STALIN AND MARXISM: A RESEARCH NOTE

This article concerns the research done by the author in Stalin's private library. The notes made in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin suggest that until the end of his life Stalin felt himself in general agreement with these "classics." The choice of books and the notes support the thesis that, despite his historical interest and his identification with some of the tsars as powerful rulers, Stalin always continued to consider himself a Marxist, and that he was uninterested in other systems of thought, including those of traditional Russia.     

Hume and vital materialism

ABSTRACT

Hume was not a philosopher famed for what are sometimes called ‘ontological commitments'. Nevertheless, few contemporary scholars doubt that Hume was an atheist, and the present essay tenders the view that Hume was favourably disposed to the 'vital materialism' of post-Newtonian natural philosophers in England, Scotland and France. Both internalist arguments, collating passages from a range of Hume's works, and externalist arguments, reviewing the likely sources of his knowledge of ancient materialism and his association with his materialistic contemporaries are employed.     

Leon Trotsky’s Contribution to the Marxist Theory of History

Trotsky’s contribution to historical materialism has been subject to two broadly defined critical assessments. Detractors have tended to dismiss his interpretation of Marxism as a form of productive force determinism, while admirers have tended to defend his Marxism as a voluntarist negation of the same. In this essay I argue that both of these opinions share an equally caricatured interpretation of Second International Marxism against which Trotsky is compared. By contrast, I argue that Trotsky’s Marxism can best be understood as a powerful application and deepening of the strongest elements of Second International methodology to a novel set of problems. Thus, against Trotsky’s admirers, I locate his Marxism as both emerging out of, in addition to breaking with, Second International Marxism; while, against his critics, I argue that it was precisely the strengths of this earlier interpretation of Marxism that informed Trotsky’s powerful contributions to historical materialism: his concept of combined and uneven development and his discussion of the role of individual agents within the Marxist interpretation of history.     

Kant on materialism

ABSTRACT

In this paper I argue that Kant’s complex argument against materialism involves not only his generic commitment to the existence of non-spatio-temporal and thus non-material things in themselves (which follows directly from Transcendental Idealism), but also considerations pertaining to reason and the subject of our thoughts. Specifically, I argue that because Kant conceives of reason in such a way that it demands a commitment to the existence of the unconditioned so that we can account for whatever conditioned objects we encounter in experience, our thoughts, which are also conditioned, require something unconditioned that, because it is unconditioned, cannot be material. In this way, Kant’s attitude towards materialism is based not only on abstract features of his metaphysics and epistemology, but also on specific features that were under serious discussion in the early modern period.     

The Theological Foundation of Hobbesian Physics: A Defence of Corporeal God

In 1668, the octogenarian Hobbes finally affirmed openly a doctrine that was unavoidable given his longstanding embrace of both theism and materialism: God is corporeal. However, this doctrine has generally been downplayed or dismissed by scholars, who have alleged that Hobbes's corporeal theism is irreconcilable with his more orthodox theological pronouncements or with his fundamental metaphysical principles. This paper defends the coherence of Hobbes's corporeal God against particularly vigorous criticisms of Douglas Jesseph and others. The aim of the paper is not, however, to situate Hobbes's deity safely within the boundaries of seventeenth century protestant theology, as defenders of Hobbesian theism have often wanted to do. Rather, the paper places the corporeal God at the metaphysical foundations of Hobbes's natural philosophy. Despite his early reticence about theological speculation, Hobbes eventually relied on God to provide a continuous, resistance-free source of motion or conatus to a material plenum whose parts would otherwise quickly slow to an infinitesimal crawl. Hobbes's late theology, while certainly heterodox in content, is not so different in function from that of contemporaries like René Descartes and Henry More, whose religious sincerity is rarely questioned. Hobbes' corporeal deity deserves a place in the seventeenth century pantheon.     

