While much attention has been paid to the various strains of modernity’s development from its emphasis on instrumental rationality to its construction of the advent-guard, what I want to do here is examine the intersection of modernity, affectation, and acceleration. This essay contends nostalgia ameliorates identity disruption from social acceleration in late modernity. Existential threats evoke nostalgia, reconstituting familiar “homeworlds” and enabling experiential normalcy. Subjects recoup weak role-identification and unstable archetypes – byproducts of pluralisation, entrepreneurialism, and insecuritization – through nostalgia. (...) As compensatory, nostalgia proffers refuge; yet precipitating consumption, it incarnates cultural dialectics. This essay argues that the prevalence of nostalgia in late modern societies is the result of social acceleration, but the nostalgia born of this acceleration is also a spiritual palliative for its destabilising effects. (shrink)

The growth of the so-called “bad” civil society or “uncivil” society has turned into an increasingly problematic phenomenon in contemporary democracies, with implications both in practice and in theory that have gone so far as to jeopardize the very concept of civil society. This article is framed within a solid theory of democracy – the Habermasian theory – and draws, in particular, on one of the most widely accepted conceptualisations of civil society – that of Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato (...) – towards identifying a way to distinguish uncivil society from civil society. To that end, this article proposes a criterion and two types of politics for classifying social movements based on the extent to which their actions contribute to either damage or strengthen the public sphere as such. This conceptual work pursues a double objective. On the one hand, it seeks to respond to the issue of how to deal with uncivil society, whether we should engage and debate with it, ignore it, or condemn it. And, on the other, it aims to identify how civil society could – in theory and in practice – continue to yield valuable elements for contemporary democracies. (shrink)

This article compares affinities in Walter Benjamin and Rosi Braidotti’s historiographical methodologies, focusing on a monadic/nomadic perception of history. For Benjamin and Braidotti questions on how we remember, write and represent history are critical. Benjamin develops a non-linear representation of history in relation to the microscopic perception of Leibniz monad. Braidotti, in turn, develops a critical nomadic theory in relation to Deleuze’s re-reading of Leibniz’s monad. Can a link be established between these two adaptations of the concept of the monad? (...) Can Benjamin’s historico-philosophical thinking be actualized in relation to the contemporary critical theory, such as post-humanism, queer and feminist theory? (shrink)

This paper argues for a reading of Michel Foucault’s works that draws on an expansive concept of normativity and places Foucault’s project in a broader framework. It is argued that the distinction between the normative and the non-normative fails to grasp what is most significant in Foucault’s work. This distinction should be replaced by a broader understanding of normativity permeating all social practices. However, in order to retain the sound intuition of two distinct moments within critical thought, this broader understanding (...) must be complemented with a view of the entwined perspectives of participant and observer, both thoroughly permeated by normativity. However, there is a tension between these perspectives which both Foucault and critics such as Jürgen Habermas recognise as intensified in modernity. This intensification is manifest as instability, an ever-present possibility of shifting between perspectives that seems to demand resolution. Taking the fundamental norm motivating Foucault’s work as “the undefined work of freedom” the paper considers how this norm guides Foucault’s work by affirming this play of perspectives or “revolving door of rationality” in a way that marks a fundamental difference from his critics. (shrink)

The concept of utopia was abandoned over the years, mainly following the tragic events of the twentieth century which led to the rejection of the grand narratives that characterized modernity. But the challenges of our time invite a rethinking of the concept. The purpose of this article is to offer a non-nostalgic understanding of the concept of utopia through an analysis of Ernst Bloch’s paradoxical concept of “concrete utopia”. My intention is, first, to trace back the genealogy of the concept (...) of the concrete to offer a non-trivial understanding, of it; and, second, to emphasize the importance of the concrete in the creation of the new. I argue that this understanding, coupled with a nuanced way of thinking about the relationship between the present and the future, allows us to reject the simple metaphysical dichotomy between the two. This does not mean sacrificing the present for the sake of the future or vice versa but perceiving the present as containing future possibilities within it. In this way, we can think of utopia as neither a hypothetical ideal (no-where) nor an empirical fact (now-here), but as the no-where of the now-here. That is, as a process of becoming. (shrink)

Much has been written about the disagreement and even radical opposition between Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s conceptualizations and those of Jacques Lacan: for example, about desire, psychotherapy, the subject and the radically opposed political consequences that result from their approaches. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate from a Lacanian perspective that in the case of a central concept such as the body, there are rather more similarities than differences. Its main thesis is that Deleuze’s and Guattari’s body (...) without organs is very close to Lacan’s notion of the Other jouissance and that with slightly different strategies they both provide arguments to fight the same enemy: that is, the control and repression of singularity under capitalism. (shrink)

Michèle Lamont’s Seeing Others: How to Define Worth in a Divided World (2023) is a work of normative sociology which analyses prevailing patterns of recognition in contemporary US society, proposes...

Conceptual Harmonies is the best kind of history of philosophy. In it, Paul Redding uncovers a neglected tradition of Greek mathematics and shows its importance for Hegel’s theory of logical catego...

