In this essay, I select three privileged examples (or constellations of examples) which arise from my own experience of working with Hegel and his Marxian continuation, by reading and, so to speak, re-writing his sentences, uncovering their latent prerequisites and their ambivalent implications [continue reading here]
What follows is a reflection on Adorno’s philosophy, particularly as it unfolds in Negative Dialectics, and an exploration of the pivotal role Hegel plays in shaping his thought. [Continue reading here]
Opposition to Hegelianism constitutes a powerful tool for Deleuze (and Guattari) in thinking about politics, and consequently allows us to formulate problems which are undoubtedly still our own today. [Continue reading here]
With Jürgen Habermas’s death, one of the last intellectual giants of the twentieth century has left us. It will be hard to think of Germany and Europe without his voice and his prose. [Continue reading here]
Like Marcuse, I am convinced of the emancipatory potential of Hegelian philosophy, and though in my recent work I have made a turn to Kant, I have never left Hegel behind. [Continue reading here]
Zohran Mamdani is the model of a political actor and thinker who is engaged in a new practice of philosophy. He is a critical theorist/political actor who is constantly confronting concrete political projects with philosophical principles, and vice versa. To elaborate on what I have in mind, I draw on the writings of the postwar French philosopher Louis Althusser, who, throughout his deeply problematic and troubled life, constantly struggled to provide the Left with a philosophical foundation and, in the process, developed one model of what he called “a new philosophical practice.”
What is the relationship between the form and political content of theological and philosophical traditions? This essay focuses on the early works of the French philosopher Louis Althusser, who, in the postwar period, tried to reconcile Christianity with Leftist politics and Hegelian philosophy. Althusser demonstrates how form and content can be linked, but in the end, more than anything, the essay underscores the need for the Left to develop a new comprehensive philosophy to inspire political action today. [Continue reading here]
In this essay, I explore the far Right’s embrace of Lenin. I return to the Hegelian roots of Lenin’s politics to explain what he meant by “smashing the state machine.” I then argue that the Left should reclaim Lenin’s dialectics and his call, in the April Theses, for a second wave of social movements to overcome President Trump’s revolution. [Read more…]