Confronting Reification

Confronting Reification PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004430083
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In Confronting Reification, an international team of scholars examines the work of the Hungarian philosopher, Georg Lukács, and the relevance of his concept of reification.

Confronting Reification

Confronting Reification PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004430083
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In Confronting Reification, an international team of scholars examines the work of the Hungarian philosopher, Georg Lukács, and the relevance of his concept of reification.

History and Class Consciousness

History and Class Consciousness PDF Author: Georg Lukacs
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262620208
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
This is the first time one of the most important of Lukács' early theoretical writings, published in Germany in 1923, has been made available in English. The book consists of a series of essays treating, among other topics, the definition of orthodox Marxism, the question of legality and illegality, Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist, the changing function of Historic Marxism, class consciousness, and the substantiation and consciousness of the Proletariat. Writing in 1968, on the occasion of the appearance of his collected works, Lukács evaluated the influence of this book as follows: "For the historical effect of History and Class Consciousness and also for the actuality of the present time one problem is of decisive importance: alienation, which is here treated for the first time since Marx as the central question of a revolutionary critique of capitalism, and whose historical as well as methodological origins are deeply rooted in Hegelian dialectic. It goes without saying that the problem was omnipresent. A few years after History and Class Consciousness was published, it was moved into the focus of philosophical discussion by Heidegger in his Being and Time, a place which it maintains to this day largely as a result of the position occupied by Sartre and his followers. The philologic question raised by L. Goldmann, who considered Heidegger's work partly as a polemic reply to my (admittedly unnamed) work, need not be discussed here. It suffices today to say that the problem was in the air, particularly if we analyze its background in detail in order to clarify its effect, the mixture of Marxist and Existentialist thought processes, which prevailed especially in France immediately after the Second World War. In this connection priorities, influences, and so on are not particularly significant. What is important is that the alienation of man was recognized and appreciated as the central problem of the time in which we live, by bourgeois as well as proletarian, by politically rightist and leftist thinkers. Thus, History and Class Consciousness exerted a profound effect in the circles of the youthful intelligentsia."

Descent of the Dialectic

Descent of the Dialectic PDF Author: Michael J. Thompson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040099785
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This book reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic criticism or a form of reason that is able to synthesize human value with objective rationality. This book argues that defects in modern forms of social reason are the result of the powers of social structure and the norms and purposes they embody. Increasingly, modern societies are driven not by substantive values concerning human good but by the technical imperatives of economic management, leading to a cultural condition of nihilism that has eroded dialectical consciousness. The first half of the book demonstrates the various ways that social power erodes and undermines critical-rational forms of consciousness. The second part of the book constructs an alternative basis for critical reason by showing how it requires seeing human value as essentially ontological: that is, constituted by objective forms of sociality that either promote human freedom or pervert our capacities and drive toward pathological forms of life. The philosophical claim is that a critical theory of ethics must be rooted in these concrete forms of life and that this will serve as a critical vantage point for critical political judgment and transformational praxis. Descent of the Dialectic will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy, political theory, social theory, and critical theory.

Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute

Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute PDF Author: Daniel Andrés López
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004417680
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description
Georg Lukács’s philosophy of praxis, penned between 1918 and 1928, remains a revolutionary and apocryphal presence within Marxism. His History and Class Consciousness has inspired a century of rapture and reprobation, perhaps, as Gillian Rose suggested, because of its ‘invitation to hermeneutic anarchy’. In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López radicalises Lukács’s famous return to Hegel by reassembling his 1920s philosophy as a conceptual-historical totality. This speculative reading defends Lukács while proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique. While Lukács’s concept of praxis approaches the shape of Hegel’s Absolute, it tragically fails to bear its weight. However, as López argues, Lukács’s failure was productive: it raises crucial political, methodological and philosophical questions for Marxism, offering to redeem a lost century.