This article presents a critical examination of Igor Soikhedbrod’s Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality, and Rights. We argue that the book presents an important criticism of antinomian forms of critical theory, which underplay the extent to which Marx engaged in an imminent critique of liberal societies, including the rule of law, and upheld that progressive advances enshrined in this rule should be carried over or sublated in a communist dispensation.

In the recent progressive reappraisals of the enlightenment by Jonathan Israel and Rainer Forst, Voltaire figures as almost a reactionary thinker, opposing the radical dimensions of the enlightenment pushing forwards secularisation, democratisation, and toleration. Part 1 examines Israel’s and Forst’s accounts of Voltaire, showing their striking proximity. Part 2 is divided into the three subheadings of (i) Voltaire’s deism, (ii) the pivotal subject of toleration, and (iii) the decisive question of what philosophical radicalism, in the direction of democratising reform, involves. (...) At issue in Israel’s and Forst’s claims that Voltaire’s deism represents a step backwards from Bayle’s and Spinoza’s more radical conceptions of reason and toleration, we will claim, is a shared, anachronistic failure to duly credit Voltaire’s deism’s distance from the revealed religions, and the radicalism of Voltaire’s anti-clericism. In the key claim of the paper, however, we will argue that the larger issue in Israel’s and Forst’s positioning of Voltaire as almost reactionary are a deeper set of assumptions about how we should assess philosophical texts which aim to act in the world, and (evoking Feuerbach) to change it (2, iii). Both Israel and Forst, despite the former’s extensive labours in contextualisation, read the texts of eighteenth century philosophers for their arguments alone, rather than as rhetorical and political acts and interventions which aimed to reach, entertain, and reform an expanding reading public through esprit, art, satire, and rhetoric, as well as by making argumentative contributions to the controversies of the day. (shrink)

Technology has been at the centre of existentialist (e.g. Heidegger) and sociological (e.g. Marcuse) critique for a long time. The latest versions of criticism rely on the results of “science and technology studies”: they argue that essentialist conceptualisations of technology should be replaced while aiming at “democratizing technology” (e.g. Feenberg). However, even these approaches are characterised by a shortcoming when it comes to providing a normative basis: as contemporary technology intermeshes with the elementary levels of existence (such as perception or (...) cognition), it remains in the blind spot of those users, who could “democratize” it through their critique. Accordingly, the formal normative bases (e.g. the one provided by Feenberg, who relies on Habermas’ democracy principle), need to be complemented with substantive claims. For this purpose, a phenomenological-existentialist framework is elaborated with the help of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. It is argued that due to the ongoing expansion of social systems relying on various forms of technology (Luhmann), the “mediated flesh” becomes rigid. By losing the plasticity of the chiasm, subjects are exposed to existential crises unmanageable by mere technology (e.g. mental disorders). Such experience of technologically induced social suffering could serve as a normative basis for criticising the over-expansion of technology. (shrink)

Rahel Jaeggi argues that forms of life ought to be the main reference point for a critical theory of society because the internal normative structure of life forms allows for immanent critique. In this article, I extend her model by systematically considering the possibility of oppressive forms of life. Oppressive forms of life are clusters of practices in which subordinated groups are systematically excluded or disabled from participating in the social processes of interpretation through which the values and purposes of (...) those very practices are determined. The possibility of oppressive forms of life poses a challenge to the method of immanent critique because it seems that any such critique must rely on immanent norms that are at least partly constituted by interpretations and that can therefore be distorted by oppression. I argue that Jaeggi’s model of immanent critique can be extended to respond to that challenge, either by recovering a constitutive form of freedom within all forms of life or by consciously adopting a partisan stance in favour of oppressed and marginalised self-understandings. (shrink)

Faced with the absurdity of continued climate inaction, more people are becoming morally outraged about the projections of human suffering and loss due to global warming impacts. This article draws from the work of Albert Camus to examine human responses to absurdity through rebellion and how this can be applied to understand the notion of climate rebellion. Focusing on Camus’ works The Rebel and The Plague, as well as his speech “The Human Crisis”, I examine the conditions of climate injustice (...) that present the grounds for climate rebellion, what becoming a climate rebel might mean, the importance of solidarity in climate rebellion, and lastly how Camus’ value of limitation might inform ethical responses to minimize climate-related harm. (shrink)

The present article revolves around the notion of universality and its relation to freedom and temporal orientation in contemporary political thought, with a focus on Susan Buck-Morss' notion of universality. The purpose is twofold. Firstly, I discern and critique the historico-political premises of her approach. Secondly, I suggest an alternative historico-political approach to universality addressing the drawbacks of her approach. I present three objections to her approach. Drawing on Arendt's distinction between liberation and the practice of freedom, I first present (...) a critique of the conceptualisation of freedom on which Buck-Morss' approach hinges, arguing that she overemphasises the moment of liberation. Thereafter, I turn to her reflections on historical orientation. My third objection concentrates on Buck-Morss' concept of universality. As a heuristic tool to expound on my critique, I activate the distinction between fictive and ideal universality as suggested by Étienne Balibar. I contend that Arendt's distinction between liberation and the practice of freedom efficiently elucidates the questions at stake in Balibar's discussion, as well as how his distinction points to the limits of Buck-Morss' argumentation. Ultimately, I contend that these critical remarks open up for a more dialectical approach to universality as a historical-political problem. (shrink)

