The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism

The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism PDF Author: Todd May
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271039744
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description

The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism

The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism PDF Author: Todd May
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271039744
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description


Constructing Foucault's ethics

Constructing Foucault's ethics PDF Author: Mark Olssen
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526156598
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
In popularizing the term ‘speaking truth to power’, now widely used throughout the world, Michel Foucault established the basis upon which a new ethics can be constructed. This is the thesis that Mark Olssen advances in Constructing Foucault’s ethics. Olssen not only ‘speaks truth’ to existing moral and ethical theories that have dominated western philosophy since Plato, but also shows how, by using Foucault’s insights, an alternative ethical and moral theory can be established that both avoids the pitfalls of postmodern relativism and simultaneously grounds ethical, moral, and political discourse for the present age. Taking the late ‘ethical turn’ in the philosopher’s thought as its starting point, this ambitious study seeks to construct an ethics beyond anything Foucault ever attempted while remaining consistent with his core postulates. In doing so it advances the concept of ‘life continuance’, which expresses a normative orientation to the future in terms of the quest for survival and well-being, giving rise to irreducible normative values as part of the discursive order of events. This approach is explored in contrast with a range of other, established systems, from the Kantian to the Marxist to contract ethics and utilitarianism.

The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism

The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism PDF Author: Todd May
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271039078
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
The political writings of the French poststructuralists have eluded articulation in the broader framework of general political philosophy primarily because of the pervasive tendency to define politics along a single parameter: the balance between state power and individual rights in liberalism and the focus on economic justice as a goal in Marxism. What poststructuralists like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard offer instead is a political philosophy that can be called tactical: it emphasizes that power emerges from many different sources and operates along many different registers. This approach has roots in traditional anarchist thought, which sees the social and political field as a network of intertwined practices with overlapping political effects. The poststructuralist approach, however, eschews two questionable assumptions of anarchism, that human beings have an (essentially benign) essence and that power is always repressive, never productive. After positioning poststructuralist political thought against the background of Marxism and the traditional anarchism of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Proudhon, Todd May shows what a tactical political philosophy like anarchism looks like shorn of its humanist commitments—namely, a poststructuralist anarchism. The book concludes with a defense, contra Habermas and Critical Theory, of poststructuralist political thought as having a metaethical structure allowing for positive ethical commitments.

Ethics and Politics after Poststructuralism

Ethics and Politics after Poststructuralism PDF Author: Madeleine Fagan
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748685146
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
What would political thought look like without the foundation of ethics? Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Madeleine Fagan puts forward a radical and far-reaching refusal of foundational ethics. Instead, she proposes an account of the inseparability of ethics and politics. The 'ethical' should not be understood as a label; it does not mean 'good' or 'right', it is not an evaluation or guide. Rather, both the ethical and the political are descriptions of the context in which we find ourselves. The book highlights the necessity of a practice-based rethinking of the relationship between ethics and politics and so denaturalises a series of commonplaces about poststructuralist ethics.

Ethics and Representation

Ethics and Representation PDF Author: Claire Colebrook
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Ethics and Representationprovides a critique and overview of contemporary post-structuralist theory. Exploring the Kantian and phenomenological background of Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, and Irigaray, this book raises some key questions and issues in critical theory. These questions are looked at from a number of angles including the notion of point of view and perspective, the critique of anthropologism from Kant to Deleuze, and the relation between representation and modernity. This is an original contribution to ethical and critical theory which situates poststructuralism in its philosophical background, and in the sustained problematic of the enlightenment.

Critical Resistance

Critical Resistance PDF Author: David Couzens Hoy
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262582635
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
This book serves as both an introduction to the concept of resistance in poststructuralist thought and an original contribution to the continuing philosophical discussion of this topic. How can a body of thought that mistrusts universal principles explain the possibility of critical resistance? Without appeals to abstract norms, how can emancipatory resistance be distinguished from domination? Can there be a poststructuralist ethics? David Hoy explores these crucial questions through lucid readings of Nietzsche, Foucault, Bourdieu, Derrida, and others. He traces the genealogy of resistance from Nietzsche's break with the Cartesian concept of consciousness to Foucault's and Bourdieu's theories of how subjects are formed through embodied social practices. He also considers Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida on the sources of ethical resistance. Finally, in light of current social theory from Judith Butler to Slavoj Zizek, he challenges "poststructuralism" as a category and suggests the term "post-critique" as a more accurate description of contemporary Continental philosophy. Hoy is a leading American scholar of poststructuralism. Critical Resistance is the only book in English that deals substantively with the topical concept of resistance in relation to poststructuralist thought, discussions of which have dominated Continental social thought for many years.

