The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here. It is not incidental that the apologists for these necropolitical regimes as they were in the midst of their formation always considered them “humane” in some ironic, if not perverse, sense of the word. The…
Max Weber
Neoliberalism, Populism, And Modern Transforms of Sovereignty – From The Doctrine of Discovery To The Capitalist “Thaumaturgy”, Part 2 (Carl Raschke)
The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here. Sovereignty and the Modern Doctrine of Dominion The advent of a brave, new world bifurcated between neoliberalism and populism, while bringing about the erosion of politics itself, has in the same breath led to the…
The Sociological Deficit Of Contemporary Critical Theory – Axel Honneth’s Theory Of Recognition, Part 1 (Piet Strydom)
The following is the first installment of a four-part series. From his doctoral work published in extended form in 1985 under the title of Kritik der Macht to interviews as late as 2003 and 2009, Axel Honneth repeats the claim that the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory as a…
The Dialectic Of Enlightenment From A Postsecular Lens, Part 4 (Roger Green)
I have been working through a reading of Max Horkheimer and Thedor Adorno’s classic work of Critical Theory, Dialectic of Enlightenment. I am particularly interested in the use of literary concepts in their critique. As we have seen in earlier posts, their first few chapters moved historically, seeing the core…
Is Political History Fundamentally About the State? Part 1 (Keir Martland)
The following is the first installment of a two-part series. According to Erika Cudworth and John McGovern in The Modern State: Theories and Ideologies, in politics the state is defined as a political community living under a single system of government in the most basic terms. Additionally, the state is…
Beyond Religious Ideas – The Legacy Of Max Weber In Critical Theory And Critical Religion (Joel Harrison)
The following is the first of a two-part series. In his essay “The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion,” (141-62) Donald Wiebe heralds a courageous return to the Enlightenment principles which once characterized the “science of religion,” particularly in the nineteenth century. Just a year after he…