Recent developments in sociological theorizing about revolution are surveyed, critiqued, and evaluated in terms of an emerging new paradigm. The first section assesses the strengths and weaknesses of 1970s theorizing by Tilly, Paige, and Skocpol. A second section takes up themes of state and crisis from 1980s work deepening this tradition. A third section identifies and discusses recent work in new areas critical of the structuralists, on agency, social structure, and culture. Finally, the shape of a new paradigm based (...) on conjunctural modeling of economic, political, and cultural processes is suggested with a discussion of Walton and of very recent work by Farhi, Foran, and Goldstone. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought is often seen as inconsistent for offering two apparently dissimilar theories of revolution. The first is universal democratisation, understood as a social phenomenon and a grand revolutionary change; the second sees revolution as the logical continuation and radicalisation of the preceding regime. The following question arises: was Tocqueville inconsistent in his principal works? I argue that this was not the case and that the two processes are complementary elements in Tocqueville’s model, which combines (...) the ancient cyclical science of regime change with modern theories of revolutionary progress. What Tocqueville offers is a powerful political theory with considerable predictive power. Tocqueville, I consequently claim, should be viewed as a theorist of revolution rather than as a theorist of democracy per se. (shrink)

A political and intellectual biographical study of Lenin which focuses on those aspects of his thought and political activities that had a bearing on the accession of the Bolsheviks to power in Russia in 1917 and the creation of the Soviet state. The book places Lenin in the context of his times and shows his relationship to other socialist thinkers. In particular it locates Lenin within the development of Marxist thought in Russia. Its historiographical chapter reveals the political factors which (...) influenced the way biographies of Lenin were written in the Soviet Union. The book makes use of first hand materials including sources from the Russian archives. (shrink)

This new collection illuminates and explains the political and moral importance in justifying the exercise of judicial power.Explores enduring questionsFocusing ...

A number of writings have recently appeared in which various aspects of the theory of revolution are examined. This is evidence of an increased interest in problems of the methodology of social revolution. Nonetheless, further research in this field is necessary.

In a previous article we have shown that Kuhn's theory of concepts is independently supported by recent research in cognitive psychology. In this paper we propose a cognitive re-reading of Kuhn's cyclical model of scientific revolutions: all of the important features of the model may now be seen as consequences of a more fundamental account of the nature of concepts and their dynamics. We begin by examining incommensurability, the central theme of Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, according to (...) two different cognitive models of concept representation. We provide new support for Kuhn 's mature views that incommensurability can be caused by changes in only a few concepts, that even incommensurable conceptual systems can be rationally compared, and that scientific change of the most radical sort—the type labeled revolutionary in earlier studies—does not have to occur holistically and abruptly, but can be achieved by a historically more plausible accumulation of smaller changes. We go on to suggest that the parallel accounts of concepts found in Kuhn and in cognitive science lead to a new understanding of the nature of normal science, of the transition from normal science to crisis, and of scientific revolutions. The same account enables us to understand how scientific communities split to create groups supporting new paradigms, and to resolve various outstanding problems. In particular, we can identify the kind of change needed to create a revolution rather precisely. This new analysis also suggests reasons for the unidirectionality of scientific change. (shrink)

ERIC JACOBSON, Theories of Justice, Profane and Prophetic: Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution. with commentary drawn from Walter Benjamin's Critique of Violence) in: Gershom Scholem. In Memoriam, Vol. II. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, No. 21, ed. Joseph Dan, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007, 59-75.

In recent years, many scientists and philosophers have begun to believe that a new theoretic revolution is occurring in cognitive science. The revolution is the rise of theoretical models of "4E+S" cognition. "4E" denotes "embodied", "embedded", "enacted", and "extended"; "S" denotes "situated". Differentiating from the traditional computational theory or representational theory of cognition, this branch of new cognitive scientists and philosophers have begun to claim that cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted, extended and situated. All of these (...) five theories agree that cognitive processes can proceed beyond the boundary of the brain. Thus we can synthesize them together as "transcranial cognition" or "transbrain cognition". The questions are: Are there common characteristics of these five models? Can we integrate them together with a new model of cognition? Is the "4E+S" model a real Copernicus style revolution of cognitive science? This article analyzes these questions and provides the following answers: There is a common characteristics of these cognitive theories and it is the characteristics of transcranialness, i. e. cognition or mind can exist beyond brain; We can integrate them together as transcranial cognition; The new theory of cognition or mind is a new big extended theory of traditional cognitive science. (shrink)

