John Rundell

David Roberts has always had a keen, sharp and even mischievous eye for paradox, for pointing to what used to be termed in Hegelianese, ‘contradictions’ or ‘dialectics’ of modern society and its forms. Roberts’ keen eye has focused on the paradoxes (rather than negative dialectics) of aesthetic modernity and the forms that these paradoxes have taken within the historical time consciousness and self-understanding of modernity. This paper will suggest – although only sketchily and in outline – that Roberts’ keen eye notices and reconstructs three paradoxical models or forms of aesthetic modernity: 1. The total work of art of aesthetic modernism; 2. the contemporary postmodern plurality of the present which is captured as musealization; 3. interpretation, play and humour as the open acceptance of the contingency and paradoxes of the present.

In a new reading of Immanuel Kant’s work, this book interrogates his notions of the imagination and anthropology, identifying these – rather than the problem of reason – as the two central pivoting orientations of his work. Such an approach allows a more complex understanding of his criticalphilosophical program to emerge, which includes his accounts of reason, politics and freedom as well as subjectivity and intersubjectivity, or sociabilities. Examining Kant’s theorisation of the complexity of our phenomenological existence, the author explores his transcendental move that includes reason and understanding whilst emphasising the importance of the faculty of the imagination to undergird both, before moving to consider Kant’s pluralised, transcendental notion of freedom.

ABSTRACTKant is concerned to give meaning, depth and veracity to the notion of the subject, which he does on transcendental grounds, and also to shift it beyond purely cognitivist formulations. He opens the subject up to other dimensions of the world that he or she establishes – not only the cognitive, but also the political – ethical and the aesthetic. He does this by constructing and denoting different faculties and their principles that ought to be employed in the distinct domains – the understanding, reason in its pure and practical orientations, and the imagination. Whilst practical reason is Kant’s main focus, the imagination is Kant’s unfinished business and is not limited to the issue of aesthetics. It is both reason’s “other”, and “an indispensable dimension of the human soul”, equal in power and capacity to the other faculties.

We are always in the circle of the present and everything depends on where we are in it, and if we wish to move around, or even impossibly, exit from it. In terms of our topic, we are in a history of bad mistakes and misjudgements. But we can make the past speak, ask questions of it that are self-consciously raised by the present. In this sense the past is turned into an interlocutor rather than either an object that can be dissected or re-assembled in the scientific manner of a forensic anthropologist or a corpse that can be picked over by crows. These mistakes and misjudgements involve the problem of ‘leaping in’ prematurely where there may be nowhere to leap to, of holding back too long where and when it was more prudent to act than not to. These are the questions of and for our present, as it was for the present of World War I. But questions always require creativity, interpretation and thinking in Arendt’s use of the term. They require circumspection.

Critical Theories and the Budapest Schoolbrings together new perspectives on the Budapest School in the context of contemporary developments in critical theory. Engaging with the work of the prominent group of figures associated with Georg Lukács, this book sheds new light on the unique and nuanced critiques of modernity offered by this school, informed as its members' insights have been by first-hand experiences of Nazism, Soviet-type societies, and the liberal-democratic West. With studies of topics central to contemporary critical theory, such as the political and historical consciousness of modernity, the importance of bio-politics, the complexity of the human condition, and the relevance of comedy and friendship to developing critical perspectives, the authors draw on the works of Ágnes Heller, Maria Márkus, György Márkus, and Ferenc Fehér, demonstrating their enduring relevance to critical theory today and the ways in which these philosophers can inform new perspectives on culture and politics. An innovative reassessment of the Budapest School and the importance of its legacy, this book opens a much-needed and neglected dialogue with other schools and traditions of critical theorizing that will be of interest to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and social theory. n inform new perspectives on culture and politics. An innovative reassessment of the Budapest School and the importance of its legacy, this book opens a much-needed and neglected dialogue with other schools and traditions of critical theorizing that will be of interest to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and social theory.

