FROM MYSHKIN TO MARXISM: THE ROLE OF DOSTOEVSKY RECEPTION IN LUKÁCS'S REVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 927-960 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD WESTERMAN
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Fyodor Dostoevsky ◽  
Spiritual Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

For European literati of the early twentieth century, Fyodor Dostoevsky represented a mythically Russian spirituality in contrast to a soulless, rationalized West. One such enthusiast was Georg Lukács, who in 1915 began a never-completed book about Dostoevsky's work, a model of spiritual community that could redeem a fallen world. Though framing his analysis in the language and themes of broader Dostoevsky reception, Lukács used this idiom innovatively to go beyond the reactionary implications this model might connote. Highlighting similarities with Max Weber's account of political ethics, I argue that Lukács developed an ethic derived from his reading of Dostoevsky, which focused on the idea of a hero defined by an ability to resolve the specific ethical dilemma of adherence to duty and moral law on the one hand, and, on the other, the need to restore spontaneous human community at a time when the social institutions embodying such laws had fallen into decay. Crucially, he deployed the same framework after his conversion to Marxism to justify revolutionary terror. However different his position from Dostoevsky's, it was through engagement with these novels that Lukács not only clarified his thought but also came to identify Lenin as a Dostoevskyan hero figure.

Sexual Ontology and Group Marriage

Philosophy ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 58 (224) ◽  
pp. 215-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen R. L. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Unmarried Mother ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

Philosophers of earlier ages have usually spent time in considering thenature of marital, and in general familial, duty. Paley devotes an entire book to those ‘relative duties which result from the constitution of the sexes’,1 a book notable on the one hand for its humanity and on the other for Paley‘s strange refusal to acknowledge that the evils for which he condemns any breach of pure monogamy are in large part the result of the fact that such breaches are generally condemned. In a society where an unmarried mother is ruined no decent male should put a woman in such danger: but why precisely should social feeling be so severe? Marriage, the monogamist would say, must be defended at all costs, for it is a centrally important institution of our society. Political community was, in the past, understood as emerging from or imposed upon families, or similar associations. The struggle to establish the state was a struggle against families, clans and clubs; the state, once established, rested upon the social institutions to which it gave legal backing.

scholarly journals Revisiting Health in Colonial Bengal: A Literary Overview (1880 -1930)

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 374-377
Author(s):  
Tinni Goswami Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
British Raj ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
The One ◽  
Active Link

The essential theme of this paper is to highlight the condition of health and hygiene in the British Bengal from the perspective of official documents and vernacular writings, with special emphasis on the journals and periodicals. The fatal effects of the epidemics like malaria and cholera, the insanitary condition of the rural Bengal and the cultivated indifference of the British Raj made the lives of the poor natives miserable and ailing. The authorities had a tendency to blame the colonized for their illiteracy and callousness, which became instrumental for the outbreak of the epidemics. On the other, in the late 19 th and the beginning of the 20th, the vernacular literature played the role of a catalyst in awakening health awareness, highlighting the issues related with ill health, insanitation and malnourishment. More importantly, it became an active link between the society and culture on the one hand, and health and people on the other. The present researcher wants to highlight these opposite trajectories of mentalities with a different connotation. The ideologies of the Raj and the native political aspirations often reflected in the colonial writings, where the year 1880 was considered as a landmark in the field of public health policies. On the other, the dichotomy between the masters and the colonized took a prominent shape during 1930s. Within these fifty years; the health of the natives witnessed many upheavals grounded on the social, economic and cultural tensions.

