'Knowledge' tag archive

Tom Holert, Knowledge Beside Itself: Contemporary Art’s Epistemic Politics (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2020). 278 pp., €22.00 pb., 978 3 94336 597 9 Tom Holert remarks near the beginning of Knowledge Beside Itself that art has traditionally been defined in contradistinction to knowledge, at least scientific or systematic knowledge. How then to understand the proliferation of […]

Dossier bachelard and the concept of problematic What is a problematic? Patrice maniglier Gaston Bachelard’s 1949 book, Le Rationalisme appliqué (RA; best translated as Reason Applied), is essential to an understanding of his work, and Bachelard is essential to an understanding of twentieth-century French philosophy. That this book has never been translated into English shows […]

What does Bachelard mean by rationalisme appliqué? Mary tiles While Bachelard’s Rationalisme appliqué can readily be translated as Applied Rationalism, neither the French nor the English are very revealing of the position being advocated. In particular one would be led very far astray if one were to think of rationalism as a philosophical position which […]

Corrationalism and the problematic Gaston bachelard If the fear of being accused of psychologism were not so keenly felt by epistemologists they would no doubt pay more attention to the problem of the acquisition of ideas.* They would then notice that to each new idea there remains attached a perspective of acquisition, an approach structure […]

Comment Pirate Radical Philosophy Gary hall Pirate … from the Latin pirata (-ae; pirate)… transliteration of the Greek piratis (pirate; πειρατής) from the verb pirao (make an attempt, try, test, get experience, endeavour, attack; πειράω). … In modern Greek… piragma: teasing [πείραγμα] … pirazo: tease, give trouble [πειράζω].1 Much has been written about the ‘crisis […]

Dossier Thealthusser–Rancière Controversy Introduction to Althusser’s ‘Student Problems’ Warren montag For those familiar with Louis Althusser’s published work, reading his relatively early essay entitled ‘Student Problems’ may be a surprising and even disconcerting experience. Part of the surprise lies in the fact that the essay exists at all. Although it was published in Nouvelle Critique […]

Revealing the Truth of Art Andrew Bowie Philosophical discussion of art in English tends not to aim its sights particularly high, and some Anglo-Saxon philosophy has effectively denied art any serious philosophical significance at all. In this light a contemporary German book* which wishes to argue for the truth of art over that of the […]

Feminism, Humanism and Postmodernism Kate Soper I shall not begin, as I probably should, by offering to define my terms. Instead, I shall acknowledge that I have brought together three concepts admitted on all sides to be well-nigh indefinable. Or, if they are definable, they are so only by reference to a particular thinker’s usage […]

Knowledge as a Social Phenomenon Sean Sayers The idea that knowledge is a social phenomenon is no longer either novel or unfamiliar. With the growth of the social sciences, we are accustomed to seeing ideas and beliefs in social and historical terms, and trying to understand how they arise and why they take the forms […]

The Return of the Subject in late Foucault Peter Dews The following essay is an initial attempt to extend the comparison of the thought of Michel Foucault with that of the Frankfurt School, begun in my Logics of Disintegration (Verso, 1987), to cover the work ofFoucault’s last phase. It does not claim to be a […]

Women and the High Priests of Reason Janna Thompson Introduction Women are not supposed to be truly rational. The conviction that women can at best worship in the outer precincts of the temple of reason has a long tradition. It has survived philosophical and social revolutions. The idea is not that women are incapable of […]

of them has much in the way of arguments. Q. r’;hat do you make of Donald Davidson and the contemporary philosophy of action, which has been taken very seriously on the continent? A. I never found it very interesting. It seems to me to be a hang over from the problem of free will. I’m […]

Scientific Explanation and Human Emancipation Roy Bhaskar 1. Introduction What connections, if any, exist between explanations in the human sciences and the project of human emancipation? I want to addr~ss this issue in the light of the transcendental realist reconstruction of science (2) and the critical naturalism which that reconstruction enables (3). My main target […]

SCIENTifiC SOCIALISM, Jl POSITIVIST DELUSION? Russell Reat In Radical Philosophy 21, Roy Edgley replied to some criticisms I made, in RP16, of his article on ‘Science, Social Science, and Socialist Science’ in RP15. I don’t finj his comments at all convincing, and I will try to say why. At the end, I will briefly indicate […]

ALTHUSSBR’S BPISTBMOLOGY: Ihe limils of Ihe Iheo..y of Iheo..elical p ..aclice PaulPatton concepts and theses which would permit the demarcation of science from other kinds of theoretical discourse. Dialectical materialism, then, was thought to be the philosophical theory Within which the scientific character of historical materialism could be demonstrated. Althusser’s marxist philosophy, however, was no […]

and of universal hUmanism, but by shortsighted against incompr~hensible neglect of the workers’ education, against authoritarian relatonships particular interests of the ruling apparatus of within the League of Communists, against the intropower. It is very characteristic that parallel duction of censorship and bureaucratic pressures with the development of the campa~gn against us for self-censorship, against […]

” What ue lhe llbas of Science? Aaron.Sloman I ~ , If we are to understand the nature of science, ·”course much wider than science. We all, including we must see it as an activity and achievement of infants and children, aim to extend our knowledge the human mind alongside others, such as the a~d […]

Joseph Dj-elzgeD This article is the first of a series on neglected philosophers. Some subjects will, like Dietzgen, be largely unknown, others simply forgotten by British philosophy departments. Later articles will (we hope) include introductions to Merleau-Ponty, Cassirer, Collingwood and Fouca~lt. Other suggestions would be welcome JOSEPH DIETZGEN is indeed a neglected philosopher. How many […]

Hegelian Marxism than to the relations that exist in Althusser’s thought. He attacks the latter as ‘philosophy’s police mentality’ but no more. The difference is that between a clear and rigorous analytic distinction between the concepts that combine into a theory – a distinction that Al thus.ser tries to maintain – and a relationship of […]

Richard Turner The concept ‘dialectical reason’, as used by ‘marxist’ theorists, contains buried within it a number of theoretical problems, problems which have significance for where why and how we may use dialectical reason. There are three issues, in particular, on which reflective clarity is both always needed and often lacking. Firstly, what precisely distinguishes […]

THE EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY TOADULTS Noel Parker Even in the least partisan formulation of its objectives, Radical Philosophy believes in a philosophy ‘relevant to people’s wider lives and interests’. Though many of us may find or hope to find guidance for radical political or social activity in the philosophy we study, the fact remains […]