The sexual revolution that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s is one of the most profound social changes during the second half of the twentieth century in America. Before the revolution, there existed a norm proscribing premarital sex (PS norm); premarital sex was not accepted. After the sexual revolution, the PS norm no longer existed; premarital sex became accepted. In the literature on how premarital sex became accepted, little attention is given to the institutional (...) change that transpired—the collapse of a sexual norm. This study specifies one micro-mechanism of this social change. Specifically, adopting methodological individualism and the prisoner's dilemma game, I develop a theory that explains how a technological innovation for contraception triggered a change in individuals' perception of premarital sex, which led to their behavioral change. As a result, premarital sex became accepted, and the norm proscribing premarital sex collapsed. I use General Social Survey data to test the hypothesized micro-mechanism of the institutional change. The empirical analysis supports the hypothesis derived from the theory. Based on the above analyses, I discuss two alternative explanations and the issue of teenage pregnancy. (shrink)

This article offers a close reading of Hannah Arendt's book On Revolution. It exposes the ambivalence of Arendt with regard to tragedy and mimesis. This ambivalence is not just her own; it is inherent in the treatment of tragedy and mimesis throughout the history of political thought. In spite of Arendt's argument that privileges the limited American Revolution against the boundless French one, in her rhetoric and in her storytelling Arendt presents a unitary but dialectical picture of (...) class='Hi'>revolution, where suffering and foundation are inseparably intertwined. The founding public action of revolutionaries implies a crisis of mimetic passions (of fear and pity) which threatens to undo, but also set the stage for, revolution. This negative, passionate and passive side of revolution helps us to come to terms with the non-productive but emancipatory revolutions in the Eastern Europe of 1989-91. (shrink)

This article explores the question of the political meaning of the term “revolution” and the relation that has been established and should continue to be established between revolution and freedom. To this effect, the article examines some of the main proposals set forth in this respect by three contemporary thinkers, Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, with occasional references to Michel Foucault and Antonio Negri. The proposal argued for here is that Arendt’s notion of revolution and (...) the notions of event and act put forth in the radical political theories of Badiou and Žižek intersect and necessarily supplement one another. (shrink)

The primary objective of this study is to provide a description of the major ideas about void space within and beyond the world that were formulated between the fourteenth and early eighteenth centuries. The second part of the book - on infinite, extracosmic void space - is of special significance. The significance of Professor Grant's account is twofold: it provides the first comprehensive and detailed description of the scholastic Aristotelian arguments for and against the existence of void space; and it (...) presents (again for the first time) an analysis of the possible influence of scholastic ideas and arguments on the interpretations of space proposed by the nonscholastic authors who made the Scientific Revolution possible. The concluding chapter of the book is unique in not only describing the conceptualizations of space proposed by the makers of the Scientific Revolution, but in assessing the role of readily available scholastic ideas on the conception of space adopted for the Newtonian world. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to paraphrase Theda Skocpol’s theory of social revolutions with the use of the conceptual apparatus of non-Marxian historical materialism. In the successive sections of this paper, the concepts of modernization, the nature of state power, an agrarian bureaucracy, and the mechanism of a victorious revolution are paraphrased. This paraphrase makes it possible to distinguish two kinds of agrarian bureaucracies, each resulting in social revolutions with different outcomes. A victorious revolution led to (...) successful modernization in the case of an economic agrarian bureaucracy, but not in the case of a political agrarian bureaucracy. (shrink)

This report presents the features of the organisation and the main ideas of the international scientific conference “‘No Right of Sedition’. Kant and the Problem of Revolution in the 18th—21st Century Philosophy.” The conference was held at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) in Kaliningrad on November 9—10, 2017 and was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The event was organised by the Academia Kantiana — a research unit on comparative studies on Russian and (...) Western philosophy at the IKBFU’s Institute for the Humanities. The reports presented at the conference focused on the analysis of the phenomenon of revolution from Kant to the present day as well as the conceptions of revolution that appeared around the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The report summarises all the presentations and discussions that took place at the confe­rence in accordance with the thematic clusters. The conference confirmed that Kant’s ideas on the state and the revolution are still relevant today. (shrink)