Leon Petrażycki and contemporary socio-legal studies

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Cotterrell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Transnational Law ◽  
The One

AbstractThe work of the Polish–Russian scholar Leon Petrażycki from the early decades of the twentieth century holds a strikingly paradoxical position in the literature of juristic and socio-legal scholarship: on the one hand, lauded as a supremely valuable contribution to knowledge about the nature of law and, on the other, widely neglected and little known. This paper asks how far Petrażycki's theories, expressed in writings by and about him available to an international readership, can provide insight for contemporary socio-legal studies – not as historical background but as living ideas. How far can his work speak to current issues and inform current debates? What obstacles stand in the way of this? Why have few international scholars engaged with his theories despite their rigour and originality? The paper starts from this last issue before addressing the others. It argues that Petrażycki's radical legal theory offers strikingly distinctive resources for rethinking issues about the role of law in multicultural societies, the nature of developing transnational law, and the significance of law as an aspect or expression of culture.

Facing Strangers in Need

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Nenad Miscevic ◽  
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Psychological Approach ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decent Life ◽  
The One

What is the role of toleration in the present-day crisis, marked by the inflow of refugees and increase in populism? The seriousness of the crises demands efforts of active toleration, acceptance, and integration of refugees and the like. Active toleration brings with itself a series of very demanding duties, divided into immediate ones involving immediate Samaritan aid to people at our doors and the long-term ones involving their acculturation and possibilities of decent life for them. A cosmopolitan attitude can contribute a lot. In the context of a refugee crisis, cosmopolitanism is not disappearing but showing its non-traditional, more Samaritan face turned not to distant strangers, as the classical one, but towards strangers at our doors.We have conjectured that this work of active toleration can diminish the need for the passive one: the well-integrated immigrant is no longer seen as a strange, exotic person with an incomprehensible and unacceptable attitude, but as one of us so that her attitudes become less irritating and provocative. The social-psychological approach that sees integration as involving both the preservation of central aspects of the original identity and the copy-pasting of the new one over it offers an interesting rationale for the conjecture: once integrated, the former newcomer is perceived as one of ‘us’ and her views stop being exotic, incomprehensible and a priori unacceptable. Given the amount of need for toleration, and difficulties and paradoxes connected with its passive variety, the conjecture, if true, might be a piece of good news.Finally, we have briefly touched the question of deeper causes of the crisis. Once one turns to this question, the traditional cosmopolitan issues come back to the forefront: the deep poverty and unjust distribution on the one hand, and conflicts and wars on the other. Cosmopolitans have a duty to face these issues, and this is where active global toleration leads in our times.

Optimal Contracting Model in a Social Environment and Trust-Related Psychological Costs

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suren Basov ◽  
M. Ishaq Bhatti
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Optimal Contracting ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Contracting Model

AbstractMost research in contract theory concentrated on the role of incentives in shaping individual behavior. Recent research suggests that social norms also play an important role. From a point of view of a mechanism designer (a principal, a government, and a bank), responsiveness of an agent to the social norms is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it provides the designer with extra instruments, while on the other it puts restrictions on how these new and the more conventional instruments can be used. The main objective of this paper is to investigate this trade-off and study how it shapes different contracts observed in the real world. We consider a model in which agent’s cost of cheating is triggered by the principal’s show of trust. We call such behavior a norm of honesty and trust and show that it drives incentives to be either low powerful or high powerful, eliminating contracts with medium powerful incentives.

scholarly journals Negative views towards TVET : the role of colonial and post-colonial TVET policies in Kenya

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses Njenga
Keyword(s):  
Vocational Education ◽  
Technical Education ◽  
Negative Parity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social And Economic Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

While vital for the social and economic development of Kenya and Africa as whole, Vocational Education remains hampered by a negative parity of esteem. Individuals and households continue to view vocational education as a second option. This is in contrast with the views held by both pre-colonial and post colonial governments. Each successive government has attempted to provide vocational education and made policies to effect widespread provision. This article reviews the history of these policies and identifies the source of negative views towards vocational education on the one hand to discriminatory approaches by colonial governments and on the other hand to the burdening of technical education with the task of employment creation.

