John Rundell

This article develops three interconnected arguments concerning the image of modernity as a revolutionary epoch and the way in which this image has been understood and theorized. These three lines of conceptualization, which can only be sketched in less rather than greater detail here, concern the constellation or figuration of modernity, its democratic dimension, and in reference to each, the work of Max Weber, especially The City. More specifically, the article argues that modern democracy is revolutionary when viewed as an open and self-instituting articulation of political power. Its modern revolutionary impulse begins in the Italian Renaissance city-states, the German `free' cities, and the Swiss federation where urban autonomy was matched by the creation of elected forms of rulership and the development of federated circulations of power

Aesthetics and Modernity brings together Agnes Heller's most recent essays on aesthetic genres such as painting, music, literature and comedy, aesthetic reception and embodiment in the context of the continuing pitfalls of modernity. The essays also throw light on Heller's theories of values, emotions and feelings, embodiment, and modernity. Those with an interest in philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, and social theory will find this collection illuminating, and an essential addition to any philosophy bookshelf

The aim of this paper is to examine two turns towards the idea of the creative imagination in contemporary critical theory in the works of Axel Honneth and Cornelius Castoriadis. Honneth's work subsumes the idea of the creative imagination under the paradigm of mutual recognition. Castoriadis constructs the idea of the creative imagination from an ontological perspective. However, Castoriadis' idea of the primary autism of the creative imagination can be thrown into relief by Hegel's Jena Lectures. Hegel's and Castoriadis' work opens onto a subjectivity in tension, that is, a subjectivity that is forged out of a combination of subjective interiority, as well as the patterns of interaction that are multidimensional in their scope and create social spaces that force the subject beyond an initial closure.

This article deploys a double conceptual framework. One frame is positioned through the ideas of absolute strangers and outsiders. The other frame develops out of, though is distinct from, the first, and refers to the disaggregated forms of modern citizenship. The citizen-as-absolute-stranger in addition to accruing political rights may also accrue social, economic or identity rights, or traverse wider relations between him or herself and other absolute strangers in either national or international settings. It is in this context that outsiders are configured - aliens who have no national-juridical status