What's Left of Philosophy

In this episode we work through some of the ideas laid out in Part 1 of Raymond Geuss’ 2008 Philosophy and Real Politics. It’s a refreshingly clear-eyed argument for what he calls the realist approach in political philosophy, which tries to attend to the messiness of actually existing societies, the opaque and invested people who make them up, and the shifting, contradictory values they hold. We’re talking Hobbes meets Lenin meets Nietzsche here, folks. Leave your rational decision theory and normative idealism at the door. patreonn.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphil References: Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode, we kick off a new series on the concept of utopia by taking a look at the guy who invented the word, Thomas More. We discuss how his wonderfully satirical 1516 book Utopia was written in response to the enclosures happening in England, which forced masses of peasants into unemployment and misery and created the conditions for early capitalist agriculture. His fictional island nation of Utopia thrives without private property, but More’s real trick is how he reveals the wildly utopian and fantastical nature of our own capitalist world order. Plus Owen invents the phrase ‘professional social improvement class’, which is just great. patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphil References: Thomas More, Utopia, trans. Robert M. Adams, ed. George M. Logan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Karl Kautsky, Thomas More and his Utopia, trans. Henry James Stenning, accessed at the Marxist Internet Archive: <https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1888/more/index.htm>. Quentin Skinner, “Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and the language of Renaissance humanism,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Padgen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Alexandre Matheron, “Spinozism and the Breakdown of Thomist Politics: Machiavellianism and Utopia,” in Politics, Ontology, and Knowledge in Spinoza, trans. and ed. Filippo Del Lucchese, David Maruzzella, and Gil Morejón (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020). Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode, we read Jean-Paul Sartre's Search for a Method. We begin by working through Sartre’s puzzling claim that Marxism is this era’s one true philosophy and then branch out into broader questions concerning what it is we are trying to do when we philosophize and whether Sartre was right not to give up on capital-T “Truth.” Other topics include Sartre’s conception of freedom, the relationship of the individual to history, and the problems of dogmatic Marxism up to the present day. This one is sure to delight, and it's just the start for us with old J-P!patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphilReferences:Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Vintage Books, 1963)Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! In this surprise gift of an episode, we’re visited by the spectre of Jacques Derrida and his deconstruction of the gift. Like the Ghost of Christmas Past, he forces us to ask whether we have given enough, whether we know how to give without reciprocity, and why it is so hard to give in the first place. The gang reflects on the phenomenology of gift-giving and the insidious politics of philanthropy, and even takes shots at the big guy himself: Santa Claus. So sit back, grab your eggnog, and celebrate the holidays with your four favorite philosophers. ‘Tis the season!patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphilReferences:Jacques Derrida, Given Time I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992)Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode we get together to discuss a new article by our very own Will Paris! We talk about Will’s critical and materialist conception of consciousness, the role of awareness and normative expectations in processes of social transformation, and why utopia is involved in knowledge production. We talk Bloch, we talk Hayek: you know, the usuals. It’s a classic original crew set, recorded live on stream!patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphilReferences:William Paris, “Crisis Consciousness, Utopian Consciousness, and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology (forthcoming)Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode we welcome Dr. Ashley Bohrer to discuss Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence”. We talk about the relationship between violence and the law, reflect on the limits of institutional power for emancipatory projects, and get really real about the spiritual dimension of justice. Keep your messianism weak, comrades.patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphilashleybohrer.comPedagogies for Peace podcast: https://kroc.nd.edu/research/intersectionality/pedagogies-for-peace-podcast/References:Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” trans. Edmund Jephcott, in Selected Writings Volume I: 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

This episode dives behind the Iron Curtain into socialist Albania in discussion with Lea Ypi on her new memoir “Free.” The crew explores what has been gained and what has been lost in the transition to capitalism. Lea explains why some of the symmetry may surprise us and why Marxism is a philosophy of human freedom.patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphilReferences:Lea Ypi, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Penguin Random House, 2021)Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com 

In this episode, the crew takes on a beloved figure of the academic ‘left’: Michel Foucault. The discussion gravitates around Foucault’s work in the early 1970’s on the ‘punitive society’, power as civil war, and popular rebellion. This post-‘68 period of his life and work is often seen as his most politically ‘radical’, both because of his activist involvement in the Prisons Information Group (GIP) and because he directly engages with Marxist discourse and thought. Nevertheless, the conversation quickly turns skeptical (to put it mildly). We question both the explanatory power and the political stakes of his historical studies: What is the principle of connection between the often remote historical discourses and events he examines and present conditions of life? What are the consequences of rejecting causal explanations of historical development? Above all, how salient and clarifying are his histories for emancipatory struggles in the present? We try to answer these questions, while poking a bit of fun at our Foucauldian friends and comrades. Oh and we talk about the CIA’s alleged awareness of the increasing hegemony of French theory in the academic left—apparently they loved that for us.Listen to the full episode on our Patreon!patreon.com/leftofphilosophyFollow us @leftofphilReferences:Michel Foucault, Penal Theories and Institutions: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1971-1972, ed. Bernard E. Harcourt et. al., trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador)Michel Foucault, The Punitive Society: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972-1973, ed. Bernard E. Harcourt, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave MacMillan)Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode, we welcome Professor Melvin Rogers of Brown University to discuss his forthcoming book The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought. We focus on the often elided importance of character in social struggle and transformation, the tension between optimism and pessimism in African American political thought, and the centrality of rhetoric and persuasion in this tradition. It is not to be missed!patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphilReferencesRogers, Melvin. Forthcoming. The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode we are joined by Joel Michael Reynolds for a wide-ranging discussion about disability theory. We dig into the relationship between disability and white supremacy, the idea of politics as differential capacitation, genomics and medicalization, justice as equity, and more. Naturally we put full-bore social constructivism on blast. Leftists gotta be materialists, you know?patreon.com/leftofphilosophy | @leftofphilReferences:Joel Michael Reynolds, “The Meaning of Ability and Disability.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 33.3 (2019).Joel Michael Reynolds, “Genopower: On Genomics, Disability, and Impairment.” Foucault Studies 31 (forthcoming).Joel Michael Reynolds, “Disability and White Supremacy.” Critical Philosophy of Race (forthcoming).Joel has also graciously compiled a comprehensive list of literature related to disability theory and politics, which you can find here.Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com