scholarly journals Kritik in der Krise

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Critical Political Theory

In times of crises, critical thinking needs to be maintained and fostered. This volume on critical political theory in the coronavirus pandemic brings together 13 contributions that offer a variety of perspectives on the interrelationship between critique and crisis. What are the consequences of the current crisis for critical political thinking—and what contribution can critical theory offer to our understanding of current challenges? With contributions by Clara Arnold, Simon Duncker, Oliver Flügel-Martinsen, Lea Jonas, Kristoffer Klement, Jamila Maldous, Noah Marschner, Samia Mohammed, Malte Pasler, Demokrat Ramadani, Gerrit Tiefenthal, Andreas Vasilache and Nele Weiher.

Human Nature, Non-human Nature, and Needs

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Biro
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Communicative Rationality ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Needs

This chapter assesses the relevance of Frankfurt School critical theory for contemporary environmental political theory. Early Frankfurt School thinkers such as Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse developed a critique of instrumental rationality that provides a powerful framework for understanding the domination of nature in modernity, including an inability to articulate and defend human needs. Habermas subsequently attempts to mitigate this totalizing critique, countering instrumental rationality with a focus on communicative rationality. This Habermasian turn both provides new openings and forecloses certain possibilities for environmental political theory; deliberative democracy is emphasized, but with a renewed commitment to anthropocentrism. The chapter then explores whether Habermas’s communicative turn could be “greened,” either through an expansion of the subjects of communicative rationality, or by critically examining the extent to which human beings themselves can articulate their genuine needs.

Political Emancipation

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-121
Author(s):  
Joan Wallach Scott
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Formal Equality ◽  
Political Emancipation ◽  
The Law ◽  
Women's Emancipation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

This chapter considers the contradictions of women's emancipation in light of the American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions. It shows how the resistance to women's citizenship had less to do with the necessarily slow but inevitable progress of liberal democratic ideas than it did with a contradiction at the very heart of the political thinking that articulated them—a political thinking integral to the discourse of secularism. Liberal political theory postulated the sameness of all individuals as the key to their formal equality—abstracted from their circumstances there was no discernable difference among them, they stood as equals before the law. At the same time there were differences that were thought to refuse abstraction. These were people in a state of dependency, such as propertyless peasants, wage laborers, women, children, slaves. Therefore, they could not be counted as autonomous individuals—autonomy, after all, was at the heart of the very definition of individuality.

Does Queer Political Theory Have a Future?

Shame ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan Popa
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Future ◽  
Eve Sedgwick ◽  
Lauren Berlant

In this final chapter I reflect upon the possibilities unleashed by recent scholarship in queer political theory. First, I discuss the future of queer political thinking by insisting that the act of interpretation has to draw on how one becomes both irritated by and surprised by scholarly arguments. As an affective practice, irritation offers the incentive to challenge what is already known while the surprise opens up a new territory for investigation. Second, to enact my interpretative method, I critically engage with the work of Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, José Esteban Muñoz, and Lauren Berlant to argue that queer practices can articulate an equality-oriented vision of politics.

scholarly journals How to do realistic political theory (and why you might want to)

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Hall
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Basic Features ◽  
Political Value

In recent years, a number of realist thinkers have charged much contemporary political theory with being idealistic and moralistic. While the basic features of the realist counter-movement are reasonably well understood, realism is still considered a critical, primarily negative creed which fails to offer a positive, alternative way of thinking normatively about politics. Aiming to counteract this general perception, in this article I draw on Bernard Williams’s claims about how to construct a politically coherent conception of liberty from the non-political value of freedom. I do this because Williams’s argument provides an illuminating example of the distinctive nature of realist political thinking and its attractions. I argue that Williams’s account of realist political thinking challenges the orthodox moralist claim that normative political arguments must be guided by an ideal ethical theory. I then spell out the repercussions Williams’s claims about the significance of political opposition and non-moralised accounts of motivation have for our understanding of the role and purpose of political theory. I conclude by defending the realist claim that action-guiding political theory should accordingly take certain features of our politics as given, most centrally the reality of political opposition and the passions and experiences that motivate them. On this reading political realism offers a viable way of thinking about political values which cannot be understood in terms of the categories of intellectual separation – ideal/nonideal or fact-insensitive/fact-sensitive – that have marked political theory in recent years.

Critical political theory and moral development

1977 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
HerbertG. Reid ◽  
ErnestJ. Yanarella
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Political Theory
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