Sub-Abstract Bodies: The Epistemic and Ethical Role of the Body-Mind Relationship in Adorno’s Philosophy

Abstract

The aim of this paper is threefold. In the first place, I should like to show that Adorno’s philosophy is dependent, to a degree perhaps not always directly recognized in the literature, on a deeply contentious view on the relationship between the mind and the body. In order to show this, I explore and bring out the epistemic and ethical stakes for Adorno’s theory of the relationship between mind and body. Secondly, I move to better articulate precisely what Adorno’s view on the nature of this relationship is. I hold that his position revolves around positing a porous boundary between the domains of the somatic and the cognitive. In closing, I show that Adorno’s account relies on this domain boundary being unidirectionally porous, in that determination of somatic impulses by cognitive content does not seem a live option for Adorno. I go on to note that this smuggles in a dubious position which does a lot of unearned work. The stakes which his implicit account of the body and mind relationship served to secure thereby come once more to look highly vulnerable.     

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM: THE IMPORTANCE OF A DISTINCTION

Abstract. John Caiazza's interesting argument is an important one and deserves a close hearing. However, his article could be more forceful if he would distinguish more carefully between science on the one hand and “scientific secularism” and “materialism” on the other.     

Eighteenth-century French materialism clockwise and anticlockwise

ABSTRACT

Because of their reliance on mechanistic metaphors and analogies referring to machines, the eighteenth-century materialists La Mettrie and Diderot have sometimes been described as ‘mechanistic materialists’. However, if one pays close attention to the ways in which mechanical analogies and metaphors were used in eighteenth-century French materialism, one sees that the recourse to these metaphors and comparisons in no way implies mechanism in the sense of physicalist reductionism. Instead, early instances of these comparisons appear in arguments pointing out that technological artefacts have functional properties which are not reducible to their physical properties. When La Mettrie compares man to a machine in his L'homme machine, he insists at the same time on the fact that, just like a machine, man is a cultural artefact. According to La Mettrie, man's very existence depends on language and culture, and it is precisely this dependence on culture which distinguishes him from other animals. However, La Mettrie's sceptical stance renders his position towards physicalistic reductionism ambiguous. Diderot, who by contrast was interested in the distinction between the living and non-living, distances himself from the ambiguous use of mechanistic metaphors and insists on the irreducibility of physiological and biological phenomena to the physical.     

Wilhelm Reich in Soviet Russia: Psychoanalysis,Marxism, and the Stalinist reaction

Abstract

In 1929, Wilhelm Reich lectured on “Psychoanalysis as a natural science” before the Communist Academy in Moscow; he was the only Freudian-trained Central European psychoanalyst to do so. That same year, his article “Dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis” was published in the Academy's journal, Under the Banner of Marxism, in both Moscow and Berlin. By this time, Reich's involvement with political activism aligned with the Austrian Communist Party was increasing, while simultaneously psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union was in decline. Our paper places these events in their proper historical context and includes a discussion of the various attempts to determine the compatibility of psychoanalysis and Marxism. We offer analyses of both the article, “Dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis,” and the lecture, “Psychoanalysis as a natural science,” and the reactions to both by Reich's Russian critics. We show the ways in which responses to his lecture foreshadow what becomes the standard Soviet assessment of psychoanalysis. As an appendix to this paper, we provide the first English translation of the Russian account of his lecture, as published in the Herald of the Communist Academy.     

From dialectic to organization: Bogdanov’s contribution to social theory

This paper situates Bogdanov in the context of social theory generally and socialist theory in particular. It outlines briefly the principal characteristics of his mature system, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of his approach to the fundamental problems of social thought. The paper devotes particular attention to the problem of just how systems develop from less complex to more complex forms of organization, and evaluates Bogdanov’s solution to this problem against the background of populist, social democratic, and Leninist alternatives.     

RELIGIOUS NATURALISM OR THEOLOGICAL HUMANISM?

