Federica Gregoratto

In this paper, I discuss Amy Allen’s contribution to a social philosophy or critical theory of love. On the wake of Allen’s interpretation of Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytical theory, I distinguish two faces of love, aggressive love and caring, or, in Kleinian terms, depressive love. I moreover elaborate the implications of these ideas of love for a (critical) theory of recognition, focussing on the state of fusion or symbiotic union between ego and other, which Axel Honneth has called, puzzlingly, the “zero-point” of recognition. The article proceeds in two steps. The first one reconstructs Allen’s concerns with Honneth’s recognition theory, with the idea of love encompassed by his theory, and with the image of fusion at play there (1). The second section attempts to read Heinrich von Kleist’s drama Penthesilea to further illustrate Allen’s and Klein’s insights. I argue that Kleist’s Penthesilea sketches a fruitful model to cast erotic relationships as relationships of recognition. Kleist’s figuration of recognition is ambiguous: it stages the dynamic of violent love, that collapses into an annihilating fusional state, but also the possibility of caring, “depressive” love, and of recognition of the other as a free subject (2).

Im Zeitalter der Hochspezialisierung sind sie selten geworden, die Philosoph*innen, die an der Universität wie im Feuilleton gleichermaßen zuhause sind. Dieter Thomä ist einer dieser Wenigen. Ob in leichtfüßigen Kolumnen oder in tiefschürfenden Studien zur Geistesgeschichte - stets gilt sein Interesse den Unruheherden innerhalb von Ordnungen, den Umschlagspunkten, an denen ein System kippt. In vier Jahrzehnten publizistischer Tätigkeit hat er der Philosophie neue Gegenstände erschlossen und die Öffentlichkeit mit provokativen Zeitdiagnosen bereichert. Anlässlich seines 60. Geburtstags werden die Denkanstöße gewürdigt, die von seiner beherzten theoretischen Quertreiberei ausgingen.

Es gibt verschiedene Arten von Feminismus, die je nach der Denktradition, an die sie angeknüpft werden, benannt sind: Während die marxistischen oder sozialistischen, liberalen oder poststrukturalistischen Arten längst als bekannt gelten können, ist hingegen die Rede von einem pragmatistischen Feminismus, oder feministischem Pragmatismus, erst seit den 1990er Jahren in den philosophischen Debatten aufgetaucht. Diese Verzögerung ist überraschend, zumal wenn man die Arbeit der vielen Feministinnen berücksichtigt, die in der sog. ›progressiven Ära‹ (etwa 1890–1920) der Vereinigten Staaten als Hochschuldozentinnen, Sozialarbeiterinnen, Theoretikerinnen und Aktivistinnen tätig waren und die sich explizit von den klassischen Pragmatisten inspirieren ließen und mit ihnen zusammenarbeiteten. Auch aufgrund der direkten Kollaboration mit einigen von diesen Frauen weisen mehrere pragmatistische Texte, hauptsächlich die von John Dewey, eine hervorstechende Sensibilität für feministische Fragen auf. Überdies können zahlreiche pragmatistische Thematiken aufgezeigt werden, die später eine relevante Bedeutung für feministische Philosophinnen übernommen haben, die sich mit feministischen Perspektiven fruchtbar kombinieren lassen, und die weiterhin Ressourcen für feministisches Denken darstellen können.

In this paper, we comment and discuss the fifteen replies that interpret, solicit, problematize, and further develop our Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto (Krisis 42(1)), that have been published in Krisis 43(1). In the paper, we address four overarching topics that we see emerging from the replies: Histories and traditions of criticial naturalism; the relation between theory and praxis; the question of what is critical about critical naturalism; and finally the question of utopia. Additionally, we discuss three general types of attitudes that our critics take to the Manifesto.

The Critical Naturalism Manifesto is a common platform put forward as a basis for broad discussions around the problems faced by critical theory today. We are living in a time, e.g. a pandemic time, when present-day challenges exert immense pressure on social critique. This means that models of social critique should not be discussed from the point of view of their normative justification or political effects alone, but also with reference to their ability to tackle contemporary problematic issues (like the dismantlement of the welfare state, the environmental catastrophe, and the sanitary crisis). With this manifesto, we invite varying practices of philosophical, artistic and scientific social critique to take seriously the enormous challenges our societies face with regard to inner and outer nature. We first identity eleven theses of critical naturalism which contemporary critical theory should take into consideration. We then identify the historical crises and catastrophes that critical naturalism seeks to respond to, dispelling the prejudices against naturalism in contemporary critical thought, and considering alternative answers to these questions such as social constructivism, accelerationism, xenofeminism, flat ontologism, and monist world ecology. By sketching the notions of nature and naturalism, we anchor critical naturalism in the history of materialism and critical theory, understood initially as that of the Frankfurt School, but expanded and enriched by other approaches to social critique. Finally, we sketch models and projects of critical naturalism, which are exemplary fragments of varying ways to practice naturalist social critique.