Current changes in the intimate sphere are denoted by an expansion of emotional vocabularies, of freedom in sex and sexual preference, and the extension of sexual life with neither inhibition, nor obligation, nor marriage for both women and men. This reading of the works of Jean-Claude Kaufmann and Niklas Luhmann suggests that the result of this current revolution of the intimate sphere is mixed. A new differentiated form of the intimate sphere has developed with an internal distinction between sex qua leisure and committed love-relationality. Although sex qua leisure is mediated by the new communications technology, this technological mediation is not what is important here. Rather, the actions are configured and mediated by the neo-liberal paradigm by all participants. Leisure-sex is simply a game that combines autonomy, leisure, power and rational choice – a combination that is open to men and women alike. But there is still love, and in ways that enable it to be expressed beyond traditional forms. From the position of committed love-relationality, rather than marriage, love is between people – but it is a different between to the one of leisure sex. Love is double-sided: whilst heightening a sense of self-orientation, one is also focused on an other. Love involves all kinds of complexity in the everyday because it involves the well-being of an other or others – with joys and heartaches, responsibilities and conflicts.

There is an opening in Castoriadis’ work for a notion of cruelty, and it emerges in the way in which he develops his idea of heteronomy, as a human world that is blinded or deflected away from human self-creation. This essay is an attempt to locate cruelty constitutively or ontologically in a post-metaphysical register, as an act of creativity that can be given form as a very particular act of singularity, that is, without regard for the other. Acts of human cruelty are acts of imaginary, creative activity among others that themselves are form, that is, expressed in physically embodied, objectivated, linguistic or symbolic form, and often become highly stylized,and when socially instituted, have their own spatial and temporal dimensions. In this way, it is distinct from relations of power.

This paper explores the constellation of fear and the social forces, assumptions and images that construct it. The paper’s underlying presupposition is that there are many locations for fear that run parallel to one another in modernity, one of which will be discussed here – the city. It begins by exploring two images and ideas of the city, around which the social theoretical tradition has revolved, both of which are linked in some way to the ideal of the metropolis and the counter-ideal of the stranger. The stranger invariably accompanies the image of the city, as someone who comes to it from the outside. This co-existence between integration and the experience of being outside generates the inner tension or unease of city life, especially when we are all strangers.

Current changes in the intimate sphere are denoted by an expansion of emotional vocabularies, of freedom in sex and sexual preference, and the extension of sexual life with neither inhibition, nor obligation, nor marriage for both women and men. This reading of the works of Jean-Claude Kaufmann and Niklas Luhmann suggests that the result of this current revolution of the intimate sphere is mixed. A new differentiated form of the intimate sphere has developed with an internal distinction between sex qua leisure and committed love-relationality. Although sex qua leisure is mediated by the new communications technology, this technological mediation is not what is important here. Rather, the actions are configured and mediated by the neo-liberal paradigm by all participants. Leisure-sex is simply a game that combines autonomy, leisure, power and rational choice – a combination that is open to men and women alike. But there is still love, and in ways that enable it to be expressed beyond traditional forms. From the position of committed love-relationality, rather than marriage, love is between people – but it is a different between to the one of leisure sex. Love is double-sided: whilst heightening a sense of self-orientation, one is also focused on an other. Love involves all kinds of complexity in the everyday because it involves the well-being of an other or others – with joys and heartaches, responsibilities and conflicts

There is an opening in Castoriadis’ work for a notion of cruelty, and it emerges in the way in which he develops his idea of heteronomy, as a human world that is blinded or deflected away from human self-creation. This essay is an attempt to locate cruelty constitutively or ontologically in a post-metaphysical register, as an act of creativity that can be given form as a very particular act of singularity, that is, without regard for the other. Acts of human cruelty are acts of imaginary, creative activity among others that themselves are form , that is, expressed in physically embodied, objectivated, linguistic or symbolic form, and often become highly stylized, and when socially instituted, have their own spatial and temporal dimensions. In this way, it is distinct from relations of power

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