Hegel and Marx on the Historical Necessity of the Terror

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-124
Author(s):  
David James
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Practical Necessity ◽  
Mediating Factor ◽  
Conceptual Necessity ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Necessity

Hegel is shown to explain the historical necessity of the phase of the French Revolution known as the Terror in terms of conceptual necessity. This conceptual necessity concerns the self-conception and understanding of how the world ought to be characteristic of agents who are committed to the idea of ‘absolute’ freedom. Practical necessity here plays a key role, in that it is the mediating factor between this conceptual necessity and historical necessity. It also enables Hegel to avoid introducing a standpoint that is external to the one of the agents caught up in the historical process that is being explained. Marx explains the Terror in similar terms, and his explanation of it is shown to be related to his critique of the modern state and his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.

Practical Necessity, Freedom, and History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David James
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Practical Necessity ◽  
Historical Necessity ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

By means of careful analysis of relevant writings by Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, the author argues that the concept of practical necessity is key to understanding the nature and the extent of human freedom. Practical necessity here means being, or believing oneself to be, constrained to act in certain ways in the absence (whether real or imagined) of other, more attractive options, or by the high costs attached to pursuing other options. Agents become subject to practical necessity because of economic, social, and historical forces over which they have, or appear to have, no effective control, while the extent to which they are subject to this form of necessity varies according to the amount of economic and social power that one agent possesses relative to other agents. The concept of practical necessity is also shown to acknowledge how the beliefs and attitudes of social agents are, in large part, determined by social and historical processes in which they are caught up, and how the type of motivation that we attribute to such agents should recognize this fact. Another key theme is how Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, in contrast to Hobbes, explain the emergence of the conditions of a free society in terms of a historical process that is initially governed by practical necessity. The role that this form of necessity plays in explaining historical necessity invites thefollowing question: to what extent arehistorical agents genuinely subject to practical and historical necessity?

scholarly journals Soil, Blood and Identity

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zygmunt Bauman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Masses

Modern nations are products of nationalism, and can be defined only as such, rather than by their own distinctive traits – which anyway vary over an extremely wide range. Nationalism was, sociologically, an attempt made by the modern elites to recapture the allegiance (in the form of cultural hegemony) of the ‘masses’ produced by the early modern transformations and particularly by the cultural rupture between the elites and the rest of the population by the ‘civilizing process’, whose substance was the self-constitution and the self-separation of new elites legitimizing their status by reference to superior culture and knowledge. In the same way in which the modern state needed nationalism for the ‘primitive accumulation’ of authority, nationalism needed coercive powers of the state to promote the postulated dissolution of communal identities in the uniform identity of the nation. In the practice of both, there was an unallayed tension between the ‘inclusivist’ and ‘exclusivists’ prongs of the nation-state project; hence the never fully effaced link between nationalism and racism, nationalism being the racism of the intellectuals, and racism -the nationalism of the masses. Currently our part of the world undergoes the process of the separation between state and nation, effected by lesser reliance of state power on culturalist legitimation and a degree of de-territorialization of communal affiliations, which fills the efforts of nation-building, invention of heritage, tribal integration etc. with a new urgency and may lead to the sharpening of either of the two prongs of the nationalist project.

scholarly journals The Qing Policy of Self-Isolation in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Elvina Albertovna Khusnutdinova ◽  
Dmitry Evgenyevich Martynov ◽  
Yulia Aleksandrovna Martynova
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Traditional Society ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
The Universe

This article discusses the difficult period of the XVII - XIX century in China's development. As a result of Manchu taking over China, the Qing empire was formed, and historiographers differ in evaluating the results of its rule. On the one hand, the Qing dynasty inherited the sinocentric view of the world from its predecessors - China was declared as the center of the universe, and all other states as sidelined vassals, who should not be subject to equal treatment. Manchu attempted to apply this doctrine in practice, which resulted in a significant expansion of the state, the annexation of Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang, and border wars with Russia, Vietnam and Burma. The self-isolation policy led to economic stagnation while the population was growing strongly. These problems could not have been resolved within the bounds of the traditional society.

scholarly journals Radical Hope or the Moral Imperative of Images in the Work of Susan Sontag Jean-Luc Godard

