On the Sources of Critique in Heidegger and Derrida

According to Lisa Guenther’s concise account, critical phenomenology seeks to expose not only the transcendental conditions of seeing and making the world (such as subjectivity, embodiment, and temporality), but the “quasi-transcendental” ones we find in contingent historical and social structures, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity (2020, 12). This excellent formulation raises the question of its central distinction: from what position would the critical phenomenologist be able to distinguish transcendental from quasi-transcendental conditions, or universal from contingent structures? This question recalls post-Heideggerian treatments of transcendental historicity (Crowell & Malpas 2007) and the possibilities of critical theorizing, e.g., the Habermas-Gadamer debate on lifeworld and critique (How 1995). These issues also remind us of earlier attempts to forge alliances between (post-)phenomenology and critical theory by scholars shuttling between Freiburg (or Paris) and Frankfurt. At times, these went under the label “critical ontology” and often sought to develop a coherent vision out of Western Marxism and phenomenology, with a special focus, it seems, on Adorno and Heidegger (Dallmayr 1991; Guzzoni 1990; Mörchen 1981; Macdonald & Ziarek 2008).

Walter Benjamin and the Weak Messianic Power

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German intellectual of Jewish descent, a well-known literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator and essayist, and a key figure in continental philosophy. His works on topics such as historical materialism, German idealism, and Jewish mysticism have had a marked influence on contemporary aesthetic theories and the development of Western Marxism, including the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. These articles will focus on the analysis of the concept of messianism, which Benjamin develops in his work “On the concept of history” or “Theses on the philosophy of history” (1940). Messianism here is neither a theological dogma nor a modern figure of the utopian. Benjamin’s messianic time does not refer to the future, but to the urgency of the “now.” The author contrasts the “weak messianic force” of the tradition of the oppressed, which demands the past with the realization of happiness and liberation in the present, and Jetztzeit – a model of messianic time, open and nonlinear time of rupture, based on modern (contemporary) forms of collective experience past and liberation memory (Eingedenken).

On humanistic interpretation of Marx: Communism or narcissism?

This article analyzes two most widespread approaches towards interpretation of the humanistic content of Marx’s doctrine, which have developed within the framework of Western Marxism in the 19550s – 1970s. The first approach – Marxist humanism – describes humanism as the “initial” form of Marx's doctrine of the early period. The second approach – theoretical antihumanism – views the concept of “humanism” as ideological, unscientific and incompatible with Marxism. The analysis of modern Russian and foreign bibliographies indicates the existing ambiguity in assessment of both, Western Marxism and humanistic content of the original ideas of Marx, which defines relevance of this research. The novelty lies in the proposal to view Marxist humanism and theoretical antihumanism in conjunction with the historical establishment of Marx's theory, rather than in contraposition to each other. The author suggest to forgo the interpretation of Marx’s ideas from the perspective of humanism or antihumanism. Such interpretation not only idealizes and mystifies the content of his works, but also creates a prerequisite for narcissistic view of the surrounding material objects and nature. The latter thought is reflected in undertaken at the margin of “Capital” Marx's criticism of the commodity fetishism as one of the central elements of the capitalist manner of production.

Ilyenkov’s Dialectics of the Ideal and Engels’s Dialectics of Nature

Within the current resurgence of interest in E.V. Ilyenkov, the influence of Engels on Ilyenkov’s work is either overlooked or denied, making Ilyenkov seem closer to Western Marxism than he actually is. In this paper, by considering Engels’s place in his philosophy, I show that Ilyenkov’s approach is fundamentally hostile to many of Western Marxism’s main views. Ilyenkov, like Engels, conceives philosophy as Logic and affirms the ‘alliance’ between philosophy and the natural sciences against speculative metaphysics. In this regard, he develops an original cosmological hypothesis based on Engels’s insights on the hierarchy of matter’s forms of movement and provides a remarkable account of the ideal as an attribute of nature that reproduces its concrete universality through social labour, the active transformation of nature’s phenomena into objects stamped with the seal of our subjectivity.

Alienation as a Problem in Heidegger’s Philosophy

The concept of alienation is important part of the 20th century leftwing social criticism and a key theme of Western Marxism and critical theory. It also has a significant impact on various existentialist-inspired cultural criticism. The development of the social and economic dynamics in recent decades has aroused interest for a different interpretations of this classic question. The following text is an attempt for ontological rethinking of the problem through the existential concepts of Martin Heidegger. This happens with the interpretive reading of several of those key concepts.

Is Green the New Red? Marxism, Ecology, and Contemporary Architectural Theory

This essay examines the role of Marxist concepts in recent architectural theories of ecology using two architecture firms, Estudio Teddy Cruz and Sauerbruch Hutton (SH), as case studies. In their writings, Cruz and SH mobilize the critique of capital, a dialectical materialist understanding of history, and the Frankfurt School’s critique of functionalist culture for the theorization of sustainable design. Their work has two vital ramifications for current sustainability discourses in two different fields which this essay seeks to bridge. For Marxist theorists concerned about ecology but averse to Western Marxism because of its supposed idealism, Cruz and SH show anew the importance of aesthetic concerns to conceptions of the environment. For design scholars accustomed to thinking of Marxism as having been absorbed into broader debates about cultural studies, the architects’ theories have the potential to recentralize the left-wing inheritance through its adaptation to concerns of ecology. In addition, in the essay’s conclusion, I reflect briefly, as a suggestion for further research, on how Cruz’s and SH’s architectural practice and theories might productively be analyzed in light of the terms of the Adorno-Benjamin debate of the 1930s over the political status of the cultural products of capital. Can eighty-year old discussions of the potentially revolutionary and retrograde qualities of mass cultural objects be relevant to radical thought in the age of climate change.