London, is the former. This relatively large-format book is richly illustrated and printed on glossy “art” paper, ensuring that the rich colors are not lost. The (...) strikingly beautiful cover includes an evocative painting from an 1850 version of Gulliver’s Travels. The liberal inclusion of bright images, and captioned boxes elaborating on a theme or person, is very .. (shrink)

Anti-utopia as a genre of literature has always attracted scientific interest. The result of this interest is a number of definitions of the term ‘anti-utopia‘, none of which is universally accepted, and singling out of peculiar characteristics of such literature. The term ‘young adult anti-utopia‘ and specific features of such novels present a scientific lacuna. Having studied the language means creating the fictional world picture in modern anti-utopian young adult trilogies, the author identifies 15 main features typical (...) of the genre. The results of the research lead to the conclusion that some of the features are universal for the genre of anti-utopia in general: description of a totalitarian state, geographical limitation, vague identification of the past, suffering of the poor, a brave protagonist trying to shatter the existing government, etc. But some other features, mainly, the ones connected with teenage self-identification and alleviation of adolescent stand against the worlds of childhood and adulthood, are typical of young adult anti-utopias: young adult as a protagonist, importance of beauty, ability to sacrifice, a deem hope of a better future preconditioned by evolution of the human race. (shrink)

This paper assesses the extent to which the category of hope assists in preserving and redefining the vestiges of utopian thought in critical social theory. Hope has never had a systematic position among the categories of critical social theory, although it has sometimes acquired considerable prominence. It will be argued that the current philosophical and everyday interest in social hope can be traced to the limited capacity of liberal conceptions of freedom to articulate a vision of social transformation apposite (...) to contemporary suffering and indignity. The background to these experiences is the structural changes associated with the injustices of globalisation, the mobilisation of the capitalist imaginary and the uncertainties of the risk society. The category of hope could assist in sustaining the utopianism of critical theory through conjoining normative principles with a temporal orientation. Yet, the paradoxes of the current phase of capitalist modernisation have further denuded notions of progress. Since the theological background to the category of hope constitutes a major limitation, the utopian orientation of critique is clarified in relation to the antinomies of the turn to social hope and the potential of Habermas' discourse theory of democracy, law and morality. Despite Castoriadis' profound critique of the category of hope, its present usage in social analyses will be seen to have affinities with Honneth's conception of the struggle for recognition. (shrink)

In Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre boldly asserts that: “To be dead is to be a prey for theliving.”1 In the following paper, I argue that Sartre’s rather pessimistic understanding of death isunwarranted. In fact, Herbert Marcuse forcefully suggests that Sartre is one of the “betrayers of Utopia”because Sartre’s notion of death stifles efforts towards true liberation. By returning to Eros andCivilization, I explain and further substantiate Marcuse’s critique of Sartrean freedom as originallypresented in Marcuse’s essay, “Existentialism: Remarks on (...) Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’Etre et le Neant.”. (shrink)

In Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre boldly asserts that: “To be dead is to be a prey for theliving.”1 In the following paper, I argue that Sartre’s rather pessimistic understanding of death isunwarranted. In fact, Herbert Marcuse forcefully suggests that Sartre is one of the “betrayers of Utopia”because Sartre’s notion of death stifles efforts towards true liberation. By returning to Eros andCivilization, I explain and further substantiate Marcuse’s critique of Sartrean freedom as originallypresented in Marcuse’s essay, “Existentialism: Remarks on (...) Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’Etre et le Neant.”. (shrink)

This book examines the general liberal aspiration of neutrality whilst moving discussion of Nozick's moral and political philosophy on from Anarchy, State and Utopia. Using neutralism as a unifying theme it connects his views on ethics, value and pluralism with the earlier libertarianism, combining an up to date critique of Nosick with a fresh view of neutrality.

This article explores the uses of utopian rhetoric of food plenty in Italian colonial visions before the First World War. It examines the travel writings of three leading Italian journalists, Enrico Corradini, Arnaldo Fraccaroli, and Giuseppe Bevione, who visited the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and campaigned for their colonization by Liberal Italy. By reconstructing their utopian rhetoric of food plenty, this article seeks to show the relevance of arguments about food and agriculture produce to early twentieth century (...) colonial visions, shedding light on an aspect of Italian political thought that has been hitherto marginalized in existing historical scholarship. (shrink)