Critical Theory

Critical Theory PDF Author: Stephen Eric Bronner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190692677
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
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Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists

Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists PDF Author: Stephen Eric Bronner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135326118
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Of Critical Theory and its Theorists is an intelligent , accessible overview of the entire Critical Theory Tradition, written by one of the leading experts on the subject. Filled with original insights and valuable historical narratives, Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists covers the work of major philosphical thinkers such as Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas and revisits the contributions of lesser-known figures such as Karl Korsch and Ernst Bloch. Bronner measures the writing of these theorists against each other, postmodernist philosophers and the critical tradition reaching back to Hegel. Of Critical Theory and Its Thoerists presents new insights useful to experienced scholars and offers clear summaries for students making this book an ideal introduction to the debates surrounding one of the most important intellectual traditions of the 20th Century.

Phenomenology as Critique

Phenomenology as Critique PDF Author: Andreea Smaranda Aldea
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000550672
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics. The contributions show that contemporary phenomenological investigations of various forms of oppression and domination develop new critical-analytical tools that complement those of competing theoretical approaches, such as analytics of power, critical theory, and liberal philosophy of justice. More specifically, the chapters pay close attention to the following methodological themes: the conditions for the possibility of phenomenology as critique; critique as radical reflection and free thinking; eidetic analysis and reflection of transcendental facticity and contingency of the self, of others, of the world; phenomenology and immanent critique; the self-reflective dimensions of phenomenology; and phenomenological analysis and self-transfermation and world transformation. All in all, the book explicates the multiple critical resources phenomenology has to offer, precisely in virtue of its distinctive methods and methodological commitments, and thus shows its power in tackling timely issues of social injustice. Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in phenomenology, Continental philosophy, and critical theory.

De-Centering Global Sociology

De-Centering Global Sociology PDF Author: Arthur Bueno
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000684032
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
This volume explores the challenges posed to sociological theory and social science research by a growing need to foreground perspectives stemming from, and accounting for, subaltern groups, marginal categories, the Global South, and other politically peripheral regions. De-Centering Global Sociology radically questions some of the most enduring assumptions within sociological thought and social science research and illustrates the impacts of de-centering critical concepts in public policy and education. It proposes new places to build social theory, beyond Europe and the United States, offering debates on the present and future of the social sciences. This peripheral turn also has impacts on the development of pedagogical practices, curricula, and educational research that are more inclusive, and in a position to promote global citizenship. This book will be a valuable resource for researchers and academics with an interest in global social theory, decolonial and postcolonial studies, political theory, feminism, critical race theory, economic sociology, inequality studies, urban sociology, and the sociology of work, religion, and education. It will be of particular interest to those with a focus on citizenship, social policy, conviviality, social integration and solidarity, and new perspectives on multicultural education.

Explorations in Social Theory

Explorations in Social Theory PDF Author: George Ritzer
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1473946050
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
George Ritzer is one of the leading social and cultural commentators of the present day. In this essential new book he considers some of the main tendencies in contemporary social theory. Included here are Ritzer′s latest reflections on the uses and misuses of metatheory. According to Ritzer, sociology is a multiparadigm science. The differences and intensities of rivalries between paradigms are often very confusing for students and even for professional sociologists. This book seeks to find a way out of the confusion by sketching out the lineaments of a new integrated sociological paradigm and demonstrates how this paradigm can be applied. It shows the various ways in which Ritzer has developed rationalization theory to shed light on professional integration, the shape of consumer culture, hyperrationality and the state of sociology today.

In Defense of Animals

In Defense of Animals PDF Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118712358
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Bringing together new essays by philosophers and activists, InDefense of Animals: The Second Wave highlights the newchallenges facing the animal rights movement. Exciting new collection edited by controversial philosopherPeter Singer, who made animal rights into an international concernwhen he first published In Defence of Animals and AnimalLiberation over thirty years ago Essays explore new ways of measuring animal suffering, reassessthe question of personhood, and draw highlight tales of effectiveadvocacy Lays out “Ten Tips for Activists”, taking thereader beyond ethical theory and into the day-to-day campaigns foranimal rights