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 487-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Idit Alphandary
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
Susan Sontag ◽  
Life Challenges ◽  
The World ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Form ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

In the films For Ever Mozart, In Praise of Love and I Salute You Sarajevo, Go-dard’s images introduce radical hope to the world. I will demonstrate that this hope represents an ethical posture in the world; it is identical to goodness. Radical hope is grounded in the victim’s witnessing, internalizing and remembering catastrophe, while at the same time holding onto the belief that a variation of the self will survive the disaster. In The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida argues that choosing to belong to the disaster is equivalent to giving the pure gift, or to goodness itself, and that it suggests a new form of responsibility for one’s life, as well as a new form of death. For Derrida, internalizing catastrophe is identical to death—a death that surpasses one’s means of giving. Such death can be reciprocated only by reinstating goodness or the law in the victim’s or the giver’s existence. The relation of survival to the gift of death—also a gift of life—challenges us to rethink our understanding of the act of witnessing. This relation also adds nuance to our appreciation of the intellectual, emotional and mental affects of the survival of the victim and the testimony and silence of the witness, all of which are important in my analysis of radical hope. On the one hand, the (future) testimony of the witness inhabits the victim or the ravaged self (now), on the other hand, testimony is not contemporaneous with the shattered ego. This means that testimony is anterior to the self or that the self that survives the disaster has yet to come into existence through making testimony material. Testimony thus exists before and beyond disaster merely as an ethical posture—a “putting-oneself-to-death or offering-one’s-death, that is, one’s life, in the ethical dimension of sacrifice,” in the words of Derrida. The witness is identical to the victim whose survival will include an unknown, surprising testimony or an event of witnessing. The testimony discloses the birth or revelation of a new self. And yet this new self survives through assuming the position of the witness even while s/he is purely the victim of catastrophe, being put to death owning the “kiss of death.”

scholarly journals The Worldwood of the Cinematic Image

Phainomenon ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-202
Author(s):  
José Manuel Martins
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
General Relevance ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Human Flesh ◽  
Textual Support

Abstract A close analysis of the specifically cinematographic procedure in Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Dream’ Crows reveals it as an articulated and insightful philosophical statement, endowed with general relevance conceming ‘natural’ perception, phenomenological Erlebnis, mechanical image and aesthetic rapture. The antagonism between the Benjarninian lineage of a mechanical irreducibility of the cinematic image to anthropocentric categories, and the Cartesian tradition of a film-philosophy still relying on the equally irreducible structure of the intentional act, be it the one of a deeply embodied and enworlded counsciousness, in accounting for the essential structure of film and spectator (and their relation), i.e., the antagonism between the decentering primacy of the image and the self-centered primacy of perception, cannot be settled through a simple Phenomenological shift from occularcentric, intentional counsciousness to its embodyment ‘ in-the-world’ as yet another carrier of intentionality. Still it remains to be explained what is it in the mechanical image that is able to so deeply affect the human flesh, and conversely, to what features in the human bodily experience is its mechanical other, the fascinating image, so successfuly adressing? It should be expected from the anti-Cartesianism of both the early and the late Merleau- Ponty the textual support for an approach to the essential condition of passivity in movie watching, that would be convergent with Benjamin. The Chapter ‘Le sentir’, in Phénoménologie de la perception, will offer us the proper guide to elucidate what we are already perceiving and conceiving in Kurosawa’s film, where the ex-static phenomenological body of the aesthetical contemplator ‘ enters the frame’ like the Benjaminian surgeon enters the body and like the painter - and always already like our deepest levei of ‘sensing’, previously to any act of cousciousness - ‘just looses himself in the scene before him’. The Polichinello secret of cinema watching is nonetheless too evident to be seen, and that is where Phenomenological description and reduction are still required.

Der biblische Glaube

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Held
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
Pure Form ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

This book uses the means of a phenomenology of the world based freely on Husserl and Heidegger to design a new systematic interpretation of the belief in the one God that originated in Israel and persists in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The phenomenological analysis of monotheism, as compared to other methods of interpretation, is able to render both its origin and its conceivable future more distinct and clear. The main feature of this origin is the self-distinction of the biblical belief in the one desert God, who deliberately withholds himself from any lifeworldly intuition, from the (at least in this respect) somewhat more plausible polytheism. A possible future is marked by a tragedy: antipolytheist faith, in its Christian variety, drives itself into ruin precisely because, in the age of the globalized experience of the one world, it eventually attains its pure form and in so doing succumbs to a radical oblivion of the lifeworld.

