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

Лоренц Эррен - Брут, убийца тиранов. Чем римский республиканизм привлекал русскую аристократию

Проблема России в том, что она никак не может сформулировать свое место в мире, в истории мировой политики и цивилизации; проблема русских гуманитарных наук в том, что они эту проблему игнорируют. 

Попытки «догнать и перегнать» Запад в применении новейших методологий постмодернизма не способствовали преодолению традиции руссоцентризма и (недобровольного) провинциализма. Европа по-прежнему воспринимается как эталон подражания, но не как объект подробного изучения или даже обоснованной критики. Такое упущение не может не отражаться отрицательно и на понимании «собственной» русской истории. 

Сегодня «имперскость» воспринимается как злокачественный принцип, прямо противоположенный «европейским ценностям». Но во времена Петра Великого всё было с точностью до наоборот. Создание Российской империи рассматривалось как составная часть проекта «европеизации России», интеграции её в «систему великих европейских держав». Военно-политическое вовлечение в европейские дела, однако, создавало поле для возникновения новых конфликтов и проблем (геополитических, культурных, психологических), которые руссоцентричная историография оказывалась не всегда в состоянии адекватно освещать. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpdyW8hhk1k

Sartre, Jews, and the Other: Rethinking Antisemitism, Race, and Gender

The starting point for this compilation is the wish to rethink the concept of antisemitism, race and gender in light of Sartre’s pioneering Réflexions sur la Question Juive seventy years after its publication. The book gathers texts by prestigious scholars from different disciplines in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, with the objective or revisiting this work locating it within the setting of two other pioneering and we argue, related publications, namely Simone De Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe of 1949 and Franz Fanon’s Peau noire et masques blancs of 1952. This particular and original standpoint sheds new light on the different meanings and political functions of the concept of antisemitism in a political and historical context marked by the post-modern concepts of multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism.

David Graeber vs Peter Thiel: Where Did the Future Go (2014)

Once upon a time, in the heyday of social prognostication, many Americans believed that gadget-related knowledge would surely yield immeasurable leaps forward in the progress of the human species. Yet as David Graeber argued in his Baffleressay “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit,” Information Age capitalism has mainly given us better ways to shop and handed the government unprecedented opportunities to watch. Was the gilded promise of innovation a con game all along? What does Peter Thiel, the renowned Silicon Valley author and investor, think about the reality of technological progress? How do Thiel’s libertarian principles stand in relation to Graeber’s revolutionary anarchism?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eF0cz9OmCGw

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.