The concept of revolution marks the ultimate horizon of modern politics. It is instantiated by sites of both hope and horror. Within progressive thought, “revolution” often perpetuates entrenched philosophical problems: a teleological philosophy of history, economic reductionism, and normative paternalism. At a time of resurgent uprisings, how can revolution be reconceptualized to grasp the dynamics of social transformation and disentangle revolutionary practice from authoritarian usurpation? Eva von Redecker reconsiders critical theory’s understanding of radical change in order (...) to offer a bold new account of how revolution occurs. She argues that revolutions are not singular events but extended processes: beginning from the interstices of society, they succeed by gradually rearticulating social structures toward a new paradigm. Developing a theoretical account of social transformation, Praxis and Revolution incorporates a wide range of insights, from the Frankfurt School to queer theory and intersectionality. Its revised materialism furnishes prefigurative politics with their social conditions and performative critique with its collective force. Von Redecker revisits the French Revolution to show how change arises from struggle in everyday social practice. She illustrates the argument through rich literary examples—a ménage à trois inside a prison, a radical knitting circle, a queer affinity group, and petitioners pleading with the executioner—that forge a feminist, open-ended model of revolution. Praxis and Revolution urges readers not only to understand revolutions differently but also to situate them elsewhere: in collective contexts that aim to storm manifold Bastilles—but from within. (shrink)

This volume is a sequel to the author's earlier work on the development of European theories of sovereignity and constitutionalism. Professor Franklin here explains a major innovation associated with the English Civil Wars. It was only now, he shows, that there finally emerged a theory of sovereignity and resistance that was fully compatible with a mixed constitution. The new conception of resistance in a mixed constitution was to enter the main tradition via Locke, who stood alone among major writers (...) of the 1680s in holding that the effect of tyranny by any constituted power, even by the King alone, was entire dissolution of the government and the reversion of power to the general community. When this familiar position is read against the background of preceding constitutionalist theory, the Second Treatise reveals a new dimension of novelty and historical significance. (shrink)

Grossman’s first major, published study of Marxist economic theory was a devastating critique of Fritz Sternberg’s ambitious and long book, Imperialism. The article exposed the way Sternberg failed to grasp Marx’s method and basic economic arguments, and drew impatient revolutionary conclusions from assumptions of anti-revolutionary revisionism. It also outlined Grossman’s own recovery, restatement and elaboration of features of Marx’s economic analysis, and Lenin’s conception of workers’ revolution. This abridgement consists of the first three sections of the article. An (...) introduction to Grossman’s article is published simultaneously. (shrink)

The world as perceived by human beings is full of colour. The world as described by physical scientists is composed of colourless particles and fields. Philosophical theories of colour since the scientific revolution have been primarily driven by a desire to harmonize these two apparently conflicting pictures of the world. Any adequate theory of colour has to be consistent with the characteristics of colour as perceived without contradicting the deliverances of the physical sciences. Given this conception of the (...) aim of a theory of colour, there are three possibilities for resolving the apparent conflict between the scientific and perceptual facts. The first possibility is to deny that physical objects have colours. Theories of this kind admit that objects appear coloured but maintain that these appearances are misleading. The conflict is resolved by removing colour from the external world. Second, it might be that colour is a relational property. For an object to possess a particular colour it must be related in the right way to a perceiver. One common version of this view analyzes colour as a disposition to cause particular kinds of perceptual experiences in a human being. Since the physical sciences deal only with the intrinsic properties of physical objects and their relations to other physical objects and not their relations to perceiving subjects, the possibility of conflict is removed. A third possible response to the conflict is to maintain that colour really is a property of external objects and that the conflict is merely apparent. Some theories of this form maintain that colour is identical to a physical property of objects. Others maintain that colour is a property that physical objects possess over and above all their physical <blockquote> 1 </blockquote> properties. Philosophical discussions of colour typically take the form of either elaborating on one of these three possibilities or attempting to show more generally that one of these three types of responses is to be preferred to the others.. (shrink)

This article is an introduction to the first English edition of Karl Kautsky's article series "The American Worker" (Karl Kautsky, “Der amerikanische Arbeiter”, Die neue Zeit, 24. 1905-1906, 1. Bd., 1906, H. 21, S. 676-683, H. 22, S. 717-727, H. 23, S. 740-752, H. 24, S. 773-787), which was a Marxist reply to Werner Somart's book Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (Werner Sombart, Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus?, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1906).

