The Grandeur And Twilight Of Radical Universalism

Grandeur and Twilight of Radical Universalism provides a theoretical construction to the extraordinary events of the past several years in Europe and the Soviet Union, and China. These masterful essays attribute much of the problem of totalitarianism to its blind acceptance of a Marxist philosophy of practice. With the failure of communist practice, the collapse of the Marxian paradigm was quick to follow.At its roots this volume is a critique of the idea that we can have "scientific knowledge" of the social and political future. Totalitarian Marxism combined statements of history and claims of omniscience. Free choice was surrendered to history, and when the predicted outcomes fail to materialize, when communism came closer to being buried than capitalism, and western ideals of democracy proved far more compelling than inherited doctrines of authoritarianism, the outcome proved monumental and disastrous.The authors position themselves as evolving from critical Marxism to post-Marxism, and then post modernism. By this, they mean a modest view of life, one that moves beyond radical universalism and grand narrative, into a realization of individualism and equity concerns are central to the end of the twentieth century. The volume proceeds historically: from studies of the classic Marxian legacy; to the early twentieth century efforts of Lukacs, Weber and Adorno; proceeding to the disintegration of the Marxian paradigm in both its pure and revisionist forms. It ends with a study of options posed by this paradigmatic collapse - to consideration of the status of postmodernity and the choices between pure relativism and a theological fundamentalism. ,This is a work of absolute importance for political philosophy, the sociology of knowledge, and the history of ideas. In raising recent events to a theoretically meaningful framework, it represents a refreshing as well as remarkable step toward understanding Revolutions from 1789 to 1989.

Ward’s book focuses on the work of the Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller; prominent member of the Budapest School, a group of students who studied under the Marxist social theorist György Lukács. For both Marx and Heller (albeit in different ways) dissatisfaction emerges as the inevitable result of the expansion of need(s) within modernity and as a catalyst for the development of anthropological wealth (what Marx refers to as the 'human being rich in need'). Ward argues that dissatisfaction and the corresponding category of human wealth–as both motif and method–is central to grasping Heller’s seemingly disparate writings. While Marx postulates a radical overcoming of dissatisfaction, Heller argues dissatisfaction is integral not only to the on-going survival of modernity but also to the dynamics of both freedom and individual life. In this way Heller’s work remains committed to a position that both continually returns and departs, is both with and against, the philosophy of Marx. This book will be of interest to scholars of political philosophy, social theory, critical theory, and sociology.

For Johnson, feminism must recognize itself as a humanism in order to avoid certain theoretical quagmires. [The argument] is extremely provocative, and even, I would say, necessary. This book is sure to be controversial and of interest to a wide audience in feminist theory. I know of no other treatment of feminism and humanism that is so clear, cogent, and systematic. Judith Grant University of Southern California Feminism is currently at an impasse. Both the liberation feminism of the 1970’s and the more recent feminism of difference are increasingly faced with the limitations of their own perspectives. While feminists today generally acknowledge the need to recognise diversity, they lack a coherent framework through which this need can be articulated. In Feminism as Radical Humanism, Pauline Johnson calls for a reassessment of feminism’s relationship to modern humanism. She argues that despite its very thorough and necessary critique of mainstream formulations of humanist ideals, feminism itself remains strongly committed to humanist values. Drawing on a broad range of political and intellectual traditions, Johnson demonstrates that, only by proudly affirming its own humanist commitments can feminist theory find a way to negotiate the impasse in which it currently finds itself. Feminism as Radical Humanism is an important and controversial contribution to feminist theory, and to the ongoing debate about the meaning of contemporary humanism.

The political and social structures of modernity are dominated by really eurocentric forms and relations, yet the theorisation of the eurocentricity of modernity remains barely developed. At the same time, modern political and social theory is fundamentally eurocentric, yet the critique of eurocentrism remains marginal to marxian and critical realist theory. Addressing the eurocentrism of both modernity and modern theory, Eurocentrism: A Marxian Critical Realist Critique discloses the deeply embedded constraints it imposes on historical and social reflexivity. Building on the insights of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, Eurocentrism shows how the powerful anti-eurocentric tendencies of the marxian critique of civil society and the critical realist critique of philosophy have been misunderstood or ignored. It develops the latent potential of these traditions to develop a systematically anti-eurocentric approach to understanding and explaining modernity.

Critical Theories and the Budapest School brings together new perspectives on the Budapest School in the context of contemporary developments in critical theory. Engaging with the work of the prominent group of figures associated with Georg Lukács, this book sheds new light on the unique and nuanced critiques of modernity offered by this school, informed as its members’ insights have been by first-hand experiences of Nazism, Soviet-type societies, and the liberal-democratic West. With studies of topics central to contemporary critical theory, such as the political and historical consciousness of modernity, the importance of bio-politics, the complexity of the human condition, and the relevance of comedy and friendship to developing critical perspectives, the authors draw on the works of Ágnes Heller, Maria Márkus, György Márkus, and Ferenc Fehér, demonstrating their enduring relevance to critical theory today and the ways in which these philosophers can inform new perspectives on culture and politics. An innovative reassessment of the Budapest School and the importance of its legacy, this book opens a much-needed and neglected dialogue with other schools and traditions of critical theorizing that will be of interest to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and social theory.

An original approach to the question 'what is a human being?', examining key ideas of leading contemporary sociologists and philosophers.

György Lukacs was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, writer, and literary critic who shaped mainstream European Communist thought. Soul and Form was his first book, published in 1910, and it established his reputation, treating questions of linguistic expressivity and literary style in the works of Plato, Kierkegaard, Novalis, Sterne, and others. By isolating the formal techniques these thinkers developed, Lukács laid the groundwork for his later work in Marxist aesthetics, a field that introduced the historical and political implications of text. For this centennial edition, John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis add a dialogue entitled "On Poverty of Spirit," which Lukács wrote at the time of Soul and Form, and an introduction by Judith Butler, which compares Lukács's key claims to his later work and subsequent movements in literary theory and criticism. In an afterword, Terezakis continues to trace the Lukácsian system within his writing and other fields. These essays explore problems of alienation and isolation and the curative quality of aesthetic form, which communicates both individuality and a shared human condition. They investigate the elements that give rise to form, the history that form implies, and the historicity that form embodies. Taken together, they showcase the breakdown, in modern times, of an objective aesthetics, and the rise of a new art born from lived experience.

György Lukacs was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, writer, and literary critic who shaped mainstream European Communist thought. Soul and Form was his first book, published in 1910, and it established his reputation, treating questions of linguistic expressivity and literary style in the works of Plato, Kierkegaard, Novalis, Sterne, and others. By isolating the formal techniques these thinkers developed, Lukács laid the groundwork for his later work in Marxist aesthetics, a field that introduced the historical and political implications of text. For this centennial edition, John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis add a dialogue entitled "On Poverty of Spirit," which Lukács wrote at the time of Soul and Form, and an introduction by Judith Butler, which compares Lukács's key claims to his later work and subsequent movements in literary theory and criticism. In an afterword, Terezakis continues to trace the Lukácsian system within his writing and other fields. These essays explore problems of alienation and isolation and the curative quality of aesthetic form, which communicates both individuality and a shared human condition. They investigate the elements that give rise to form, the history that form implies, and the historicity that form embodies. Taken together, they showcase the breakdown, in modern times, of an objective aesthetics, and the rise of a new art born from lived experience.