Question 94 - Response to Misgeld.pdf

Paideusis, 2010

Constellations, 2011

In the fall of 1970, Arendt delivered thirteen lectures at the New School on the precepts of Kant's political philosophy. She presented him to the audience as someone who "had never written political philosophy." In 1982, Ronald Beiner assembled this lecture series and presented them as a possible foundation upon which to designate the third missing part in the great last epos she composed-The Life of the Mind. Arendt had finished writing the first two parts of this epos-"Thinking" and "Willing"-close to her death in 1975, and they were published posthumously, edited by Mary McCarthy. Arendt did not get to write the third part, "Judgment." Beiner's essay, presupposing that "without the account of judging, our picture of The Life of the Mind is in a decisive respect incomplete," 1 proposes an outline of what he calls Arendt's judgment theory. 2 According to him, "Among those who have closely and sympathetically followed the progress of Hannah Arendt's thought, it is a commonly held view that her theory of judging would have been the culmination of her life's work and that this final chapter of her philosophy would have provided an answer to many of the unresolved problems of preceding chapters." 3 Unlike Beiner, who assumes that Arendt's work culminates in the chapter which she did not get to write, and whose outline he sketches out of these lectures, I propose to read these lectures on Kant as a model for Arendt's political thinking and the way in which she intervened in the history of political philosophy. Her reading of Kant, as of many other thinkers, is a part of Arendt's effort to produce within her thought-within such a political thought as hersa tradition within the history of philosophy. Arendt was cautious not to present the new horizon opened by her political thinking as a new page that makes everything that preceded it obsolete. One by one she leafed through the pages of ages of political philosophy and dismissed most of what was commonly regarded as political philosophy while drawing from each of those thinkers some strand, some thread with which she could proceed to weave an alternative tradition out of the tradition of political philosophy. Heraclitus, Plato, Socrates, Spinoza, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel and others, all sought a solution, according to her, which would allow them to withdraw in their writings or in their lives from "being alive at all and having to live among men." 4 In her reading of their works, Arendt methodically pointed out the traces of the presupposition that "the true philosopher does not accept the conditions under which life has been given to man." 5 This is what she did with Kant in these lectures. Arendt dismissed all his texts commonly seen as his political philosophy, and claimed that "Kant, like so many after him, had substituted a philosophy of history for a political philosophy." 6 On the other hand, the faculty of judgment-the judgment dealing with particulars-a central concept in The Critique of Judgment, was turned by Arendt into a key-element in Kant's political philosophy. In this concept, Arendt claims, Kant goes beyond the understanding of the self "in its independence of others" 7 and the appearance of interest in "human plurality" and in the world as manifested in questions such as "how to found a commonwealth" or how to force man "to be a good citizen even if [he is] not a morally good person." 8

Contemporary Political Theory, 2015

History shows there is no desirable alternative to liberalism. Dissenters from the status quo need to be constructive. Unless they can specify what they would put in place of existing social arrangements, they cannot expect to be taken seriously. In any case, liberalism can accommodate even its critics. While we can argue about the extent to which any set of political institutions can be genuinely neutral between different moral perspectives, we can agree that liberal ones have legitimacy precisely because they do not impose (or not too much) any particular vision of 'the good life' on individuals. Rather, the liberal state provides a framework within which free and equal citizens can disagreeso long as they are reasonable about it. In the real world, of course, liberal democracies have often, perhaps always, fallen short of liberal ideals, by excluding (either formally or de facto) certain groups from political participation, allowing economic power to undermine democratic processes, or engaging in drone warfare against civilians, for example. Yet that does not undermine the ideals themselves. To implicate liberal political philosophers in these real-world failures is uncharitable. Such adages define the accepted parameters of debate within contemporary political philosophy. Yet, according to Finlayson, they deserve closer examination. Why, for instance, is Marx so easily dismissed as 'refuted by history', while pointing to the more bloody moments of Actually Existing Liberalism does not count as an argument against J. S. Mill? In this incendiary new study, Finlayson focuses critical attention on the methodological assumptions that suffuse the air of philosophy departments: that criticism of the dominant (liberal) view must always be 'constructive' and 'charitable', and that (love him or hate him) all must pay tribute to the great contribution of John Rawls. In each case, she argues, 'What is presented

Adorno is often portrayed as a philosopher unengaged with political problems, who at best was sympathetic but failed to engage with the vital political struggles of his time. Though immediately concerned with the horrors of World War II and totalitarianism, Adorno's political philosophy demonstrates a deeper concern with the metaphysical underpinning of such atrocities than standard liberal critiques of fascism. In order to begin to understand his philosophical perspective, we must first understand Adorno's critical engagement with Hegel. In doing so, we can understand his critique of Hegel, epitomised within Negative Dialectics but developed much earlier within his career, as part of a wholesale reformulation of the standard theory-action dynamic which the Left has established for itself. Adorno's critique allows us to better understand philosophy's historical role and the prism within which contemporary actors are situated, particularly with the radical political developments of the 2010s.

This essay considers the role of "critical theory" in the university and the shape of future research in this intellectual tradition. I draw from Max Horkheimer's early elaborations on a "social philosophy" to identify the theoretical terrain on which the "Frankfurt School" was founded and the principles upon which it might be renewed today. I also treat Adorno's melancholy science and Marcuse's philosophy of liberation in light of Horkheimer's original research program and statement. The larger argument is on behalf of a critical theory that attends to human needs, passions, and desires, not as timeless essences or inward feelings, but as social and historical forces.

Editorial Introduction Colin Wright Campus Watch: …

2009

Popular educational policy discourse promotes a limited relationship between policy and philosophy which is dominated by a liberal/rationalist conception of both. Such conceptions do not allow for alternative possibilities in envisioning and actualizing creative and more meaningful relationships between policy and philosophy. Moreover, the liberal/rationalist policy discourse has not been successful in challenging the neo-liberal agenda, especially in education. In fact, albeit unwittingly, the predominant policy discourse reproduces dangerous neoliberal myths such as, (a) the possibility and desirability of neutrality, (b) the view that the only meaningful notion of evidence is empirical evidence, and (c) the view that to achieve equity we need standardization enforced through technical accountability mechanisms. In other words, one could argue that the liberal/rationalist positioning in policy discourse has set the foundations for, if not the "natural" emergence or development, of neo-liberal stances and practices. In other words, political rationalism reduces public policy to clear-cut solutions to easily-identifiable problems while masking the role of democracy, the needs of citizens, and the power of the problem definition itself .

2014