Author: Silvia Mazzini
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319590219
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
This book aims to provide fresh perspectives on Vattimo and Zabala’s groundbreaking foundational text, Hermeneutic Communism, from 2011. The contributors to this collection of essays explore various facets of Vattimo and Zabala’s “anarchic hermeneutics” and “weak communism” in order to investigate the concepts resulting from them, such as “framed democracies,” “armed capitalism” and “conservative impositions.” Vattimo and Zabala’s text is one of the most innovative contributions to the current debate on Communism, in which authors such as Badiou, Negri, and Rancière have been the protagonists so far. The unique and original contribution of Vattimo and Zabala’s position consists in letting politics evolve from one of the anarchic origins of hermeneutics: the end of truth. This triggers the essential question of how far politics is possible without truth. One of the essential, methodologically innovative characteristics of this collection is its dialogical, hermeneutical form, which is achieved by inserting Vattimo and Zabala’s personal reactions to each essay in the book. By responding to each chapter in turn, Vattimo and Zabala establish a hermeneutic dialogue with the contributors. Thus hermeneutics will not only be a central topic, but also an epistemological, concrete application of Vattimo and Zabala’s theories. An indispensable critical tool for students, researchers, professors, activists and general readers interested in the philosophical and political debate on Communism, which encompasses a wide variety of disciplines such as philosophy, political science, sociology, postcolonial studies, critical theory and Latin American studies. Offering an innovative first analysis of the new concepts of Hermeneutic Communism, this book represents a vital contribution to the understanding of the intriguing interrelation between philosophical hermeneutics and political communism. “A very much needed and refreshing perspective for all those interested in rethinking radical politics beyond both political Eurocentrism and philosophical imperialism." (Chiara Bottici, New School of Social Research, and author of Imaginal Politics) “The book offers much food for thought both for those who have given up hope and for those who have been fighting for a better world for some time...The contributions to Making Communism Hermeneutical may be seen as step in the direction of a much-needed change in thinking.” (David Block, ICREA Research Professor in Sociolinguistics, Universitat de Lleida)
Author: Gianni Vattimo
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231528078
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, Vattimo and Zabala fear this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, they adopt an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala's well-known work on the weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the fully transformational, politically effective potential of Marxist thought.
Author: Gianni Vattimo
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527551
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 187
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Book Description
With Western cultures becoming more pluralistic, the question of "truth" in politics has become a game of interpretations. Today, we face the demise of the very idea of truth as an objective description of facts, though many have yet to acknowledge that this is changing. Gianni Vattimo explicitly engages with the important consequences for democracy of our changing conception of politics and truth, such as a growing reluctance to ground politics in science, economics, and technology. Yet in Vattimo's conception, a farewell to truth can benefit democracy, exposing the unspoken issues that underlie all objective claims. The end of absolute truth challenges the legitimacy of policies based on perceived objective necessities protecting the free market, for example, even if it devastates certain groups or classes. Vattimo calls for a truth that is constructed with consensus and a respect for the liberty of all. By taking into account the cultural paradigms of others, a more "truthful" society freer and more democratic becomes possible. In this book, Vattimo continues his reinterpretation of Christianity as a religion of charity and hope, freeing society from authoritarian, metaphysical dogmatism. He also extends Nietzsche's "death of God" to the death of an authoritarian God, ushering in a new, postreligious Christianity. He connects the thought of Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Karl Popper with surprising results and accommodates modern science more than in his previous work, reconciling its validity with an insistence that knowledge is interpretive. Vattimo's philosophy justifies Western nihilism in its capacity to dispense with absolute truths. Ranging over politics, ethics, religion, and the history of philosophy, his reflections contribute deeply to a modern reconception of God, metaphysics, and the purpose of reality.
Author: Radegundis Stolze
Publisher: Zeta Books
ISBN: 6068266427
Category : Translating and interpreting
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
This volume presents selected papers from the first symposium on Hermeneutics and Translation Studies held at Cologne in 2011. Translational Hermeneutics works at the intersection of theory and practice. It foregrounds both hermeneutical philosophy and the various traditions -- especially phenomenology -- to which it is indebted, in order to explore the ways in which the individual person figures at the center of the mediating process of translation. Translational Hermeneutics offers alternative ways to understand the process of translating: it is a holistic and strategic process that enhances understanding by assisting the transmission of meaning in and across multiple social and cultural contexts. The papers in this collection accordingly provide a preliminary outline of Translational Hermeneutics. Gathered together, these papers broach a new discipline within Translation Studies. While some essays explain the theoretical foundations of this approach, others concentrate on practical applications in diverse fields, for example literary studies, and postcolonial studies.