Waiting

2021 ◽  
pp. 342-368
Author(s):  
Anne Storch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
Getting Lost ◽  
Epistemic Approach ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The One

This chapter explores the dialectics of walking and resting, and of mobility and waiting, with regards to creativity in language. It thereby focuses on the interruption and unintended break as an opportunity for interactions and encounters across linguistic epistemes, boundaries and norms. Walking as a methodology and epistemic approach has been discussed in anthropology, the social sciences and literary critique, but met very little interest in linguistics. This chapter on the one hand consequently attempts to address walking as a substantial approach to the study of multilingualism and improvisation, but on the other aims at highlighting disruption and stillness as creating the very liminal space and practice through which language creativity can emerge and be realized. It touches upon various practices that are crucial: being stuck, passing time, getting lost. Points of special interests interest include the role of language in the love songs and other genres, especially in the context of the Mediterranean, disruptions associated with migrations and peoples’ movements, the context of tourism, and the linguistic effects of spirit possession.

‘Turf is nu eenmaal een vruchtbaar terrein voor de fantasie’

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 268-291
Author(s):  
Tom Sintobin ◽  
Marguérite Corporaal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
The Other ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Future Opportunity ◽  
The Social ◽  
De Vries ◽  
Dutch Literature ◽  
The One ◽  
Class Divisions

Abstract ‘After all peat is a fertile soil for the imagination’. The literary representation of bog and peat cutting in Dutch literature, 1909-1940 Novels about peat lands and turf-cutting were immensely popular in the Netherlands during the first decades of the twentieth century. This article traces recurring narratives and tropes in four such novels written by H.H.J.Maas, Antoon Coolen, Anne de Vries, and Theun de Vries, illustrating the ambivalent role that peat lands play in these texts. They function as sites of communality, future opportunity, and disorder on the one hand, and as places of exploitation and alienation on the other. These four novels do not downright reject the introduction of industrial innovations, but some among them are critical of the class divisions that may result. Others seem to acknowledge the hard labour that turf production involves, but do not criticize the social status of the peat-cutters.

Corporate social responsibility á la the liberal communist

Organization ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Cederström ◽  
Michael Marinetto
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dynamic Structures ◽  
The One ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
Practical Nature

This article explores the ‘liberal communist’, a conceptual and satirical figure originally elaborated in the work of Slavoj Žižek (2008). The liberal communist claims (1) that there is no opposition between capitalism and the social good; (2) that all problems are of a practical nature, and hence best solved by corporate engagement and (3) that hierarchies, authority and centralized bureaucracies should be replaced by dynamic structures, a nomadic lifestyle and a flexible spirit. This analysis of the liberal communist has at least two implications for research on CSR. First, it examines the ideological role of CSR by moving beyond a propaganda view, instead offering an ideological reading that focuses on the ways in which CSR seeks to obliterate any existing contradictions between ‘philanthropic actions’ on the one hand and ‘profit-seeking business activities’ on the other hand. Second, it demonstrates how critique is not necessarily what corporations seek to avoid, but something that they actively engage in.

Children’s cancer narratives on YouTube: Agency and entrepreneurship in Brazilian CarecaTV

2020 ◽  
pp. 204361062096701
Author(s):  
Lidia Marôpo ◽  
Raiana de Carvalho ◽  
Ana Jorge
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Brain Cancer ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
The One

This article looks at the social and cultural contexts of children’s experiences of illness, through a particular focus on the context of the Global South and the role of the social media platform YouTube in children’s culture. It takes a socio-constructivist approach to discuss the case of CarecaTV (BaldTV), a Brazilian YouTube channel with more than one million followers created by Lorena Reginato at the age of 12 when she was recovering from brain cancer. In CarecaTV, cancer subjectivity co-exists with and is expressed through digital commercialization. On the one hand, through this process, Lorena Reginato gains agency as she offers an inspirational and credible first-person testimony about cancer during childhood and becomes an emerging cancer activist. On the other, she uses entrepreneurship strategies associated with the digital influencer model of YouTube to promote herself as a (cancer) micro-celebrity, taking the lead in a youthful and playful culture.

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