Loyal Rue's book Religion Is Not About God (2005) is a polemic for religious naturalism. In it Rue sets up a general model of religion based on principles of scientific materialism, tests his model against five historical religions, and speculates on the future of religion. He claims that in the West, modern science and pluralism threaten the moral authority of Christianity in facing the environmental crisis, which is fueled by a rival metareligion, consumerism. He concludes that an ecological Doomsday is likely, following which a new religion will arise: religious naturalism. I challenge Rue's account at three levels, from the standpoint of theological humanism. First, as a philosopher of religion, Rue cannot carry through his scientific materialist explanation of religion. The first‐person experience of consciousness escapes such an account. Second, as a myth maker, Rue unifies the evolutionary epic retrospectively, where the evidence is thin, and projects the future overconfidently. Third, as a theologian, Rue is wrong to equate God and Nature.     

Descartes,Malebranche and Leibniz: conceptions of substance in arguments for the immateriality of the soul

ABSTRACT

The most prominent early modern argument against materialism is to be found in Descartes. Previously I had argued that this argument relies crucially on a robust conception of substance, according to which it has a single principal attribute of which all its other intrinsic qualities are modes. In the present paper I return to this claim. In Section 2, I address a question that is often raised about that conception of substance: its commitment to the idea that a substance has a single such principal attribute. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra and Daniel Garber have argued that this claim relies on Descartes's identification of substance with attribute. But I argue that it relies on his view that a substance has a single, unitary nature. In Section 3, I examine the role of this conception of substance in arguments found in Malebranche and Leibniz and compare these arguments with Descartes's.     

The curious incident of wisdom in the thought of Feng Qi (1915–1995): comparative philosophy,historical materialism,and metaphysics

After some introductory remarks on the work of the modern Chinese philosopher Feng Qi, I begin this article by providing some observations concerning the ambiguous notion of ‘wisdom’ in Orientalist representations of non-Western thought and in comparative philosophy, as well as on the peculiar form of subjectivity ascribed to the ‘wise’ subject. I then proceed by offering an account of Feng’s philosophical universalism and historical materialist outlook, outlining the identification of wisdom with metaphysics in his early work and exploring the status and function of wisdom in his mature writings. In doing so, I analyze the tension in Feng’s work between the theoretical rationality and systematicity of ‘metaphysics’ on the one hand and the existential and transformative orientation of ‘wisdom’ on the other.     

大学生物质主义与儒家传统价值观的冲突研究

以价值观冲突理论为依据,探讨中国社会转型时期物质主义与儒家传统价值观的并存给当代大学生带来的心理冲突。采用测谎仪记录被试回答价值观选择两难情境问题时的皮电值,结果发现：对于高儒家传统价值观的大学生而言,物质主义水平的上升会引起其皮电值的显著增加,而对于低儒家传统价值观的大学生则没有这种效应。表明同时拥有高水平的物质主义和儒家传统价值观的大学生会体验到大量的心理冲突。     

Editors’ Introduction to ‘Hegel and Sellars’: A Special Issue of International Journal of Philosophical Studies

ABSTRACT

In our Introduction to the special issue on Hegel and Sellars, we explain why there needs to be a more detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between Hegel and Sellars. Sellars is usually regarded as closer to Kant than to Hegel, but this obscures the more Hegelian features of his theoretical and practical philosophy. We briefly describe each article in the special issue.     