Author: Douglas Robinson
Publisher: Zeta Books
ISBN: 6068266729
Category : Hermeneutics
Languages : de
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Author: Bryan Smyth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793622566
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
Marxism and Phenomenology: The Dialectical Horizons of Critique, edited by Bryan Smyth and Richard Westerman, offers new perspectives on the possibility of a philosophical outlook that combines Marxism and phenomenology in the critique of capitalism. Although Marxism’s focus on impersonal social structures and phenomenology’s concern with lived experience can make these traditions appear conceptually incompatible, the potential critical force of a theoretical reconciliation inspired several attempts in the twentieth century to articulate a phenomenological Marxism. Updating and extending this approach, the contributors to this volume identify and develop new and previously overlooked connections between the traditions, offering new perspectives on Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger; exploring themes such as alienation, reification, and ecology; and examining the intersection of Marxism and phenomenology in figures such as Michel Henry, Walter Benjamin, and Frantz Fanon. These glimpses of a productive reconciliation of the respective strengths of phenomenology and Marxism offer promising possibilities for illuminating and resolving the increasingly intense social crises of capitalism in the twenty-first century.
Author: Slavoj Zizek
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844673006
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Slavoj Žižek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the “Elvis of cultural theory”, and today’s most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, literature and jokes—all to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. His recent films The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema and Žižek! reveal a theorist at the peak of his powers and a skilled communicator. Now Verso is making his classic titles, each of which stand as a core of his ever-expanding life’s work, available as new editions. Each is beautifully re-packaged, including new introductions from Žižek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Žižek’s thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy. The Sublime Object of Ideology: Slavoj Žižek’s first book is a provocative and original work looking at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. In a thrilling tour de force that made his name, he explores the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society.
Author: Bini Adamczak
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262339498
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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Book Description
Communism, capitalism, work, crisis, and the market, described in simple storybook terms and illustrated by drawings of adorable little revolutionaries. Once upon a time, people yearned to be free of the misery of capitalism. How could their dreams come true? This little book proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism. Offering relief for many who have been numbed by Marxist exegesis and given headaches by the earnest pompousness of socialist politics, it presents political theory in the simple terms of a children's story, accompanied by illustrations of lovable little revolutionaries experiencing their political awakening. It all unfolds like a story, with jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers–not to mention a Ouija board, a talking chair, and a big pot called “the state.” Before they know it, readers are learning about the economic history of feudalism, class struggles in capitalism, different ideas of communism, and more. Finally, competition between two factories leads to a crisis that the workers attempt to solve in six different ways (most of them borrowed from historic models of communist or socialist change). Each attempt fails, since true communism is not so easy after all. But it's also not that hard. At last, the people take everything into their own hands and decide for themselves how to continue. Happy ending? Only the future will tell. With an epilogue that goes deeper into the theoretical issues behind the story, this book is perfect for all ages and all who desire a better world.
Author: Yuri Slezkine
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400888174
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1123
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Book Description
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
Author: Babette Babich
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350228591
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Gunter Anders' Philosophy of Technology is the first comprehensive exploration of the ground-breaking work of German thinker Gunter Anders. Anders' philosophy has become increasingly prescient in our digitised, technological age as his work predicts the prevalence of social media, ubiquitous surveillance and the turn to big data. Anders' ouevre also explored the technologies of nuclear power and the biotech concerns for the human and transhuman condition which have become so central to current theory. Babette Babich argues that Anders offers important resources on streaming digital media through his writings on radio, television and film and is, unusually, both a comprehensive and profound thinker. Anders' relationship with key philosophers like Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin and his thinking on Goethe, Nietzsche and Rilke is also explored with a focus on the deep impact he made on his peers. It reflects specifically on the intersection of Anders' thought Heidegger and the Frankfurt school and how influential a figure he was on the landscape of 20th century philosophy. A compelling rehabilitation of a thinker with profound contemporary relevance.
