Editorial
‘After some probably avoidable delays in the appearance of RP37 we nearly return to schedule with this
‘ordinary’ issue of RP38, which contains a wide
range of essays and reviews. We apologise to our
readers for these delays and, through changes we
are instituting, hope that they will not recur. The
Collective has not been idle however and we are
glad to announce the imminent arrival of a
RADICAL PHILOSOPHY READER, a collection of
notable articles from the pages of Radical Philosophy’s historical output. This joint venture with
NLB/Verso Books will be in the bookshops in January and contains 21 articles from the early 1970s
through to the present. With an introduction by Roy
Edgley which contextualizes the development of the
Radical Philosophy Movement, the book will be an
invaluable guide to the other side of English Philosophy. Ranging fa”om pieces on individual philosophers to discussions of philosophy and science, philosophy and gender, Marxism and morality, the
Reader represents the diverse questions that have
been debated in the pages of Radical Philosophy
over the years •. Radical Philosophy readers will be
given an opportunity to buy the book at a special
discount price and even to win a copy in our new
moral philosophy competition (see below).
The articles in this issue have one major theme in
common and that is a critical desire to subvert the
obvious order of discourse of a pantheon of philosophical grand old men. Joanna Hodge most explici tly punctures what she sees as the pretensions, and
the class and gender basis of those pretensions, of a
number of leading twentieth-century Marxists including Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Lukacs and
Marcuse. Jonathan Ree takes a usefully subversive
look at Derridean pieties, at the misadventures of
the metaphysic. Susan Easton, in what is likely to
be a provocative move, argues that grounds for a
feminist reading of Hegel’s work may, be found. She
argues that the functionalist interpretation of
Hegel’s political thought, which attributes to Hegel
a view of the family as natural and necessary,
should be critically reviewed. Sheelagh Strawbridge
sets out to throw light on Althusser’s use of two
key concepts, ‘overdetermination’ and ‘structural
causali ty’, by explicating their origins in the work
of Freud and Spinoza. She argues that the source of
the difficulties in Althusser’s usage reside in the
tensions between the dualist ontology and epistemology of Freud and the thoroughgoing monism of
Spinoza’s philosophy. Finally Paul Bagguley outlines
and criticises Anthony Giddens’s theory of social
change which, he suggests, was constructed as an
alternative to historical materialism but which suffers from similar problems in terms of involving the
major problems of all evolutionary theories of social
change.
COIning this February
_RADICAL PHILOSOPHY READER
Edited by ‘Roy EdgIey and iRichard Osbome
Lucid, independent and poJemical, this colJection ofessays by contributors to RatHcal Pbil,.,plJy demonstrates a commitment to
questions ofethics. truth and scientificitx Subjects covered include the work of individual philosophers, such as Kant, Hegel and
Alth/N1er; the realist position in the philosophy ofscience; morality and politics; and the relations between philosophy and gender.
A group ofsparkling CozJbruJtatio. dissects fashionable trends in discourse theory, post-structuralism and neo-conservatism,
Contributon:
1lidwdN. . . ./oluJIUip./NIJGzDuIJa”.JUiMJAaiter.’OIIySIdll”,./outJumRee.PeterDetn.Aadre”…,.
/_ Mt:Camey.1Ut:Iwd o.bcuu.
Hardback £20. OO.Paperback m.9S
Uyou wpuld like to receive OUI complete catalogue please write to
Promotions Manager
Veroo
15 Greek Street
London WI V5LF
“VERSO