radical philosophy

Philosophical Materialism or the Materialist Conception of History

Post-Marxist Modes of Production

According to whoever wrote the editorial ‘notes’ for Radical Philosophy 17, ‘the present upsurge of fundamental Marxist researches may indicate an exit route from the circle of philosophy’s deaths and re births, via which the problem of the specificity of “the philosophical” might be both subverted and understood’. And according to Graham Burchell in Radical Philosophy 18, …

In Defence of Epistemology

My aim in this paper is to criticise a post-Althusserian tendency which urges us to ditch the whole project of epistemology; I shall also say something about the conditions for an epistemology which will not lay itself open to the objections raised against epistemology by this tendency insofar as those objections are valid. And I …

Althusser’s epistemology

‘Let us say that public positions must always be judged against the system of positions actually held and against the effects they produce’ – Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism (p115)

Introduction

The settling of accounts with ‘Althusserianism’ has been on the order of the day for some time now. The recent publication of Essays in Self-Criticism, however, makes available …

Lukács and the Marxist Criticism of Sociology

Moral Relations, Political Economy and Class Struggle

Rancière and Althusser

Rancière’s critique of Althusser and Ted Benton’s comments (RP 7 and RP 9 respectively) raise fundamental problems about the nature of theoretical debate in addition to fundamental problems at the level of theory itself. I take Benton to be presenting a defence of a more or less orthodox Althusserian position and the following points …

Discussion: Rancière and Ideology

The article by Jacques Rancière, ‘On the Theoryof Ideology’ (Radical Philosophy 7) is one of the most powerful critiques of Althusser’s work so far to have been produced from the left. Given the wide reception that Althusser’s work is nowreceiving in Britain it is vital that the issues which Ranciere raises are thoroughly …

The production of moral ideology

On the theory of ideology

Certainly it is an interesting event we are dealing with: the putrescence of the absolute spirit (Marx, German Ideology, Part 1)

All the mysteries which lead theory into mysticism find the irrational solution in human practice and in the understanding of that practice’. For a long time the main mystery as far as …

Discussion: Leninism versus proletarian self-emancipation; Laing’s social philosophy; The Trivialily of Althusser

Proletarian Self-Emancipation

Who Makes History?

5 Reviews

Economy and Society, Vol.I, 1972 Henry Bernstein

Jean Piaget, Structuralism S.W. Gaukroger

Stuart Hampshire, Morality and Pessimism (reprinted in New York Review of Books, January 25, 1973) Tony Skillen

Louis Althusser, Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx John Jervis

The Marxist Theory of Truth