The justification of political conformism: The mythology of Soviet intellectuals

Only during a brief period in the aftermath of the revolution was a portion of the Soviet intelligentsia eager sincerely to cooperate with the Soviet system. Soon, with Stalin's repressions, the intelligentsia, and especially its elite — the intellectuals, or those involved in creative activities such as science, literature and the arts, became locked in permanent conflict with the government.Once mass terror disappeared after Stalin's death in 1953, intellectuals faced the possibility of confronting the regime without fear of instant arrest and eventual death in the Gulag.Moral choices became a serious problem, especially during the period of political reaction under Brezhnev in the 1970's, when the regime resorted to repressions (albeit in milder form than during Stalin's times) and corruption in order to prevent the oppositional activity of intellectuals. Brezhnev's regime was rather successful in this endeavor, an issue which was hotly debated by Russian intellectuals in the period ofglasnost' when soul-searching and recanting about their behavior of the 1970's.The political conformism of intellectuals bore an interesting product, namely, a special mythology which had to exculpate passive intellectuals as well as those who corroborated with the authorities and betrayed their colleagues.The goal of this paper is to analyze this mythology. The author makes a distinction between two kinds of mythology used by the intellectuals to justify their conformity — a current mythology, which is employed for the vindication of contemporary deeds and a retrospective mythology, the purpose of which is to acquit one of past actions. The importance of the mythology employed by the intellectuals goes beyond the Soviet experience and reminds one of the developments in the American intellectual community during the McCarthy era, as well as in German and French communities during the Second World War. As a theoretical basis for this paper, the author uses the concept of a two-level mentality which helps explain how people can easily separate their behavior from their system of values.     

The Non-Conceptual Dimension of Social Mediation: Toward a Materialist Aufhebung of Hegel

ABSTRACT

Sellars’s relationship with Hegel is complex and itself ‘dialectical‘ in interesting ways. Sellars follows Hegel in recognizing that the normativity essential to intentionality and conceptuality is a social phenomenon. But Sellars criticizes Hegel for his inability to independently explain the emergence and function of this essential group phenomenon. I shall argue that Sellars’s critique of Hegel on this count is part of a larger, metaphysically ambitious and rigorously realistic position, which, though turning Hegel’s ontology on its head, shares with Hegel the methodological ambition of arriving at a position which is globally explanatorily closed. Further, it will be suggested that although Sellars would surely have been critical of the ontological reification of Hegel’s dialectical method, he nonetheless reserves an important role for conceptual dialectical development right at the heart of his system, namely in his understanding of the conceptual evolution that leads from the manifest to the scientific image. Finally, I shall argue that Sellars thereby aspires to provide nothing less than a materialist aufhebung of idealist Hegelian dialectics.     

Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism

ABSTRACT

Hobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. ‘Matter in motion’ may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator god or teleology to explain it, comes up against monotheism and its insistence on the incoherence of an ordered world in the absence of a God and his purposes. The following questions were central to this debate: (1) Can we understand the universe as law-governed in the absence of a god? (2) If so, what room is there in a fully determined mechanical universe for human freedom? (3) If humans do enjoy freedom, does the same hold for other animals? (4) Is this freedom compatible with standard views of morality? (5) Is there an analogue between the material world as law-governed and human social order? (6) If so does it also obtain for other animals?     

The timeliness and timelessness of the 'archaic': analytical psychology, 'primordial' thought, synchronicity

In 1930 Jung gave a lecture entitled 'Archaic Man' to the Lesezirkel in Hottingen. Following recent work on this text by two commentators, this article uses their interpretations as a springboard for a complementary reading, which emphasizes the fundamental significance of this paper as bridging the earlier and later stages in the development of analytical psychology, and examines closely the opposition between 'archaic'-'modern' in Jung's paper; indeed, in his work as a whole. In contrast to Lévy-Bruhl, Jung rejects the label of 'mysticism' as applied to the 'primitive' point of view, and his anti-mystical stance can be explained in terms of his dialectical conception of the relationship between Self and World. On this account, the subject and the object--the psyche and the external world--are more closely (inter)related than conventional (modern) epistemology and ontology generally believe. This conception of the relation between the subjective and the objective foreshadows his later, and controversial, concept of synchronicity, which is, Jung insists, a way of apprehending the world in terms of its meaning. Concluding with a survey of the status of the 'primordial' in some other texts by Jung, this article aims to foster further debate on one of Jung's most complex and fascinating texts.