Philosophy & Social Criticism

I argue for an approach to Philosophical Fragments that allows it to be philosophical (as opposed to theological) and fragmentary (as opposed to systematic), and that pays particular attention to the fragments, or crumbs, that seem least important. One such overlooked crumb is the theory of merely human education in the book—education that does not enlist God as the teacher, where humans simply try to teach and learn from each other. I argue that Philosophical Fragments defends this theory of education with several reductio ad absurdum proofs that are especially useful because they clarify why merely human education so often fails. Finally I apply the theory of merely human education in Philosophical Fragments to Kierkegaard’s authorship as a whole and argue that it gives us a paradigm for understanding all of Kierkegaard’s texts that is more fundamental than the distinction between direct and indirect communication.

I argue that Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy articulates a radical conception of hope. According to Lear, radical hope is ‘directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is’. Given Adorno’s claim that the current world is radically evil, and that we cannot know or even imagine what the good is, it is plausible that his conception of hope must be radical in this sense. I develop this argument through an analysis of (a) Adorno’s engagement with Kant’s conception of hope, (b) Adorno’s references to hope and (c) his critical diagnosis of a metaphysical need for hope. Having demonstrated that Adorno must reject both ordinary and Kantian hope, I examine why Adorno thinks that we still may have reasons for hope. I also show that Adorno’s conception of hope differs from Lear’s in one important respect.

This article uses Foucault’s lecture courses to illuminate his reading of Marx’s Capital in Discipline and Punish. Foucault finds in Marx’s account of cooperation a precedent for his own approach to power. In turn, Foucault helps us rethink the concepts of productive force and labour power in Marx. Foucault is shown to be particularly interested in one of Marx’s major themes in Capital, parts III–IV: the subsumption of labour under capital. In Discipline and Punish and The Punitive Society, Foucault offers a genealogy of the forms of labour power (Arbeitskraft) and productive force (Produktivkraft). One of his central problems is to understand how labour power is converted in productive force and how, prior to that, productive subjects who can properly bear and dispose of their labour power are formed. Foucault’s reading of Capital resonates with those currents of Marx interpretation today that seek to repoliticize the concept of productive force and to offer a materialist account of subject formation.

This essay focuses on the interrelationship of regulation and private life in human rights. It argues three main points. (1) Article 8 connects the question of protection of private lives and privacies with the question of their management. Thus, Article 8 orients regulatory practices to private lives and privacies. (2) Article 8’s holders are autonomous to the extent that laws respect their private lives and privacies. They are not autonomous in a ‘pre-political’ sense, where we might expect legal rules to protect an already autonomous private life or privacy. (3) Article 8 does not simply prohibit or permit acts. In certain cases, it also ‘enables’ acts. Then, this essay introduces the idea of oikopolitics. This idea allows us to capture these three points in a useful manner. By this idea, this essay means the context (a) where the interpretation of privacy reaches out to broader social practices and norms and (b) where the status of rights-holders living their private lives makes them objects of attention.