The Lives of Marx: Hägglund and Marx’s Philosophy after Pippin and Postone

To make ‘philosophy worldly’ often requires an act of translation. In This Life, Martin Hägglund argues for the relevance of Marx to our contemporary lives. By way of a lively and sophisticated dialogue between philosophical interlocutors – including Hegel and Marx – Hägglund offers a compelling account of the relation between time, value and freedom. This Life translates current issues in academic philosophy into a popular register that does not reduce the complexity of the issues but shows what is at stake for our own lives. Hägglund provides a synthesis of Robert B. Pippin’s normative reading of Hegel and the value-form critical theory of Moishe Postone’s Marxism. Further, Hägglund’s vision of freedom outflanks the political limitations of Pippin’s Hegel and Postone’s Marx while retaining the power of their analyses. I assess his interpretation of Hegel and critically examine the concept of value operative in This Life, and frame this question in terms of value-form theory.

LAWS OF THINKING AS A SUBJECT OF RESEARCH IN THE HERITAGE OF PROFESSORS OF THEOLOGICAL-ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE XIX – EARLY XX CENTURIES

The article is devoted to studying the logical and epistemological issues, in particular the laws of thinking in the creative heritage of the representatives of Kyiv theological-academic philosophy of the XIX century, such as V. Karpov, J. Mikhnevych, O. Novytsky, P. Linytsky. The central problem of the article is the theoretical search for ideological origins of understanding the essence, place and significance of the laws of thinking in human cognitive activity. The authors of the article focus on studying the creative heritage only of those personalities who had their own textbooks on logic, although the lectures were delivered without exception by all professors of philosophy of the KTA. This approach to the problem is associated with a number of difficulties, because in the textbooks it was difficult to find the thinker's own position on a particular problem. Despite this, the positions of professors differ significantly from each other. And we tried to prove it. The aim of the study was to clarify the ideological coincidence and at the same time fundamental differences of the main statements on understanding the essence, place and significance of the laws of thinking in human cognitive activity in the creative heritage of professors of the Kyiv Theological Academy. This goal was realized in the following tasks. to analyze the main ideas of works on the logic by K. Karpov, J. Mikhnevych, O. Novytsky, P. Linytsky and to reveal their worldview preferences; find ideological coincidences among the main statements of their theoretical preferences; to substantiate the fact of the influence of the Western European philosophical tradition on the philosophers of the Kyiv school of theological-academic philosophy of the XIX – early XX centuries

The Women Are Up to Something

This book tells two intertwined stories, centered on twentieth-century moral philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. The first is the story of four friends who came up to Oxford together just before WWII. It is the story of their lives, loves, and intellectual preoccupations; it is a story about women trying to find a place in a man’s world of academic philosophy. The second story is about these friends’ shared philosophical project and their unintentional creation of a school of thought that challenged the dominant way of doing ethics. That dominant school of thought envisioned the world as empty, value-free matter, on which humans impose meaning. This outlook treated statements such as “this is good” as mere expressions of feeling or preference, reflecting no objective standards. It emphasized human freedom and demanded an unflinching recognition of the value-free world. The four friends diagnosed this moral philosophy as an impoverishing intellectual fad. This style of thought, they believed, obscured the realities of human nature and left people without the resources to make difficult moral choices or to confront evil. As an alternative, the women proposed a naturalistic ethics, reviving a line of thought running through Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, and enriched by modern biologists like Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin. The women proposed that there are, in fact, moral truths, based in facts about the distinctive nature of the human animal and what that animal needs to thrive.

Chinese philosophy: The philosopher as activist

In contemporary academic philosophy, Chinese Philosophy remains a niche. This has a lot to do with its presentation, which often creates an impression of alienness and allegory, making its contribution, especially to analytical questions, not obvious. This paper examines how a change in presentation eases the inclusion of Chinese Philosophy into the mainstream. On the assumption that there has been an “activist turn” in the discipline in general, philosophical interest in a tradition that ranges from conceptual analysis, to ethics and politics, but that is ultimately focused on motivating actions, becomes more relevant and pressing. Since, in much of Chinese Philosophy, the philosopher is an activist, if the wider discipline is indeed undergoing an “activist turn”, then there is a connection here that should be made. In this paper, the connection is explained using two examples, Mozi and Xu Fuguan.

Reconstructing Professional Philosophy: Lessons from Philosophy as a Way of Life During a Time of Crises

This article reflects on the way the Covid-19 hecatomb has disclosed and unraveled the ongoing crisis of professional philosophy, and suggests some lessons that might be taken from the pandemic, urging academic philosophers to take action regarding the future of their work in philosophy departments and institutions. In the first section of the article, we highlight some lasting criticisms to academic philosophy and explore one particular nasty thorn in the side of philosophers doing the kind of work that might speak to broad audiences facing a crisis of meaning and living: the rush to publish instead of “perishing” without a secure academic position. In the next section, we discuss philosophy as a way of life (PWL) as an alternative nascent field in academic philosophy that, while garnering respect and recognition within the academy, has regained connections with a broader public desperate for ways to chart their own paths of meaningful living, especially when facing a deeply challenged and fractured world. PWL helps address the crises of meaning many in the academy face (both teachers and students) and the absence of rich philosophical reflection and communities in the broader public, which otherwise all too easily fall prey to hucksters, con-artists, and authoritarian and conspiratorial forces. We argue that this kind of wholistic critical development of PWL from the ancient world is designed to enact a prefigurative or eutopian politics. We conclude by situating our recommendations into a broader reconstruction of professional philosophy needed at this critical cultural moment.

Brief aus den Niederlanden

In this letter to our German colleagues we describe the situation, mentality, and organization of academic philosophy in the Netherlands in comparison to Germany. We proceed in five acts. In the first act, A wide beach, we set the stage and introduce the two academic landscapes; in the second act, Between controversy and frontal teaching, we compare the Dutch and German academic temper and practices. In the third act, Flat land, flat hierarchies, we parallelize the geography of the Netherlands and the organizational structure of Dutch universities. In the fourth act, Philosophers among merchants, we discuss the positive and negative sides of the liberal, transparent, competitive and progress-oriented spirit of Dutch academic philosophy. In the fifth and final act, Philosophy from the pragmatic point of view, we conclude what we can learn from our Dutch neighbours: We plea for a non-elitist, down to earth, straight-forward, and open-minded way of doing philosophy, where one is neither shying away from controversy nor too shy to come down from the ivory tower and mingle with the audience.

Book Review: Sudden Selector’s Guide to Philosophy Resources

The Sudden Selector’s Guide to Philosophy Resources, the ninth volume in its series, is a succinct introduction for the library professionals newly responsible for collection management and research assistance for the discipline. Its six chapters provide a broad overview of academic philosophy, issues of audience, common formats, flagship resources, and the financial aspects of effectively managing a philosophy collection.

A Tale of Two Injustices

This chapter has two aims. First, Davis distinguishes between two forms of testimonial injustice: identity-based testimonial injustice and content-based testimonial injustice. Second, Davis utilizes this distinction to develop a partial explanation for the persistent lack of diverse practitioners in academic philosophy. Specifically, Davis argues that both identity-based and content-based testimonial injustice are prevalent in philosophical discourse and that this prevalence introduces barriers to participation for those targeted. As Davis shows, the dual and compounding effects of identity-based and content-based testimonial injustice in philosophy plausibly contribute to a lack of diversity in the social identities of practitioners and the discourses in which practitioners are engaged.