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Reconsidering Utopia. On the Entanglement of Mind and History
If the world seemed to be in crisis when this paper was first presented in Autumn 2019,1 then it is safe to assume that we are in a worst place today. To the dual crises of the Anthropocene and the global financial crisis, we must add the spread of global viruses, a result of the extension of capitalism into previously pre-capitalist enclaves (Davis, M. ‘The Monster Enters’ in New Left Review, 122, March–April 2020.), and the recent IPCC report on global warming. Jameson’s famous dictum that it ‘is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’ (Fisher, M. Capitalist Realism: Is There Really no Alternative? Zero Books, 2009.: 2) feels even more relevant.
The purely philosophical concerns of Theodor W. Adorno's negative dialectic would seem to be far removed from the concreteness of critical theory; Adorno's philosophy considers perhaps the most traditional subject of "pure" philosophy, the structure of experience, whereas critical theory examines specific aspects of society. But, as Brian O'Connor demonstrates in this highly original interpretation of Adorno's philosophy, the negative dialectic can be seen as the theoretical foundation of the reflexivity or critical rationality required by critical theory. Adorno, O'Connor argues, is committed to the "concretion" of philosophy: his thesis of nonidentity attempts to show that reality is not reducible to appearances. This lays the foundation for the applied "concrete" critique of appearances that is essential to the possibility of critical theory. To explicate the context in which Adorno's philosophy operates—the tradition of modern German philosophy, from Kant to Heidegger—O'Connor examines in detail the ideas of these philosophers as well as Adorno's self-defining differences with them. O'Connor discusses Georg Lucà cs and the influence of his "protocritical theory" on Adorno's thought; the elements of Kant's and Hegel's German idealism appropriated by Adorno for his theory of subject-object mediation; the priority of the object and the agency of the subject in Adorno's epistemology; and Adorno's important critiques of Kant and the phenomenology of Heidegger and Husserl, critiques that both illuminate Adorno's key concepts and reveal his construction of critical theory through an engagement with the problems of philosophy.
The first line of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology is perhaps the most famous sentence—certainly one of the most infamous—in German political theory: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” [ Souverän ist, wer über den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet ]. And yet the full significance of this famous sentence is often underestimated. I intend to focus upon 1) its significance in the overall trajectory of Schmitt's Weimar work, and 2) its potential significance for contemporary constitutional theories of emergency powers.
Ich betrachte das System der bürgerlichen Ökonomie in dieser Reihenfolge: Kapital,Grundeigentum, Lohnarbeit; Staat, auswärtiger Handel, Weltmarkt. Unter den drei ersten Rubriken untersuche ich die ökonomischen Lebensbedingungen der drei großen Klassen, worin die moderne bürgerliche Gesellschaft zerfällt; der Zusammenhang der drei andern Rubriken springt in die Augen. Die erste Abteilung des ersten Buchs, das vom Kapital handelt, besteht aus folgenden Kapiteln: 1. die Ware; 2. das Geld oder die einfache Zirkulation; 3. das Kapital im allgemeinen. Die zwei ersten Kapitel bilden den Inhalt des vorliegenden Heftes. Das Gesamtmaterial liegt vor mir in Form von Monographien, die in weit auseinanderliegenden Perioden zu eigner Selbstverständigung, nicht fir den Druck niedergeschrieben wurden, und deren zusammenhängende Verarbeitung nach dem angegebenen Plan von äußern Umständen abhängen wird.
In the most comprehensive examination to date of Heidegger's Nazism, Emmanuel Faye draws on previously unavailable materials to paint a damning picture of Nazism's influence on the philosopher's thought and politics. In this provocative book, Faye uses excerpts from unpublished seminars to show that Heidegger's philosophical writings are fatally compromised by an adherence to National Socialist ideas. In other documents, Faye finds expressions of racism and exterminatory anti-Semitism. Faye disputes the view of Heidegger as a naïve, temporarily disoriented academician and instead shows him to have been a self-appointed spiritual guide for Nazism whose intentionality was clear. Contrary to what some have written, Heidegger's Nazism became even more radical after 1935, as Faye demonstrates. He revisits Heidegger's masterwork, Being and Time, and concludes that in it Heidegger does not present a philosophy of individual existence but rather a doctrine of radical self-sacrifice, where individualization is allowed only for the purpose of heroism in warfare. Faye's book was highly controversial when originally published in France in 2005. Now available in Michael B. Smith's fluid English translation, it is bound to awaken controversy in the English-speaking world.