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Marx and Contemporary Critical Theory
This edited volume brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the traces of the idea of “Real Abstraction” in Marx’s thought from the early to late writings, as well as the theoretical and practical consequences of this notion in the capitalist social system. Divided into two main parts, Part One reconstructs Marx’s notion of “Real Abstraction” and the influences of earlier thinkers (Berkley, Petty, Franklin, Feuerbach, Hegel) on his thoughts, as well as the further elaborations of this concept in later Marxist thinkers (Sohn-Rethel, Lukács, Lefebvre, Adorno and Postone). Part Two then considers the reverberations of the notion in the field of critical theory from a more abstract critique of capitalist social relations, to a more concrete understanding of historical movements. Taken together, the chapters in this volume offer a focused look at the concept of “Real Abstraction” in Marx.
The Future of Scientific Practice
Focusing on cell dynamics, molecular medicine and robotics, contributors explore the interplay between biological, technological and theoretical ways of thinking. The collection makes a strong contribution to current debates in the philosophy of science and the changing role of scientific practice.
Interdisciplinary Works in Logic, Epistemology, Psychology and Linguistics
This book presents comparisons of recent accounts in the formalization of natural language (dynamic logics and formal semantics) with informal conceptions of interaction (dialogue, natural logic and attribution of rationality) that have been developed in both psychology and epistemology. There are four parts which explore: historical and systematic studies; the formalization of context in epistemology; the formalization of reasoning in interactive contexts in psychology; the formalization of pathological conversations. Part one discusses the Erlangen School, which proposed a logical analysis of science as well as an operational reconstruction of psychological concepts. These first chapters p...
The Ethics of Conceptualization
Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? The Ethics of Conceptualization develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally...
Living in a Nuclear World
The Fukushima disaster invites us to look back and probe how nuclear technology has shaped the world we live in, and how we have come to live with it. Since the first nuclear detonation (Trinity test) and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all in 1945, nuclear technology has profoundly affected world history and geopolitics, as well as our daily life and natural world. It has always been an instrument for national security, a marker of national sovereignty, a site of technological innovation and a promise of energy abundance. It has also introduced permanent pollution and the age of the Anthropocene. This volume presents a new perspective on nuclear history and politics by focusing on f...
Reasoning in Measurement
This collection offers a new understanding of the epistemology of measurement. The interdisciplinary volume explores how measurements are produced, for example, in astronomy and seismology, in studies of human sexuality and ecology, in brain imaging and intelligence testing. It considers photography as a measurement technology and Henry David Thoreau's poetic measures as closing the gap between mind and world. By focusing on measurements as the hard-won results of conceptual as well as technical operations, the authors of the book no longer presuppose that measurement is always and exclusively a means of representing some feature of a target object or entity. Measurement also provides knowledge about the degree to which things have been standardized or harmonized – it is an indicator of how closely human practices are attuned to each other and the world.
A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion
This book explores a variety of interconnected themes central to contemporary Marxist theory and its further development as a critical social theory. Championing the critique of political economy as a critical theory of society and rejecting Marxian economics as a contradiction in terms, it argues instead that economic categories are perverted social categories, before identifying the sheer unrest of life - the struggle to make ends meet - as the negative content of the reified system of economic objectivity. With class struggle recognised as the negative category of the cold society of capitalist wealth, which sees in humanity a living resource for economic progress, the author contends that the critique of class society finds its rational solution in the society of human purposes, that is, the classless society of communist individuals. A theoretically sophisticated engagement with Marxist thought, A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in critical theory and post-capitalist imaginaries.
A History of Technoscience
Are science and technology independent of one another? Is technology dependent upon science, and if so, how is it dependent? Is science dependent upon technology, and if so how is it dependent? Or, are science and technology becoming so interdependent that the line dividing them has become totally erased? This book charts the history of technoscience from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century and shows how the military–industrial–academic complex and big science combined to create new examples of technoscience in such areas as the nuclear arms race, the space race, the digital age, and the new worlds of nanotechnology and biotechnology.
Overcoming Exploitation and Externalisation
Advancing an intersectional theory of hegemony, this book shows how various power relations interact through capitalist structures of othering. Going beyond the usual critiques of capitalism, it analyses the market itself as a principal cause of various forms of externalisation and domination. The book therefore calls for a dismantling of the market and its competitive economic structures through a transformation of the economy from below, greater democratisation (not least for the empowerment of suppressed identities), and the creation of commons as spaces based on inclusion rather than exclusion. In doing so, Overcoming Exploitation and Externalisation argues that co-operative possibilities can emerge for the transformation of ourselves and our society. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of social and political theory with interests in the commons and alternatives to capitalism.
