Телеграм канал «Политическая теория и философия (Political theory and philosophy)»

Giulia Zerbinati - Adorno and Hegel: Truth, experience, and the ‘workshop’ of dialectics

Aim of the paper is to highlight the influence of Hegelian dialectics on the elaboration of Adorno’s negative dialectics, focusing, in particular, on the fact that the later must be read not so much or not only as an uncompromising critique of the first one. Rather, negative dialectics must be read as an immanent critique of the Hegelian model, i.e. as its rethinking from within and, at the same time, as an attempt for its continuation and reconfiguration, on the basis of an initial and profound understanding of it. This becomes clear in a series of Adornian materials dated between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, which constitute a sort of ‘constellative’ work, where Adorno puts dialectics under analysis in its structure and operativity. Starting from these studies, I reconstruct some moments of this process of elaboration, through which dialectics is put into motion, put to the test, revised from within and, eventually, reshaped according to a negative paradigm.

https://journals.mimesisedizioni.it/index.php/studi-di-estetica/article/view/1137/1561

Thomas Piketty, Michael J. Sandel - Equality: What It Means and Why It Matters

In this compelling dialogue, two of the world’s most influential thinkers reflect on the value of equality and debate what citizens and governments should do to narrow the gaps that separate us. Ranging across economics, philosophy, history, and current affairs, Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel consider how far we have come in achieving greater equality. At the same time, they confront head-on the extreme divides that remain in wealth, income, power, and status nationally and globally.What can be done at a time of deep political instability and environmental crisis? Piketty and Sandel agree on much: more inclusive investment in health and education, higher progressive taxation, curbing the political power of the rich and the overreach of markets. But how far and how fast can we push? Should we prioritize material or social change? What are the prospects for any change at all with nationalist forces resurgent? How should the left relate to values like patriotism and local solidarity where they collide with the challenges of mass migration and global climate change? To see Piketty and Sandel grapple with these and other problems is to glimpse new possibilities for change and justice but also the stubborn truth that progress towards greater equality never comes quickly or without deep social conflict and political struggle.

Daniel Luban - Trump’s War

The fact that the war in Iran has proven so shocking to both Trump’s base and the broader commentariat reflects how distorted the popular view of Trump and MAGA has become.

https://dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/trumps-war/

Brigitte Studer - Travellers of the World Revolution: A Global History of the Communist International

Hope, Struggle and Defeat: The Communist International and the Global Fight for Freedom The Communist International was the first organised attempt to bring about worldwide revolution and left a lasting mark on 20th-century history. The book offers a new and fascinating account of this transnational organisation founded in 1919 by Lenin and Trotsky and dissolved by Stalin in 1943, telling the story through the eyes of the activists who became its “professional revolutionaries.” Studer follows such figures as Willi Münzenberg, Mikhail Borodin, M.N. Roy and Evelyn Trent, Tina Modotti, Agnes Smedley and many others less well-known as they are despatched to the successive political hotspots of the 1920s and ’30s, from revolutionary Berlin to Baku, from Shanghai to Spain, from Nazi Germany to Stalin’s Moscow. It traces their journeys from revolutionary hope to accommodation, defeat or death, looking at questions of motivation and commitment, agency and negotiation, of life and love, conflict and frustration. In doing so, it reveals a forgotten Comintern, the expression of a multi-dimensional revolutionary moment, which attracted not only working-class but feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist activists, highlighting the role of women in the Comintern and the centrality of anti-colonialism to the Communist project. The book concludes with a reflection on the ultimate demise of a historically unique undertaking.

The Revenge of Reason: Hegel, Kant, and Neo-Rationalism with Pete Wolfendale

What is the fate of Reason in the twenty-first century? Today more than ever, in the face of disinformation, memetic plagues, and neuroactive media, if we are to resist not just the continual solicitation of our cognitive reflexes, but also the unearned authority of endless everyman rationalists and self-appointed secular priests of rationality, then we have no choice but to mobilize Reason to continually dissect the responsibilities they shirk, and to embrace the future demands of thought. Peter Wolfendale has long been dedicated to this philosophical task, and The Revenge of Reason lays out his vision for Neorationalism as a distinctive philosophical trajectory, exploring the outermost possibilities of Prometheanism, Inhumanism, and Enlightenment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCe11uX6vpA