Non-Marxian Historical Materialism: Reconstructions and Comparisons

Non-Marxian Historical Materialism: Reconstructions and Comparisons
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2022-04-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004507299

The authors of this book reconstruct the philosophical, methodological and theoretical assumptions of non-Marxian historical materialism, a theory of historical process authored by Leszek Nowak (1943-2009), a co-founder of the Poznań School of Methodology. This book compares this theory with the concepts of Robert Michels, Vilfredo Pareto and Karl August Wittfogel.

Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism

Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism
Author: Cat Moir
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2019-12-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004272879

In Ernst Bloch’s Speculative Materialism: Ontology, Epistemology, Politics, Cat Moir offers a new interpretation of the philosophy of Ernst Bloch. The reception of Bloch’s work has seen him variously painted as a naïve realist, a romantic nature philosopher, a totalitarian thinker, and an irrationalist whose obscure literary style stands in for a lack of systematic rigour. Moir challenges these conceptions of Bloch by reconstructing the ontological, epistemological, and political dimensions of his speculative materialism. Through a close, historically contextualised reading of Bloch’s major work of ontology, Das Materialismusproblem, seine Geschichte und Substanz (The Materialism Problem, its History and Substance), Moir presents Bloch as one of the twentieth century’s most significant critical thinkers.

Reconstructing Marxism

Reconstructing Marxism
Author: Erik Olin Wright
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 226
Release: 1992
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780860913429

Reconstructing Marxism explores fundamental questions about the structure of Marxist theory and its prospects for the future. The authors maintain that the disintegration of the old theoretical unity of classical Marxism is in part responsible for what is commonly called the "crisis of Marxism." Only a reconstructed Marxism can come to terms with this disintegration. Addressing a range of problems in historical materialism and class analysis, the authors compare historical materialism with Darwinian evolutionary theory, and identify what is distinctively "historical" in Marx's theory of history. Through an evaluation of G.A. Cohen's defense and Anthony Giddens's critique of historical materialism they suggest what a plausible, yet still Marxist. theory of history might be. They analyze the relationship of microanalysis to macro theory and the assignment of causal primacy in explanations, and present a general assessment of the current state of Marxist theory and the prospects for its analytical reconstruction. Distinguished by the clarity of its presentation, the analytical rigour of its argument and its concern with fundamental philosophical and sociological issues, Reconstructing Marxism advances, at this critical juncture in the history of Marxism, a challenging new research programme.

Formal and Informal Methods in Philosophy

Formal and Informal Methods in Philosophy
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004420509

This book examines the tension between formal and informal methods in philosophy. The rise of analytic philosophy was accompanied by the development of formal logic and many successful applications of formal methods. But analytical philosophy does not rely on formal methods alone. Elements of broadly understood informal logic and logical semiotics, procedures used in natural sciences and humanities, and various kinds of intuition also belong to the philosopher’s toolkit. Papers gathered in the book concern the opposition formality–informality as well as other pairs, such as methodology versus metaphilosophy, interdisciplinarity versus intradisciplinarity, and methodological uniformity versus diversity of sciences. Problems of the nature of logic and the explanatory role of mathematical theories are also discussed.

Theory as History

Theory as History
Author: Jairus Banaji
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2010-03-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004183728

Winner of the 2011 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize. The essays collected here straddle four decades of work in both historiography and Marxist theory, combining source-based historical work in a wide range of languages with sophisticated discussion of Marx's categories. Key themes include the distinctions that are crucial to restoring complexity to the Marxist notion of a 'mode of production'; the emergence of medieval relations of production; the origins of capitalism; the dichotomy between free and unfree labour; and essays in agrarian history that range widely from Byzantine Egypt to 19th-century colonialism. The essays demonstrate the importance of reintegrating theory with history and of bringing history back into historical materialism. An introductory chapter ties the collection together and shows how historical materialists can develop an alternative to Marx's 'Asiatic mode of production'.

Understanding Marxism

Understanding Marxism
Author: Geoff Boucher
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2014-09-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317547462

Marxism as an intellectual movement has been one of the most important and fertile contributions to twentieth-century thought. No social theory or political philosophy today can be taken seriously unless it enters a dialogue, not just with the legacy of Marx, but also with the innovations and questions that spring from the movement that his work sparked, Marxism. Marx provided a revolutionary set of ideas about freedom, politics and society. As social and political conditions changed and new intellectual challenges to Marx's social philosophy arose, the Marxist theorists sought to update his social theory, rectify the sociological positions of historical materialism and respond to philosophical challenges with a Marxist reply. This book provides an accessible introduction to Marxism by explaining each of the key concepts of Marxist politics and social theory. The book is organized into three parts, which explore the successive waves of change within Marxist theory and places these in historical context, while the whole provides a clear and comprehensive account of Marxism as an intellectual system.

New Developments in the Theory of the Historical Process

New Developments in the Theory of the Historical Process
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2022-04-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004507280

The first part of this volume contains a selection of Leszek Nowak’s (1943-2009) papers on non-Marxian historical materialism, which are published in English for the first time. Its second part includes papers on the democratization of real socialism and the oligarchization of liberal democracy.

The Politics of Change

The Politics of Change
Author: W. Bonefeld
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2000-09-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0333993799

This work takes a critical view of the debate on globalization and assesses revamped versions of structuralist thought, which underpin much of the globalization discourse. In contrast to conventional views of change, the book emphasizes change as a politics of emancipation.

Marx and Wittgenstein

Marx and Wittgenstein
Author: Gavin Kitching
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134538545

At first sight, Karl Marx and Ludwig Wittgenstein may well seem to be as different from each other as it is possible for the ideas of two major intellectuals to be. Despite this standard conception, however, a small number of scholars have long suggested that there are deeper philosophical commonalities between Marx and Wittgenstein. They have argued that, once grasped, these commonalities can radically change and enrich understanding both of Marxism and of Wittgensteinian philosophy. This book develops and extends this unorthodox view, emphasising the mutual enrichment that comes from bringing Marx's and Wittgenstein's ideas into dialogue with one another. Essential reading for all scholars and philosophers interested in the Marxist philosophy and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, this book will also be of vital interest to those studying and researching in the fields of social philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of social science and political economy.

The Habermas Handbook

The Habermas Handbook
Author: Hauke Brunkhorst
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 789
Release: 2017-10-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231535880

Jürgen Habermas is one of the most influential philosophers of our time. His diagnoses of contemporary society and concepts such as the public sphere, communicative rationality, and cosmopolitanism have influenced virtually all academic disciplines, spurred political debates, and shaped intellectual life in Germany and beyond for more than fifty years. In The Habermas Handbook, leading Habermas scholars elucidate his thought, providing essential insight into his key concepts, the breadth of his work, and his influence across politics, law, the social sciences, and public life. This volume offers a comprehensive overview and an in-depth analysis of Habermas’s work in its entirety. After examining his intellectual biography, it goes on to illuminate the social and intellectual context of Habermasian thought, such as the Frankfurt School, speech-act theory, and contending theories of democracy. The Handbook provides an extensive account of Habermas’s texts, ranging from his dissertation on Schelling to his most recent writing about Europe. It illustrates the development of his thought and its frequently controversial reception while elaborating the central ideas of his work. The book also provides a glossary of key terms and concepts, making the complexity of Habermas’s thought accessible to a broad readership.