Love has been a frightening yet exciting problem for individuals and communities since ancient times. What is love? Does it give us purpose, orientation, and meaning, or is it scary, dangerous, to be avoided? Love Troubles: A Social Philosophy of Eros is an exploration of erotic love through the lens of critical social philosophy, drawing on a wide range of philosophical texts as well as narratives gathered from poetry and novels, films, and music. The place and value of love are perhaps more deeply contested now than at other times in the recent past. Feminists criticize its association with male dominance and violence, while all too often economic considerations take precedence in mating rituals, yet we are increasingly lonely, no longer even looking for partners. But the central hypothesis that motivates Love Troubles is that all these troubles are good news. They invite us to reflect upon eros, considered as both passionate sexual love and as intense friendship, as a slippery, liminal form of love, situated at the threshold between intimate and private and public and political. It is a surprising and effective critical tool that has received little attention from social philosophers and at the same time a resource for political agency, resistance, and transformation--for freedom. As Audre Lorde has argued so convincingly, we realize freedom collectively, moved by the affects and emotions that our lovers and friends inspire in us.

Discussions around progress, that have always been at the core of critical social and political philosophy, have lately become particularly thorny, exposing a sort of double bind: arguments in favour of progress are unable to avoid positions that undermine progress itself, but rejection of progress risks giving in to reactionary, cynic or melancholic positions.In this paper, I formulate the hypothesis that the double bind depends on a sort of unhealthy “obsession” with normative criteria of progress. As a corrective, I propose to think of moral, social and political changes in the terms of what I call troubled normativity – a normative reflection, namely, that embraces conflicts, ambivalences, uncertainty. I discuss in this regard two recent perspectives on progress, Rahel Jaeggi’s pragmatist and Amy Allen’s genealogical-psychoanalytical ones. I further articulate their insights by taking into consideration the affective dimension of social transformations. I concentrate in particular on two emotional constellations, anger and hope, by drawing upon María Lugones’ and Jonathan Lear’s work.

How does emancipation from social oppression work and unfold? The paper is an attempt to deal with this question from an aesthetic point of view. By drawing on pragmatist resources, and more precisely on John Dewey’s aesthetic theory and on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, I discuss the critical and transformative potential of a special kind of aesthetic experience, namely ‘aecsthetic experience’. The paper unfolds in three steps: First, I introduce Iris Marion Young’s account of social oppression, which fits particularly well with the framework of the ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1). I show then, in contrast to an established interpretation, how the protagonist of Gilman’s story makes an experience of liberation from oppression (2). Finally, I reconstruct Dewey’s role in my interpretation of this feminist classic, and I suggest what a Deweyan account might learn from it (3).

ABSTRACT In this article, I address a highly controversial question of feminist philosophy, namely, the so-called sex/gender distinction, from a Deweyan perspective. I argue that Dewey's naturalism provides useful insights for dealing with and solving the problems concerning this particular type of dualism. My argumentation unfolds in three steps. First, after having briefly introduced the meanings of the two terms, I outline two different, both unsuccessful strategies for overcoming the sex/gender distinction, namely, what I call the radical social constructionist and the nondialectical naturalist strategies. Second, I draw on Dewey's version of naturalism with the aim of conceiving of human beings as simultaneously naturally and socially constructed. Third, I sketch out the hypothesis that Dewey's way of overcoming the pernicious dichotomy between nature and society may be useful for outlining a critical metaphysics of gender.

In jüngster Zeit ist Intersektionalität eine zentrale, nahezu unumgängliche Methodologie der kritischen Sozialtheorie geworden. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird die These vorgestellt und verteidigt, dass einige pragmatistische Werke etwa als ‚proto-intersektionale‘ Experimente angesehen und verstanden werden können. In meiner Analyse werde ich mich auf die Intersektionen zwischen zwei Herrschaftsformen beschränken, Geschlechterunterdrückung und kapitalistische Herrschaft. Im ersten Abschnitt schildere ich zunächst John Deweys antikapitalistische Argumente. Zweitens illustriere ich den Zusammenhang zwischen Geschlechter- und kapitalistischer Herrschaft nach Dewey und Jane Addams. Schließlich wird eine weitere Überlegung präsentiert und diskutiert, die sowohl Addams als auch Dewey artikulieren: Nach beiden Verfasser/innen impliziert die Überwindung von geschlechtlicher sowie ökonomischer Unterdrückung eine Überwindung der einfachen Unterscheidung zwischen der privaten und der öffentlichen soziale Sphäre.

ABSTRACT The article critically discusses Rahel Jaeggi’s recent philosophical contribution to a critical theory of capitalism. The first part reconstructs Jaeggi’s account of Lebensform, life-form, that builds up the main ontological framework for addressing and problematizing capitalism intended not as an economic system but as a social whole. The second part focuses on the three different theoretical strategies that Jaeggi puts forward to detect and deal with capitalism’s immanent flaws. The third and last part problematizes the metaphysical assumptions and implications of Jaeggi’s understanding of life-form and outlines a more dialectical, or “transactional” notion of form of life, which is inspired by Dewey’s non-reductionist naturalist method of inquiry. The overall aim is to strengthen the philosophical critique of the capitalist form of life.