Dominik Finkelde

Kant, Hegel, Lacan, and the Foundations of Ethics

Excessive Subjectivity

"Badiou's philosophy of the event stands at the centre of the influential theory of revolutionary politics. It has received much acclaim for the way it rigorously and systematically unfolds as well as heavy criticism because of the philosopher's theoretical and personal radicalism as an outspoken critic of modern western democracies. Does Badiou's oeuvre not undermine the value of political representation via the state? What is left of the state in Badiou's thinking if political and universal "events" by definition bear validity through their illegitimacy, while the state only represents legality? The essays presented in the volume "Badiou and the State", written by international scholars in the field of contemporary political philosophy, are dedicated to these questions, which Badiou's unique philosophy provokes."--publisher description.

Badiou and the State

Todd McGowan

Responses to the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek have been, like Žižek himself, extreme. Critics have accused him of charlatanism on the one hand, while others have lauded his genius, especially as a public intellectual, on the other. This makes it difficult to find any kind of nuanced or interesting critical appraisal of his work. At its best Žižek's work provides a new foundation of dialectical philosophy, beyond the glitz of stardom or oversimplified sinister disdain. Žižek Responds! combines philosophers and theorists engaging with Žižek's philosophy in order to explore its unnoticed implications, its conceptual problems, or its unrealized potential. With detailed and lively responses from Žižek himself, this book offers an unique insight into how this thinker might explain, clarify and hone some of his most controversial and misunderstood ideas. At once an introduction to Žižek's most important concepts and a rare and novel insight into his thoughts on the criticisms of his work, this is indispensible reading for both Žižekians and their critics.

Žižek Responds!

Slavoj Žižek

Christoph Menke

Parallax, or the change in the position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and more precisely, the assumption that this adjustment is not only due to a change of focus, but a change in that object's ontological status has been a key philosophical concept throughout history. Building upon Slavoj Žižek's The Parallax View, this volume shows how parallax is used as a figure of thought that proves how the incompatibility between the physical and the theoretical touches not only upon the ontological, but also politics and aesthetics. With articles written by internationally renowned philosophers such as Frank Ruda, Graham Harman, Paul Livingston and Zizek himself, this book shows how modes of parallax remain in numerous modern theoretical disciplines, such as the Marxian parallax in the critique of political economy and politics; and the Hegelian parallax in the concept of the work of art, while also being important to debates surrounding speculative realism and dialectical materialism. Spanning philosophy, parallax is then a rich and fruitful concept that can illuminate the studies of those working in epistemology, ontology, German Idealism, political philosophy and critical theory.

The Dialectics of Mind and World

Parallax

How are we to conceive of acts that suddenly expose the injustice of the prevailing order? These acts challenge long-standing hidden or silently tolerated injustices, but as they are unsupported by existing ethical rules they pose a drastic challenge to dominant norms. In Excessive Subjectivity, Dominik Finkelde rereads the tradition of German idealism and finds in it the potential for transformative acts that are capable of revolutionizing the social order. Finkelde's discussion of the meaning and structure of the ethical act meticulously engages thinkers typically treated as opposed—Kant, Hegel, and Lacan—to develop the concept of excessive subjectivity, which is characterized by nonconformist acts that reshape the contours of ethical life. For Kant, the subject is defined by the ethical acts she performs. Hegel interprets Kant's categorical imperative as the ability of an individual's conscience to exceed the existing state of affairs. Lacan emphasizes the transgressive force of unconscious desire on the ethical agent. Through these thinkers Finkelde develops a radical ethics for contemporary times. Integrating perspectives from both analytical and continental philosophy, Excessive Subjectivity is a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the ethical subject.

Rebekka Klein

The volume In Need of a Master: Politics, Theology, and Radical Democracy discusses how our so-called "postmodern age" of widespread ideological critique paves the way for reactionary and conservative political movements. At center stage is the question of whether these movements can and must be – contrary to widespread beliefs among liberal elites – interpreted both as a symptom of a political awakening in the horizon of political theology in our era of immanence, as well as perhaps the perilous end of democracy as we know it. The book brings to the fore political theology as the hidden agenda of politics and presents at the same time Christian and Jewish theological traditions as an antidote to a global empire with its often unacknowledged rule of immanence.

Politics, Theology, and Radical Democracy

In Need of a Master

Paul M. Livingston

Several debates of the last years within the research field of contemporary realism – known under titles such as "New Realism," "Continental Realism," or "Speculative Materialism" – have shown that science is not systematically the ultimate measure of truth and reality. This does not mean that we should abandon the notions of truth or objectivity all together, as has been posited repeatedly within certain currents of twentieth century philosophy. However, within the research field of contemporary realism, the concept of objectivity itself has not been adequately refined. What is objective is supposed to be true outside a subject’s biases, interpretations and opinions, having truth conditions that are met by the way the world is. The volume combines articles of internationally outstanding authors who have published on either Idealism, Epistemic Relativism, or Realism and often locate themselves within one of these divergent schools of thought. As such, the volume focuses on these traditions with the aim of clarifying what the concept objectivity nowadays stands for within contemporary ontology and epistemology beyond the analytic-continental divide. With articles from: Jocelyn Benoist, Ray Brassier, G. Anthony Bruno, Dominik Finkelde, Markus Gabriel, Deborah Goldgaber, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, Johannes Hübner, Andrea Kern, Anton F. Koch, Martin Kusch, Paul M. Livingston, Paul Redding, Sebastian Rödl, Dieter Sturma.

Dominik Finkelde

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