Practical Necessity and Historical Necessity in Historical Materialism

2021 ◽  
pp. 192-222
Author(s):  
David James
Keyword(s):  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Practical Necessity ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Necessity

Practical necessity is shown to play a key role in Marx’s explanation of the historical necessity to which historical materialism is committed and to facilitate the adoption of a first-person standpoint that introduces minimal assumptions about what would lead the relevant agents to act in ways that bring about certain events and states of affairs. It is argued that Marx’s commitment to the idea of historical necessity, on the one hand, and his account of the possibility of a society in which freedom and necessity are reconciled, on the other, generate a problem in relation to the historical necessity of a phase of history that precedes a post-capitalist society in which freedom and necessity are reconciled. The idea of historical necessity would not apply to this phase of history, whereas to claim that it does so implies the existence of ‘surplus’ practical necessity.

Self-Directed/Community-Supported Learning

2020 ◽  
pp. 312-332
Author(s):  
Rebecca M. Quintana ◽  
Catherine S. Hearn ◽  
Donald J. Peurach ◽  
Kathryn Gabriele
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Workforce Development ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Self ◽  
Instructional Model ◽  
Web Based ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

MOOC designers seeking to address evolving ambitions of MOOCs to support workforce development confront a fundamental design dilemma: on the one hand, the self-paced nature of online learning is efficient for busy learners working alone to acquire new knowledge and capabilities; on the other hand, the self-paced, often-isolated nature of online learning complicates designing MOOCs that motivate and sustain the type of engagement necessary to support learners in mobilizing new knowledge and capabilities in practice contexts and in collaboration with other professionals. The authors offer an account of their efforts to create opportunities for deep learning in large-scale, open-access learning environments through the creation and instantiation of a new instructional model called self-directed/community-supported learning. This model aims to draw diverse learners around the world into a community of discourse and practice through coordinated video content presentations, web-based enrichment activities, scenario-based team practice exercises, and community-wide discussion.

A conversation

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltan J. Acs
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Wealth Creation ◽  
American Values ◽  
The World ◽  
American Style ◽  
The One

This book examines the interplay between entrepreneurship and philanthropy, on the one hand, and wealth creation and opportunity, on the other. Using historical and institutional evidence, it traces the story of American philanthropy through the centuries. It shows that many philanthropists had humble beginnings, worked hard to make something of themselves, and later used their money to help improve the world. It also demonstrates how most Americans, wealthy and otherwise, historically have exemplified an unstated principle that lies at the heart of American-style capitalism: that those who amass wealth must continually create opportunities by investing in society. The book makes a distinction between philanthropy and charity and argues that philanthropy has the potential to mitigate inequalities as it softens the hard edges of the free market. Finally, it describes philanthropy as consistent with the self-made American values of individual freedom.

scholarly journals Akademicka „międzynarodówka” kobieca? Solidarność, rywalizacja i samotność w Szwajcarii (1870–1900)

Wielogłos ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 5-34
Author(s):  
Monika Bednarczuk
Keyword(s):  
Female Students ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Text Corpus ◽  
National Group ◽  
The World ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts ◽  
The One ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg

An Academic “Internationale” of Women? Solidarity, Rivalry, and Loneliness in Switzerland (1870−1900) This paper examines the experience of the first generations of women studying in Switzerland. The text corpus consists of autobiographical accounts, letters, and fiction by German, Russian, and Polish authors. Among the first female students in Switzerland, there were such figures as Vera Figner, Olga Lubatovich, Franziska Tiburtius, Ricarda Huch, Rosa Luxemburg, Anna Tomaszewicz-Dobrska, Gabriela Iwanowska-Balicka, Zofia Daszyńska-Golińska, and Józefa Joteyko. The paper discusses the issues of (international) female cooperation and solidarity, on the one hand, and, on the other, it highlights the disparity between the self and the world, as well as the efforts to maintain the separateness of the national group.

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