This is a commentary on selected texts of Plato concerned with poetry: the Ion and relevant sections of the Republic. It is the first commentary to present these texts together in one volume, and the first in English on Republic 2 and 3 and Ion for nearly 100 years. The introduction sets Plato's views in their Greek context and outlines their influence on later aesthetic thought. An important feature of the commentary is its exploration of the ambivalence of Plato's pronouncements (...) through an analysis of his own skill as a writer. (shrink)

This book argues that Nietzsche bases his affirmative morality on the model of individual responsiveness to otherness which he takes from the mythology of Dionysus. The subject is not free to choose to avoid such responding to the demands of the other. Nietzsche finds that the basic mode of responding is pleasure. This feeling, as a basis for morality, underlies the morality which is true to the earth and the major concepts of "will to power", "eternal return", and "amor fati". (...) The priority of otherness makes all thought ethical and not only aesthetic. The basis of all meanings combines the fundamental impulse of responding outwards with an immediate complement in the individual interpretation-world. This is specifically ethical because the recognition of our own historical specificity arises as a result of the refusal of others to become mere differences within our notion of the Same, and through their demand that we "become who we are" in the recognition of their separate existence. (shrink)

To make abstractions hold good in actuality means to destroy actuality.

_Nietzsche and the Dionysian_ argues that the Dionysian affect in Nietzsche’s early work can be linked to an originary interruption of self-consciousness articulated by the philosophical companion, who compels us to respond to the plurality of life they express by being ‘true to the earth’ and ‘becoming who we are’. Such an ethics, compelled by the Dionysian affect, grounds any future for humanity in the affirmation of the earth and life.

The Mismeasure of Wealth: Essays on Marx and Social Formgathers Patrick Murray's essays reinterpreting Marx and Marxian theory published since his Marx's Theory of Scientific Knowledge(1988), along with a previously unpublished essay and an introduction.

Clinical Ethics, Ahead of Print. This paper is a response to a recent BMJ Blog: ‘The duty to treat: where do the limits lie?’ Members of the Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care Service Clinical Ethics Group reflected on arguments in the Blog in relation to resuscitation during the COVID-19 pandemic.Clinicians have had to contend with ever-changing and conflicting guidance from the Resuscitation Council UK and Public Health England regarding personal protective equipment requirements in resuscitation situations. St John Ambulance had different guidance (...) for first responders.The situation regarding resuscitation led the CEG to consider ethical aspects of health care professionals’ responses to the need for resuscitation during COVID-19. Members agreed that professionals should, ideally, have the level of PPE required for an aerosol generating procedure. However, there was no consensus regarding professionals’ duty to care when this is not available. On the one hand, it was agreed that the casualty/patient’s interests regarding resuscitation should be prioritised due to professionals’ contract with the public and professional privilege. On the other hand, risk thresholds were considered relevant to individual decision-making and professionals’ duty to care. All agreed that decision-making should not be influenced by rewards or reprimands. It was agreed also that decisions to resuscitate should not be considered as moral heroism or supererogatory - regardless of PPE availability - but rather as ‘minimally decent’. We agreed that it may be acceptable for professionals, with good reasons, to opt out of resuscitation attempts and these should be reflected on and discussed before the event. (shrink)

In the first part of this two-part article, I argued that, unlike the asocial classical labour theory of value, Marx's labour theory of value is a ‘truly social’ one. In fact, it is a purely social one. Marx's theory of value is nothing but his theory of the social forms distinctive of the capitalist mode of production. Thus, we may speak of those forms as value-forms, the commodity, money, capital, wage-labour, surplus-value and its forms of appearance, and more. The labour (...) that produces value, then, is labour of a peculiar social sort. This thought is entirely foreign to the classical labour theory of value, and, likewise, to Marxist accounts of value theory that mistake it for a radical version of Ricardian value theory. The gulf between the classical and the Marxian labour theories of value is wide. (shrink)

This article traces the development of major ideas about integration in Europe. It examines the historical development of, and competition between, ideas about the EU, exploring the clash of integration models and ideals. It draws on the visions of European unity that led to the creation and development of the EU. Regional integration in the EU is distinctive and not necessarily . The article examines governing norms, material interests, power, and security. It demonstrates that the narrative of shared experience and (...) history formed part of a need to both overcome hyper-nationalism and to share sovereignty, while also privileging some memories. EU norms are also enshrined in a distinctive institutionalized structure, based on a co-existence of national and EU interests and a balancing among often competing interests. (shrink)

The passages composed by Nietzsche around the time he spent at Sorrento reflect an engagement with the anarcho-utopian socialist milieu into which he had been introduced by Malwida von Meysenbug. The “Sorrentino politics” that appear in Human, All Too Human I and II and later works need to be understood in the context of an affirmative form of political thought that could remedy the pessimism and nihilism that he finds in the politics of all sides. Nietzsche argues that the monarchical (...) state, modern industrialism, and the restricted ownership of capital and property all undermine the goal of creating a life-affirming culture for Europe. He also provides a criticism of a utopian teleology of equality in the future – whether religious or socialist – that imposes an objective notion of purpose. Nietzsche rejects the Schopenhauerian pessimism of resignation while affirmatively engaging with the thought of Alexander Herzen and Guiseppe Mazzini. (shrink)

Marx launched a revolution in social thought that has been largely ignored. We locate this revolution in the context of two major reassessments of modern philosophy, Heidegger’s Being and Time and Donald Davidson’s new anti-subjectivism. We argue that the philosophical significance of Marx’s critique of the capitalist mode of production—his critique of the bourgeois horizon—has been overlooked. The paper exposes the bourgeois mindset that runs through political economy, “traditional” Marxism, and much of modern and postmodern philosophy. Bourgeois thinking is marked (...) by a series of “purist splits,” conceptual distinctions that are mishandled as actual separations: conceptual vs. empirical, conceptual scheme vs. thing in itself, individual vs. society, production vs. distribution, preference vs. the preferred object, and subjective vs. objective. Marx shows how capitalist social forms that produce the notion of “value added” inculcate the purist, bifurcating bourgeois horizon. (shrink)

In early 2020, as the first of many COVID lockdowns began across Australia, a collective of feminist and queer performance scholars and artists embarked on the research project Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism and Socially Engaged Art. Our aim was to document contributions of womxn theatre makers, while conducting a feminist analysis of strategies used to deal with gender inequality and oppression, on stage and off. While pivoting to the digital and the virtual, we recognised a need to support (...) womxn theatre makers whose lives and livelihoods are thrown into further precarity by the pandemic. This paper speaks to our commitment to bringing together critical theory, arts practices and everyday life in ethical forms and encounters that make visible, recognise and express care for one another and for the work. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Amid his plainly written presentations of Marxism, Christian (predominately Catholic) social teachings, liberation theology and the experience of Christians for socialism in Chile, and the various apparent points of the difference between Christianity and Marxism, Arthur McGovern quietly makes his case for the Christian, even Catholic, orthodoxy of social democracy. Only in the final chapter of the book does McGovern unveil his sympathies for the “economic democracy” of Michael Harrington, dashed with Gramsci's notion of socialist hegemony, Gandhi's stress on building (...) counter institutions during the transition to a new order, and Schumacher's small is beautiful ethos. But all along, McGovern is making straight the way for a democratic socialist answer to the question around which his book is organized: Are Marxism and Christianity compatible? (shrink)