Book picks similar to
This is Not a Program by Tiqqun


philosophy
theory
politics
critical-theory

The Philosophy of History


Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - 1831
    With this work, he created the history of philosophy as a scientific study. He reveals philosophical theory as neither an accident nor an artificial construct, but as an exemplar of its age, fashioned by its antecedents and contemporary circumstances, and serving as a model for the future. The author himself appears to have regarded this book as a popular introduction to his philosophy as a whole, and it remains the most readable and accessible of all his philosophical writings.Eschewing the methods of original history (written during the period in question) and reflective history (written after the period has passed), Hegel embraces philosophic history, which employs a priori philosophical thought to interpret history as a rational process. Reason rules history, he asserts, through its infinite freedom (being self-sufficient, it depends on nothing beyond its own laws and conclusions) and power (through which it forms its own laws). Hegel argues that all of history is caused and guided by a rational process, and God's seemingly unknowable plan is rendered intelligible through philosophy. The notion that reason rules the world, he concludes, is both necessary to the practice of philosophic history and a conclusion drawn from that practice.

Slavery and Freedom


Nikolai A. Berdyaev - 1939
    In his view, the only way of escape from the many forms of slavery--spiritual, economic, political--which shackle & improverish the spirit lies in the fuller realization of personality, as he defines it. Berdyaev turned to religious views & played a large part in the renaissance of religious & philosophical thought in Russian intellectual life early in the 20th century. In 1922 he & a number of other intellectuals were expelled from the USSR. His writings most often deal with the problem of freedom & human relations to the world in light of this problem.In Place of an IntroductionPart 1PersonalityMaster, slave & free manPart 2Being & freedom. The slavery of man to beingGod & freedom. The slavery of man to GodNature & freedom. The cosmic lure & the slavery of man to natureSociety & freedom. The social lure & the slavery of man to societyCivilization & freedom. The slavery of man to civilization & the lure of cultural valuesThe slavery of man to himself & the lure of individualismPart 3The lure of slavery & sovereignty. The 3fold image of the stateThe lure of war. The slavery of man to warThe lure & slavery of nationalism. Nation & peopleThe lure & slavery of aristocracy. The 2fold image of aristocracyThe lure of the bourgeois spirit. Slavery to property & moneyThe lure & slavery of revolution. The 2fold image of revolutionThe lure & slavery of collectivism. Enticement of utopia. The 3fold image of socialismThe erotic lure & slavery. Sex, personality & freedomThe aesthetic lure & slavery. Beauty, art & naturePart 4The spiritual liberation of man. Victory over fear & deathThe lure & slavery of history. The three kinds of time. The 2fold interpretation of the end of history. Active-creative eschatology

To the Finland Station


Edmund Wilson - 1940
    It is a work of history on a grand scale, at once sweeping and detailed, closely reasoned and passionately argued, that succeeds in painting an unforgettable picture--alive with conspirators and philosophers, utopians and nihilists--of the making of the modern world.

Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics


Erich Fromm - 1947
    The titles include works by key figures such as C.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the International Library of Psychology series is available upon request.

Campus Sex, Campus Security


Jennifer Doyle - 2015
    Sex has its own administrative unit. It is a bureaucratic progression. —from Campus Sex, Campus SecurityThe psychic life of the university campus is ugly. The idyllic green quad is framed by paranoid cops and an anxious risk-management team. A student is beaten, another is soaked with pepper spray. A professor is thrown to the ground and arrested, charged with felony assault. As the campus is fiscally strip-mined, the country is seized by a crisis of conscience: the student makes headlines now as rape victim and rapist. An administrator writes a report. The crisis is managed.Campus Sex, Campus Security is Jennifer Doyle's clear-eyed critique of collegiate jurisprudence, in the era of campus corporatization, “less-lethal” weaponry, ubiquitous rape discourse, and litigious anxiety. Today's university administrator rides a wave of institutional insecurity, as the process of administering student protests and sexual-assault complaints rolls along a Möbius strip of shifting legality. One thing (a crime) flips into another (a violation) and back again. On campus, the criminal and civil converge, usually in the form of a hearing that mimics the rituals of a military court, with its secret committees and secret reports, and its sanctions and appeals.What is the university campus in this world? Who is it for? What sort of psychic space does it simultaneously produce and police? What is it that we want, really, when we call campus security?

Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook


Mark Bray - 2017
    They could be seen in news reports, clad all in black with balaclavas covering their faces, fighting police at the presidential inauguration, and on California college campuses protesting right-wing speakers…Simply, antifa aims to deny fascists the opportunity to promote their oppressive politics—by any means necessary. Critics say shutting down political adversaries is anti-democratic; antifa adherents argue that the horrors of fascism must never be allowed the slightest chance to triumph again.In a smart and gripping investigation, historian and former Occupy Wall Street organizer Mark Bray provides a one-of-a-kind look inside the movement, including a detailed survey of its history from its origins to the present day—the first transnational history of postwar anti-fascism in English. Based on interviews with anti-fascists from around the world, Antifa details the tactics of the movement and the philosophy behind it, offering insight into the growing but little understood resistance fighting back against the alt-right.

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?


Mark Fisher - 2009
    What effects has this “capitalist realism” had on work, culture, education and mental health? Is it possible to imagine an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control?

The Ancien Régime


Alexis de Tocqueville - 1856
    It is one of the major early historical works on the French Revolution.See Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_...

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society


Jürgen Habermas - 1962
    It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.

The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude


Étienne de La Boétie
    This classic work of the sixteenth century political philosopher, in reply to Machiavelli's The Prince, seeks to answer the question of why people submit to the tyranny of government, and as such, has exerted an important influence on the traditions of dissidence from Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, to Tolstoy, to Gandhi.

The Housing Question


Friedrich Engels - 1887
    

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism


Benedict Anderson - 1983
    In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality.Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa.This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the develpment of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which, all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.

Democracy in What State?


Giorgio AgambenWilliam McCuaig - 2009
    Giorgio Agamben traces the tense history of constitutions and their coexistence with various governments. Alain Badiou contrasts current democratic practice with democratic communism. Daniel Bensaid ponders the institutionalization of democracy, while Wendy Brown discusses the democratization of society under neoliberalism. Jean-Luc Nancy measures the difference between democracy as a form of rule and as a human end, and Jacques Ranci're highlights its egalitarian nature. Kristin Ross identifies hierarchical relationships within democratic practice, and Slavoj Zizek complicates the distinction between those who desire to own the state and those who wish to do without it.Concentrating on the classical roots of democracy and its changing meaning over time and within different contexts, these essays uniquely defend what is left of the left-wing tradition after the fall of Soviet communism. They confront disincentives to active democratic participation that have caused voter turnout to decline in western countries, and they address electoral indifference by invoking and reviving the tradition of citizen involvement. Passionately written and theoretically rich, this collection speaks to all facets of modern political and democratic debate.

The Writing of the Disaster


Maurice Blanchot - 1980
    How can we write or think about disaster when by its very nature it defies speech and compels silence, burns books and shatters meaning? The Writing of the Disaster reflects upon efforts to abide in disaster’s infinite threat. First published in French in 1980, it takes up the most serious tasks of writing: to describe, explain, and redeem when possible, and to admit what is not possible. Neither offers consolation. Maurice Blanchot has been praised on both sides of the Atlantic for his fiction and criticism. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas once remarked that Blanchot's writing is a "language of pure transcendence, without correlative." Literary theorist and critic Geoffrey Hartman remarked that Blanchot's influence on contemporary writers "cannot be overestimated."

Persecution and the Art of Writing


Leo Strauss - 1952
    Here, Strauss sets forth the thesis that many philosophers, especially political philosophers, have reacted to the threat of persecution by disguising their most controversial and heterodox ideas.