Critical pedagogy speaks of teachers as liberating and transformative intellectuals.Yet their voice is absent from its discourse.The emancipatory action research, described in this article, created a dialogue between teachers and the ideas concerning oppression and liberation found in Neo-Marxist pedagogies. It strongly suggests that teachers can contribute to the further development of these ideas. It indicates that Critical Theory’s perceptions of the totality of oppression were largely accepted by these teachers after their own inner-reflective processes.Yet, the teachers rejected the dyadic (...) perception of oppressors and oppressed, and that of the ‘victimization’ of the subject, as they perceived such an approach to weaken the subject and exempt him/her from the struggle for liberation. They also highlighted the problematic aspects of positive utopia, which many of the critical pedagogies share, and offered a modest, yet intellectually rich perception of the struggle for liberation. As opposed to the static positive utopia that many of Neo-Marxist pedagogies offer, they suggested a dynamic and subjective perception of liberation; one that is neither restricted by the past nor by locality. This research suggests that teachers could well make a valuable contribution to the formation of a new counter-education. And that the development of a new pedagogical language in education could benefit by being done with them rather than for them. (shrink)

:InThe Law of Peoples, John Rawls introduces a framework for realistic utopia, within which the limits of practicable political possibility are probed through the further development of his international theory. This essay addresses the apparent paradox of realistic utopianism within the context of, and in relation to, ideal theory, in an attempt to explore the scope and limits of Rawls’s theory. The ideas behind Rawls’s realistic utopia are discussed in detail, the concept is contrasted with ideal theory in (...) order to assess to what extent Rawls’s framework for realistic utopia introduced inThe Law of Peoplesdiffers from other forms of ideal theory, and the limits of realistic utopianism are identified.I argue first, that, in an attempt to address the potential feasibility constraint, Rawls tries to distinguish his framework of realistic utopia from that of more traditional ideal theory. I then proceed to examine the differences between realistic utopianism inThe Law of Peoplesand ideal theory inA Theory of Justice. I then conclude that Rawls only partially meets the challenge of establishing practicable political possibility. In actuality, Rawls’s focus on ideal agents in ideal as well as nonideal theory, together with his emphasis on societies as closed and self-sufficient, ignores the potential for noncompliance by liberal and decent societies, as well as interdependencies between societies that can cause or lead to injustice, conflict, and instability. I argue that despite these flaws, Rawls’s approach nevertheless provokes new insights into the function of the principles of the ideal theory framework as guidelines for real-world policies striving toward peace, stability, and justice. (shrink)

The hypothesis underlying this article is that any narrative of the emergence of modernity—as the one developed by Blumenberg, for example—that leaves behind the eschatological component is incomplete, since it removes from the tradition of modernity a great deal of the Protestant religious experience which shows deep obsession with the thought of the end of the world. Through a confrontation between Adorno and Bloch, the article argues that the notions of utopia and human liberation imply logically the idea of (...) immortality. For Adorno and Bloch the dream of immortality is the dream of matter; both of them believe that the act of human transcendence must cling on to the bodily stuff out of which we are made. Yet, whereas Bloch postulates the positive existence of a transcendent space, Adorno eschews any ontological commitment. The article argues in favour of Adorno's negative approach, showing that, after Auschwitz, what both philosophers take as the truth‐content of theology cannot be automatically transferred into dialectical materialism. (shrink)

The article identifies a problem in socio-cultural-historical activity theory (SCHAT) with ignoring how hope and power constitute the theory itself, and suggests that this is why the tradition faces a bad choice between functionalist or utopianist reductions of its own social relevance. Currently, remedies for this kind of (perhaps shammed) innocence can be found in Foucauldian and Latourian approaches to knowledge. However, since these appear to presuppose the (often feigned) cynicism of a purely negative standpoint that fits all too smoothly (...) into the neoliberal management it describes, this presents us with an impossible choice or oscillation at another level. To get beyond it, we need the frankly self-reflected standpoint of ideology critique and the articulation of ‘concrete utopia’, i.e. real possibilities for social transformation. The approach is then realized and exemplified as part of an emergent practice research in the field of drug treatment. The field is broadly described as moving toward certain kinds of recognition of users’ standards, but also as filled with paradoxes that allow us to intervene with theory. One of these (sets of) paradoxes concerns the relations between state and civil (bourgeois) society that are played out in drug treatment. Contrary to the doxa of New Public Management, the (welfare) state’s normative power has not dissolved, only hides from itself. An immanent critique of practices and ideas in the field leads to the suggestion that its forms of recognition imply both submission of users, and the creation of positive standards and collectives. To intervene in this set of issues, we must expand the SCHAT reading of its own Hegelian-Marxist legacy, against the dominant liberal and scientistic trend, to engage with theories of recognition. A contemporary, participatory concept of recognition is sketched, which seeks to sublate (include and supersede) submission into the building of the generalizing ethics of a collective. (shrink)

