In Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism: Crisis, Body, World, Ian H. Angus investigates the crisis of reason in a contemporary context. Beginning with Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Angus connects the phenomenology of human motility to Marx’s ontology of labor in Capital and shows its basis in natural fecundity (excess). He argues that the formalization of reason creates an inability to foster differentiated community as expected by both Husserl and Marx and that the formalization of human motility by the regime of value reveals the ontological productivity of natural fecundity, showing that ecology is the contemporary exemplary science. Addressing the crisis requires a philosophy of technology (especially digital technology) and a dialogue between cultural-civilizational lifeworlds, which surpasses Husserl’s assumption that Europe is the home of reason. Angus’s overall conception of phenomenology is Socratic in that it is concerned with the presuppositions and applications of knowledge-forms in their lifeworld grounding. He further shows that the contemporary event is the epochal confrontation between planetary technology and place-based Indigeneity. This book lays out the fundamental concepts of a systematic phenomenological Marxian philosophy.

Marxism and Phenomenology: The Dialectical Horizons of Critique, edited by Bryan Smyth and Richard Westerman, offers new perspectives on the possibility of a philosophical outlook that combines Marxism and phenomenology in the critique of capitalism. Although Marxism’s focus on impersonal social structures and phenomenology’s concern with lived experience can make these traditions appear conceptually incompatible, the potential critical force of a theoretical reconciliation inspired several attempts in the twentieth century to articulate a phenomenological Marxism. Updating and extending this approach, the contributors to this volume identify and develop new and previously overlooked connections between the traditions, offering new perspectives on Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger; exploring themes such as alienation, reification, and ecology; and examining the intersection of Marxism and phenomenology in figures such as Michel Henry, Walter Benjamin, and Frantz Fanon. These glimpses of a productive reconciliation of the respective strengths of phenomenology and Marxism offer promising possibilities for illuminating and resolving the increasingly intense social crises of capitalism in the twenty-first century.

Martin Heidegger and Karl Marx remain two of the most influential thinkers in philosophy, in political science and other social sciences, and in the humanities. Yet there has never been a full-length study in English of the relationship between their ideas, and there has only been one study in German (from 1966). A Productive Dialogue fills this gap and contradicts the widely held assumption that Heidegger had no significant engagement with Marx. Hemming focuses on four related areas of inquiry—Heidegger’s reading of Marx; Marx’s relation to G. W. F. Hegel; Heidegger’s disastrous political involvement with National Socialism; and the significance of Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and Friedrich Nietzsche for the politics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A Productive Dialogue explores the understanding of political processes, systems, and behavior that animates both thinkers.

The Risk of Freedom presents an in-depth analysis of the philosophy of Jan Patočka, one of the most influential Central European thinkers of the twentieth century, examining both the phenomenological and ethical-political aspects of his work. In particular, Francesco Tava takes an original approach to the problem of freedom, which represents a recurring theme in Patočka’s work, both in his early and later writings. Freedom is conceived of as a difficult and dangerous experience. In his deep analysis of this particular problem, Tava identifies the authentic ethical content of Patočka’s work and clarifies its connections with phenomenology, history of philosophy, politics and dissidence. The Risk of Freedom retraces Patočka’s philosophical journey and elucidates its more problematic and less evident traits, such as his original ethical conception, his political ideals and his direct commitment as a dissident.

This book is concerned with the connection between the formal structure of agency and the formal structure of genocide. The contributors employ philosophical approaches to explore the idea of genocidal violence as a structural element in the world. Do mechanisms or structures in nation-states produce types of national citizens that are more susceptible to genocidal projects? There are powerful arguments within philosophy that in order to be the subjects of our own lives, we must constitute ourselves specifically as national subjects and organize ourselves into nation states. Additionally, there are other genocidal structures of human society that spill beyond historically limited episodes. The chapters in this volume address the significance—moral, ethical, political—of the fact that our very form of agency suggests or requires these structures. The contributors touch on topics including birthright citizenship, contemporary mass incarceration, anti-black racism, and late capitalism. Logics of Genocide will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy, critical theory, genocide studies, Holocaust and Jewish studies, history, and anthropology.

In English-speaking countries Victor Kraft is known principally for his account of the Vienna Circle. ! That group of thinkers has exercised in recent decades a significant influence not only on the philosophy of the western world, but also, at least indirectly, on that of the East, where there is now taking place a slow but clearly irresistible erosion of dogmatic Marxism by ways of think ing derived from a modem scientific conception of the world. Kraft's work as historian of the Vienna Circle has led to his being classed, without further qua1ification, as a neo-positivist philosopher. It is, however, only partially correct to count him as such. To be sure, he belonged to the group named, he took part in its meetings, and he drew from it suggestions central to his own work; but he did not belong to the hard core of the Circle and was a con scious opponent of certain radical tendencies espoused, at least from time to time, by some of its members. Evidence of this is provided by the theory of value now presented in English translation, since no less a thinker than Rudolf Carnap had, originally at any rate, obeyed a very narrowly conceived criterion of sense and declared value judgements to be senseless.

Crossing Borders: Beyond Phenomenology and Critique is a collection of original and cutting- edge essays by thirteen outstanding and diverse Canadian and International scholars that engage with Professor Ian Angus' rich contributions to three distinct, albeit overlapping, fields: Canadian Studies, Phenomenology and Critical Theory, and Communication and Media Studies. These contributions are distinct, unique, and have had resonance across the intellectual landscape over the thirty years that Angus has been teaching communications, philosophy, Canadian Studies, theory, and humanities first in the United States and then in Canada.

Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics. The contributions show that contemporary phenomenological investigations of various forms of oppression and domination develop new critical-analytical tools that complement those of competing theoretical approaches, such as analytics of power, critical theory, and liberal philosophy of justice. More specifically, the chapters pay close attention to the following methodological themes: the conditions for the possibility of phenomenology as critique; critique as radical reflection and free thinking; eidetic analysis and reflection of transcendental facticity and contingency of the self, of others, of the world; phenomenology and immanent critique; the self-reflective dimensions of phenomenology; and phenomenological analysis and self-transfermation and world transformation. All in all, the book explicates the multiple critical resources phenomenology has to offer, precisely in virtue of its distinctive methods and methodological commitments, and thus shows its power in tackling timely issues of social injustice. Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in phenomenology, Continental philosophy, and critical theory.

Originally published in English in 1984, this collection of essays documents a dialogue between phenomenology and Marxism, with the contributors representing a cross-section from the two traditions. The theoretical and historical presuppositions of the phenomenology inaugurated by Husserl are very different from those of the much older Marxist tradition, yet, as these essays show, there are definite points of contact, communication and exchange between the two traditions.

In Marx on Capitalism, James Furner offers a new answer to the fundamental question of Marxism: can a thesis connecting capital, the state and classes with the desirability of socialism be developed from an analysis of the commodity? The Interaction-Recognition-Antinomy Thesis is anchored in a systematic retranslation of Marx’s writings. It provides an antinomy-based strategy for grounding the value of social humanity in working-class agency, facilitates a dialectical derivation of political representation, and condemns capitalism as unjust without appeal to rights.