This article argues that, to distinguish between “critical” and “uncritical” solidarity, the normative concept of solidarity must be grounded on the principle of respect for persons. I start analyzing the principle of respect for persons from a modified Kantian perspective, arguing that it must be interpreted as a normative relation of power in which each person must recognize the autonomy of the other as a source of power. In this perspective, the principle of respect offers a foundation for an ethical (...) assessment of situations in which ethical solidarity is required. By drawing on the distinction between passive and active respect, I argue that solidarity is grounded on the duty of active respect in the face of danger or oppression and that this foundation allows us to distinguish between critical (i.e. appropriate) and uncritical (i.e. inappropriate) solidarity. (shrink)

Solidarity is often invoked in our times. The challenges posed by a complex juncture in human history seem to impose a rethinking of the concept and of the social practices that respond to the need...

The first National Health Service (NHS) was introduced in the United Kingdom providing free universal health care (UHC) at the point of use. Within decades, increasing European countries adopted the same intervention to improve the health of citizens on the entire life span. Today, several reasons put at risk (1) empirically, the sustainability and fairness of these systems, (2) theoretically, the same consistency of solidarity, as vulnerable patients struggle most to receive essential care. Preserving solidarity from the pressure of modern (...) medicine and society needs to identify a fair and sustainable type of coverage at the same time. This paper aims (1) to describe the short circuit of solidarity in European NHSs; (2) to discuss alternative versions of UHC and support redistributive neo-universalism; (3) to promote the role of medical humanities in implementing this solution. (shrink)

The global age has confronted human beings with new and numerous challenges, from global poverty, to labour exploitation, to climate change. Many individuals, aware of such challenges, wish to act in solidarity, and give their contribution to countering them. Acting in solidarity in such contexts can be challenging, however, as which actions are most effective for reaching the desired goal is not obvious. Furthermore, an action that is intended in solidarity at times not only fails to promote the desired objective (...) but proves detrimental to it. In this article, I wish to propose a reflection on a prior duty of solidarity action: the epistemic duty to acquire information about the correct way to promote a cause. By analyzing the anti-sweatshop movement and climate action, I will show how acting in solidarity has significant epistemic requirements that should be considered as part of the solidarity action itself. (shrink)

In this article, I intend to propose an ethical model for digital solidarity. On the one hand, it emphasises the importance of adopting a solidarity model to escape the logic of surveillance capitalism and the race for profits typical of the digital giants’ business model. On the other, it is intended to point out that a model of solidarity embodied in the digital network may instead offer a more universalistic alternative to the types of solidarity that have often imposed themselves (...) in our contemporary political landscape, namely solidarity limited to groups in opposition to others. In order to show what economic and political characteristics this model should respect, two case studies will be examined, namely Wikipedia and Occupy Wall Street. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In times of crisis, interpersonal and group solidarity often emerge as people face critical challenges that threaten their survival. However, it remains unclear whether spontaneous solidarity practices are enough to effectively face such crisis situations. In this paper, we argue that to be fully effective, solidarity must be deployed through all its political tiers, from interpersonal and group relationships to institutional and legal normativity. We contend that solidarity relations can only reach an enduring goal if they solidify into stable (...) principles that can be acknowledged and enacted at the institutional level. Through an examination of recent literature and concrete case studies, the paper investigates the linkages and mutual dependencies between the various levels of solidarity developed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis may allow us to answer the question of whether a “Multilevel European Solidarity” is a realistic goal, and what is required to achieve it. (shrink)

In this article, I define solidarity as the willingness to share with people we do not know personally but whom we consider to be equal to ourselves on the basis of some common feature allowing for identification. In the spirit of David Hume, I explain how identification can be developed through a learning process that leads us to ever more encompassing forms of sympathy. Then I show how solidarity, thus defined, is implemented in the institutions of the welfare state. Finally, (...) I present arguments for not making solidarity too much dependent on responsible behaviour. (shrink)

The global resurgence of right-wing radicalization presents significant theoretical and political challenges for critical thought. Contemporary neoliberal authoritarianism integrates diverse and often contradictory ideological elements, creating a complex and enigmatic constellation. This article examines the mechanisms of social aggregation underpinning neoliberal subjectivity today. Drawing on empirical findings from my study of the social appropriation of the concepts of “Law” and “Market” in contemporary Argentine society, I argue that authoritarian neoliberalism gains mass appeal by offering individuals symbolic frameworks of belonging. Central (...) to this process is the construction of a collective “We,” framed through an appeal to equality that paradoxically serves as a vehicle for punitive desires directed toward a phantasmic otherness. The case of these new modes of social aggregation highlights how the egalitarian principle retains legitimacy among social actors, albeit in a distorted form when tied to exclusionary political demands. (shrink)