Perhaps no work since John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice has attracted as much recent attention as Robert Nozick’s case for a minimal state—an ingeniously argued critique, not only of antinomian individualism, but also of liberal and socialist contractualism. It might be added that the book is no solace either to more conservative political theorists, who lament state incursion into private life, but whose political structures exhibit either actual or potential constriction of human life. Nozick’s book is both a (...) searching examination of the limitations of utilitarian consequentialism and the redistributivism of Rawls. His essential theme is that "a minimal state limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts etc., is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right." It is also Nozick’s contention that the coercive power of the state should not be used paternalistically to prohibit activities to people for their own protection, or to force some citizens to aid others. The last part of the book is a framework for Nozick’s utopia, and it is in this section that an essentially theoretical approach, amplified by little political or sociological data, exhibits its defects. One suspects that almost all states started with simplistic hopes for minimal coercive activity, and succumbed almost inevitably to the metastasis of function as socio-political life grew in size and complexity. Night watchmen become more than night watchmen when more than watching is needed. Moreover, Nozick’s utopia would seem to necessitate, at least by implication, coercive redistributivism and some kind of compensatory or levelling taxation process. This reviewer is not sure that he understands precisely what Nozick considers correct property theory in a state of nature. The author modestly asserts the tentative, incomplete, and conjectural nature of his work. But the taxed and manipulated citizen who grows in sympathy for the sentiments of Proudhon’s famous litany should welcome this highly literate and well argued case.—R.P.M. (shrink)

Abstract: Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral-legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the (...) concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those "dignities" that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, "human dignity" still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status—in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody. (shrink)

This article reviews the problem of the marginal communities’ representation in Richard Rorty’s philosophy. The purpose of the research is to analyze a specific character of the legitimating the marginal communities’ representatives in the levels of the social formations, participative democracy, and social antagonism. A theoretical base of the research consists of the works by R. Rorty, A. Badiou, P. Bruckner, J. Ranciere, K. Marx, and B. Latour. On the example of the USA, the right for a state as the (...) legal institution to represent the national interests was reasoned in spite of the cases with the violation of the principle of the fundamental moral action in its history, due to the constructive character of the social experiments and the realization of their creative character. The issue of self-identification with the Other is revealed, based not on the similarity with the particular individuals but rather on the empathy to the other culture’s autonomous subject, who has the right for respect and dignity. The ways of achieving a balance between a social antagonism in the pluralism of the opinions and an intersubjective consensus between the members of a liberal community, necessary to omit the shaping up of a tyranny, are also analyzed. The necessity of toleration of the polyphonic discussions is explained on the example of a possible dictatorship in the ethically unified community, regulated with the strict repressive imperatives. Generally, the inclusivity of a Rortian liberal utopia, where the representatives of different social groups have the voting rights and are solidarized on the principles of the sentimental education, have been analyzed. This research will find its application in the following analysis of the factors of the otherness in the sentimental education. Manuscript received 18.02.2020. (shrink)

This article examines the utopian vision present in the eponymous work by Thomas More and in the early Anabaptists. In the light of the discussion on the power and dangers of utopian thinking in liberation theology it seeks to show how More struggled with the tension between the positive possibilities of a different world and the destructive criticism of the present reality. A similar tension is found in early Anabaptist practices, especially in terms of their relationship to the state and (...) their practice of commonality of goods. The article shows that that all attempts to reduce visions of a better world to a particular setting end up as ideological. (shrink)

ABSTRACT After the tragedies of the twentieth century, the utopian impulse was subject to searching criticism by a host of liberal intellectuals including Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Jacob Talmon. Looking to history and political philosophy, these thinkers impugned utopianism for so frequently destroying the freedoms it appeared to pursue. Defined by its theoretical contradictions, the utopian project, rooted in the politics of the Enlightenment, bore some responsibility for the totalitarianism and genocide that had shaped their lives. (...) As this critique became liberal orthodoxy, a heretic group of anarchist thinkers challenged these conclusions. While travelling some distance with the liberal critics, for Paul Goodman, Marie Louise Berneri, and Herbert Read, the twentieth century, rather than invalidating the utopian urge made its boldness and experimentalism all the more vital. Their act of heresy was defending utopianism as a central component of their anarchist critique of the present. (shrink)

Three Lenses to View Common Goods -- Aristotle Reconstructed -- Does Political Augustinianism Help? -- Aquinas and Analogy : The Limits of Bounded Rationality -- Is Liberalism the Enemy -- The Role of Conflict in a Political Account of Common Goods -- Utopia and Apocalypse -- Is Talk of the Common Good Inevitably Paternalistic? -- Fraught Common Goods : Integral Ecology, Humane Economy -- Culture as Common Good.