Unbecoming Subjects

Unbecoming Subjects PDF Author: Annika Thiem
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823248582
Category : Crimes against humanity
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Using the horrors of the war in Bosnia to develop meaningfully adequate accounts of evil within the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity, this book states that since the foundations of the social are found in human action, evil's assault on these foundations results in the demise of the social.

Poststructuralism and the Politics of Method

Poststructuralism and the Politics of Method PDF Author: Andrew M. Koch
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739114094
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Since the time of Plato, political philosophy has attempted to create a secure basis upon which to build the prescriptive claims for political action. However, if knowledge is a human construction, not the discovery of some essential reality, is it possible to support collective acts by reference to such foundational claims? If not, we must rethink our understanding society, politics, and the exercise of power. Beginning with the premise that our knowledge of political and social life is historical and contingent, Andrew Koch seeks to re-conceptualize our understanding of politics and power. Koch moves the discussions of power and politics away from search for foundational truths. Viewing politics and power through an epistemological lens, he explores what our understanding of politics and power looks like in the wake of deconstruction and genealogy. Koch begins with a general overview of the poststructuralist epistemology. From there the work contrasts this position with the interpretive sociology of Max Weber, uses deconstruction to politicize the work of Niklas Luhmann, and explores the implications of deconstruction for democracy, Marxist theory, institutional power, and anarchist politics.

Ricoeur and the Post-Structuralists

Ricoeur and the Post-Structuralists PDF Author: Johann Michel
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1783480963
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
In this important and original book, Johann Michel paves the way for a greater understanding of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy by exploring it in relation to some major figures of contemporary French thought—Bourdieu, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault and Castoriadis. Although the fertile dialogue between Ricoeur and various structuralist thinkers is well documented, his position in relation to the post-structuralist movement is less-widely understood. Does Ricoeur's philosophy stand in opposition to post-structuralism in France or, on the contrary, is it in fact a unique variation of that movement? This book defends the latter statement. Michel speaks of post-structuralisms in the plural form and engages them in a dynamic confrontation between Ricoeur and his contemporaries in the French intellectual scene. The result is a better understanding of Ricoeur's thought and also of the distinctive issues that emerge through confrontation between Ricoeur and each of these post-structuralist thinkers.

Unbecoming Subjects

Unbecoming Subjects PDF Author: Annika Thiem
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823293476
Category : PHILOSOPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Moral philosophy and poststructuralism have long been considered two antithetical enterprises. Moral philosophy is invested in securing norms, whereas poststructuralism attempts to unclench the grip of norms on our lives. Moreover, poststructuralism is often suspected of undoing the possibility of ethical knowledge by emphasizing the unstable, socially constructed nature of our practices and knowledge. In Unbecoming Subjects, Annika Thiem argues that Judith Butler's work makes possible a productive encounter between moral philosophy and poststructuralism, rethinking responsibility and critique as key concepts at the juncture of ethics and politics. Putting into conversation Butler's earlier and most recent work, Unbecoming Subjects begins by examining how Butler's critique of the subject as nontransparent to itself, formed thoroughly through relations of power and in subjection to norms and social practices, poses a challenge to ethics and ethical agency. The book argues, in conversation with Butler, Levinas, and Laplanche, that responsibility becomes possible only when we do not know what to do or how to respond, yet find ourselves under a demand to respond, and even more, to respond well to others. Drawing on the work of Butler, Adorno, and Foucault, Unbecoming Subjects examines critique as a central practice for moral philosophy. It interrogates the limits of moral and political knowledge and probes methods of social criticism to uncover and oppose injustices.