The article analyzes the technological shifts which took place in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries and forecasts the main shifts in the next half a century. On the basis of the analysis of the latest achievements in inno-vative technological directions and also on the basis of the opportunities pro-vided by the theory of production revolutions the authors present a detailed analysis of the latest production revolution which is denoted as ‘Сybernetic’. The authors give (...) some forecasts about its development in the nearest five decades and up to the end of the 21st century. It is shown that the development of various self-regulating systems will be the main trend of this revolution. The authors argue that at first the transition to the beginning of the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution will start in the field of medicine (in its some innovative directions). In future we will deal with the start of convergence of innovative technologies which will form the system of MBNRIC-technologies (i.e. the technological paradigm based on medicine, bio- and nanotechnologies, robotics, IT and cognitive technologies). The article gives a detailed analysis of the future breakthroughs in medicine, bio- and nanotechnologies as well as some other technologies in terms of the development of self-regulating systems with their growing ability to select optimum modes of functioning as well as of other characteristics of the Cybernetic Revolution (resources and energy saving, miniaturization, individualization, etc.). (shrink)

In the present paper, on the basis of the theory of production principles and production revolutions, we reveal the interrelation between K-waves and major technological breakthroughs in history and make some predictions about features of the sixth Kondratieff wave in the light of the Cybernetic Revolution which, we think, started in the 1950s. We assume that the sixth K-wave in the 2030s and 2040s will merge with the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (which we call the (...) phase of self-regulating systems). This period will be characterized by breakthroughs in medical technologies which will manage to combine many other technologies into a single complex of MBNRIC-technologies (med-bio-nano-robo-info-cognitive technologies). The article offers some predictions concerning the development of these technologies. (shrink)

The article analyzes the relationship between Kant's “Copernican revolution” and his theory of experience. The author demonstrates that the principles of the “altered way of thinking” form the foundation of the theory of experience and determine the structure and characteristics of transcendental cognition. The author explicates the structural elements of experience: sensible intuitions, pure a priori concepts of understanding, pure transcendental synthesis, schematism of pure concepts, principles as a system of rules for the use of categories, regulative (...) ideas of reason. All these elements are constitutive and regulative components of experience. In this case, Kant's theory of experience is the realistic constructivism. (shrink)

Summary Contrary to common belief, Lavoisier's greatest phlogistic rival was not Joseph Priestley but Richard Kirwan, a fact that was firmly recognized by both the Lavoisians as well as Priestley himself. During the 1780s, which saw the unprecedented rise of the chemistry of air(s), Kirwan's ‘ingenious modifications…into the theory of phlogiston’, in Mme. Lavoisier's words, became the most dominant alternative to the revisionist pneumatic interpretations of the French. A genealogical contextualization of Kirwan's phlogistic contributions, the circumstances of their emergence (...) and the nature of their evolution and impact, reveals the intricate process of transformation that pneumatic phlogistic thought and practice have undergone during the final years of phlogiston's existence. Originally introduced as an adverse reaction to Scheele's phlogistic reasoning, Kirwan's work evolved as a sophisticated integration between notions of aerial permutations and Adair Crawford's innovative formulation of the phlogistic role of heat, with its origins in the Scottish pneumatic tradition of Black and Irvine. Examining Kirwan's views against the background of metaphysical conflicts over the constitution of pneumatic entities and the role of phlogiston in pneumatic processes traces their origins and advances to a complex interplay between innovation and renovation, proclamation and reclamation, thus depicting the dynamics of (dis-)continuity in the broader phlogistic sphere from which Kirwan's ‘modifications’ have stemmed and which they came to forcefully represent. (shrink)

Recently, Michael Wheeler has argued that despite its sometimes revolutionary rhetoric, the so called 4E cognitive movement, even in the guise of ‘radical’ enactivism, cannot achieve a full revolution in cognitive science. A full revolution would require the rejection of two essential tenets of traditional cognitive science, namely internalism and representationalism. Whilst REC might secure antirepresentationalism, it cannot do the same, so Wheeler argues, with externalism. In this paper, expanding on Wheeler’s analysis, we argue that what compromises REC’s (...) externalism is the persistence of cognitively relevant asymmetries between its purported cognitive systems and the environment. Complementarily, we argue that an antirepresentationalist ancestor of enactivism, the autopoietic theory of cognition, is able to deliver and secure externalism, thus offering the explosive combination that Wheeler claims us needed for a revolution in cognitive science. (shrink)