"La democracia neopopulista es incluyente de la plebe, de los de abajo", mientras que, en tiempos de globalización, la democracia liberal tiende a conformar "la fachada gestional de las políticas del gran capital internacional", sostiene Roberto Follari, pensando en el presente latinoamericano. Doct..

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 10, Page 1353-1368, December 2022. Rorty understands pragmatism in philosophy and social science, literature and art, to be intertwined with the political project of changing the world. Achieving Our Country, together with a lecture on the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, has become Rorty’s political testament. Rorty understands the leftist American project as the incomplete one of all those who fight for a classless society of boundless diversity. At the centre of Achieving (...) Our Country is the tragic division between old and new, social and cultural Left. Rorty’s patriotism is progressive and cosmopolitan. The American project can only be realized if the Left breaks the hegemony of the political Right. For that, America must be understood as a utopia that makes itself the avant-garde of global political, economic, social and cultural change. This utopia can be realized only by a new kind of unity between leftist centres in the university and leftist organizational power in the rest of society. In this respect, America could become a model for the rest of the world again. (shrink)

… power is never uni dimensional; it is exercised not only as a mode of domination, but also as an act of resistance or even as an expression of a creative mode of cultural and social production outside the immediate force of domination.The point is important in that the behavior expressed by subordinate groups cannot be reduced to a study of domination or resistance.Clearly, in the behavior of subordinate groups there are moments of cultural and creative expression that are informed (...) by a different logic, whether it be existential, religious, or otherwise.Our faith is ultimately in individuals and their potentialities.In saying this, I do not mean what is sometimes called individualism as opposed to association.I mean rather an individuality that operates in and through voluntary associations.If our outward scene is one of externally imposed organization, behind and beneath there is working the force of liberated individualities, experimenting in their own ways to find and realize their own ends.The testimony of history is that in the end such a force, however scattered and inchoate, ultimately prevails over all set institutionalized forms, however firmly established the latter may be. (shrink)

The ‘liberal utopia’ presented by Richard Rorty in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is a unique attempt to address the ancient problem of the relationship between individual and society or, in Rorty's terms, that between the private and the public. This article examines Rorty's influential conception of education and asks: can his book be regarded as utopian? Is it possible to establish an education for democracy on his ‘postmodern’ premises? I conclude that Rorty's attempt to separate private from public (...) and to promote a fusion between irony and solidarity is tantamount to founding human existence on an aestheticising orientation. This entangles Rorty in self-contradiction and raises educational and political problems which remain unresolved. (shrink)

La presente obra navega entre dos conceptos —la heterotopía y la utopía— en el contexto de la posmetrópolis. La heterotopía, tal y como explican en el prefacio los coeditores, ha atraído una innegable atención en el ámbito de las ciencias sociales desde que Foucault trasladara el concepto del ámbito médico al espacial. Frente al no espacio de la utopía y su carácter ideal y regulador, las heterotopías serían lugares reales, en los que la diferencia se manifiesta al invertir y subvertir (...) aquellos órdenes que configuran nuestros espacios cotidianos. Siendo uno de estos lugares cotidianos la ciudad, y atendiendo a las posibilidades emancipatorias y reactivas que pronto se asociaron a lo heterotópico, cabe preguntarse por el estado actual de las heterotopías urbanas: ¿son las heterotopías actuales, como registra el título de la obra, utopías liberales? León Casero y Urabayen ofrecen en el prefacio un amplio panorama al respecto. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s liberal utopia offers an interesting model for those who wish to explore the emancipatory potential of a post-foundational account of politics, specifically liberalism. What Rorty proposes is a form of liberalism that is divorced from its Kantian metaphysical foundations. This paper will focus on the gulf that appears between Rorty’s liberal utopia in theory, the political form that it must ultimately manifest itself in, and the consequences this has for debates on pluralism, diversity, and (...) identity, within liberal political thought. -/- The strength of Rorty’s liberal utopia, in his analysis, lies in the fact that with the rejection of philosophy and metaphysics, we can simply get on with the job of reducing cruelty through experimental tinkering with the liberal political system. Instead of trying to develop intellectually sophisticated justifications for why we act, we should just act. Political action, for Rorty, does not require a philosophical or metaphysical justification. However, upon closer critical examination, we can see that whatever potential Rorty’s liberal utopia may have in theory, this is negated by the fact that at the level of political praxis, his re-description of liberalism leaves us with a conception of liberalism that is essentially unchanged. Whilst Rorty has re-situated liberalism from the philosophical to the political, his solution fails to address any internal problems. (shrink)