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

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee - Lacan’s Lenin

In his discussion of this, Lacan associates knowledge with the jouissance involved in acquiring and exercising it. Such a brief juxtaposition does not constitute an endorsement of Leninism. But it does pose a question which I find more intriguing than an attempt at uncovering Lacan’s politics: What is it to inherit an idea whose implications the author has not exhausted?

https://www.e-flux.com/notes/6783559/lacan-s-lenin

Minxin Pei - China’s Crony Capitalism. The Dynamics of Regime Decay (2016)
 
When Deng Xiaoping launched China on the path to economic reform in the late 1970s, he vowed to build “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” More than three decades later, China’s efforts to modernize have yielded something very different from the working people’s paradise Deng envisioned: an incipient kleptocracy, characterized by endemic corruption, soaring income inequality, and growing social tensions. China’s Crony Capitalism traces the origins of China’s present-day troubles to the series of incomplete reforms from the post-Tiananmen era that decentralized the control of public property without clarifying its ownership.

Beginning in the 1990s, changes in the control and ownership rights of state-owned assets allowed well-connected government officials and businessmen to amass huge fortunes through the systematic looting of state-owned property in particular land, natural resources, and assets in state-run enterprises. Mustering compelling evidence from over two hundred corruption cases involving government and law enforcement officials, private businessmen, and organized crime members, Minxin Pei shows how collusion among elites has spawned an illicit market for power inside the party-state, in which bribes and official appointments are surreptitiously but routinely traded. This system of crony capitalism has created a legacy of criminality and entrenched privilege that will make any movement toward democracy difficult and disorderly. Rejecting conventional platitudes about the resilience of Chinese Communist Party rule, Pei gathers unambiguous evidence that beneath China’s facade of ever-expanding prosperity and power lies a Leninist state in an advanced stage of decay.

Why I Can’t Stop Thinking About “The End of History”

Francis Fukuyama's “The End of History and the Last Man” is one of the most insightful books for understanding the strangeness and instability of this political moment.

Fukuyama wrote his landmark book more than 30 years ago, and it’s typically remembered as a triumphalist argument, heralding the permanent victory of liberal democracy at the end of the Cold War. But that’s not quite right. Fukuyama also talked about the serious weaknesses he saw in liberal democracy how it may not fully satisfy the human soul and his warnings feel very prescient now.

So I wanted to have Fukuyama on the show to talk through the ideas in his book and how he sees them today, at a time when liberal democracy seems increasingly imperiled around the world. Fukuyama is a political scientist at Stanford University and the author of a number of other great books of political theory, as well as a new memoir, “In the Realm of the Last Man.”

00:00 Intro
02:16 What Is “The End of History”?
06:28 Politics of Recognition
14:12 Megalothymia and Trump
16:03 Nietzsche’s Last Man
18:11 Why Liberalism Feels Flat
22:44 Looking Back on 9/11
26:03 Why Fukuyama Broke Away From the Neoconservatives
39:16 Moderation vs. Bold Reform
44:24 Strong Leader Tradeoffs
46:41 Denmark
53:12 Social Media and Populism
55:42 China
01:00:11 Tech Horizons and Democracy
01:02:46 Agentic A.I. and Arms Race
01:07:50 Elections and Liberal Renewal
01:09:48 State Capacity and Abundance
01:11:50 Moral Energy for Liberalism
01:14:39 Book Recommendations

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KIn-1EuXx78&ra=m

Isabel Jacobs, Jacob Saliba - Finitude and Freedom

When the political philosopher Stanley Rosen recalled his encounter with Kojève in Paris in the 1960s, he noticed that Kojève often evoked one figure that stood above the rest of his circle: the theologian and Jesuit priest Gaston Fessard, “one of Kojève’s closest friends, perhaps his closest friend in Paris.” Rosen, moreover, added that among everyone he met, including Paul Ricœur and Emmanuel Levinas, Fessard remained “in my view, the greatest” with the exception of Kojève himself. Though little-known in English-speaking scholarship, Fessard was a giant on the French scene. He was known for his public debates with left-wing intellectuals, his resistance to Vichy in the 1940s, and pioneering contributions to the New Theology movement that led to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Throughout, Fessard maintained a close dialogue with Kojève, his friend, teacher, and philosophical sparring partner. This volume is the first systematic collection of the published and unpublished materials that document their exchanges and debates, including letters, essays, book reviews, and lectures. Standing at the intersection of secular political thought and theological discourse, Kojève and Fessard radically reshaped concepts of authority, right, sovereignty, and the end of history. This volume reveals how each thinker developed an original reading of Hegel, and how those readings and the debate that they spurred continue to shape political theology today.

https://communispress.com/finitude-and-freedom/

Rick Tilman - Thorstein Veblen and the Enrichment of Evolutionary Naturalism
 
One of America s most influential social critics, Thorstein Veblen authored works deeply rooted in evolutionary biology and American philosophical naturalism. Now one of today s preeminent Veblen scholars ranges widely over the man s writings to show how evolutionary naturalism underlies his social theory and criticism, shapes his satire, and binds his work together. Veblen s evolutionary naturalism, with its unflattering evaluation of America s self-selected special place in the international arena, casts doubt on today s foreign interventions, and it also provides a much-needed antidote to the resurgence of creationist thought in American culture. Rick Tilman shows that Veblen s ideas are still valuable to contemporary social scientists indeed, that his method of analysis and values are sorely needed to help us avoid wasteful consumption, predation, and the persistence of religious superstition.