Marx’s Critique of Feuerbach’s Materialism

[Paul Cézanne's Still Life with Basket of Apples] Karl Marx explores his relationship with Ludwig Feuerbach in the list of theses that he wrote about the master (the “Theses on Feuerbach”). In From Hegel to Marx, Sidney Hook generously provides the context of these theses (reading them alongside The German Ideology). (The majority of the…

Feuerbach’s Materialism

[Jan van Kessel's Still Life] In tracing the intellectual development of Karl Marx, Sidney Hook discusses, in addition to G.W.F. Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach, foremost critic of Hegel from the left, whose materialism deeply impressed the young Marx. Analogous to Marx’s own critique, Feuerbach complains of Hegel’s idealism that its “method of deducing existence from essence,…

Marx’s Difference from Hegel

[Peter-Paul Rubens' The Prophet Elijah Receiving Bread and Water from an Angel] In From Hegel to Marx, Sidney Hook traces the intellectual development of Karl Marx within the context of the dominant Hegelian philosophy of his day. While Karl Marx was indeed highly influenced by the systematic, totalizing, and absolute philosophy of Hegel, in the…

Back in Empire

[Shopping at Macy's, the world's largest store; Image from corbis] Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations at Boston University, contributes to the discourse on American empire in an interview with Bill Moyers. Bacevich’s thesis is that America’s current troubles (brewing for decades now)—a consequence of its worldwide empire—are caused not by something external—some enemy plotting…

Homo Sapiens 10.1: Rational Complexity of Aggression

Fellows, Friends, and Others, I am sending another one of my reports from the field. As stipulated, I am using the species’ own mode of transmission, their own semiology—what is referred to in these parts as “language” (though, technically speaking, they use many “languages” organized in a similar way as a system (i.e. as “language”),…

(Un)Conscious (Non)Correspondence

I’ve been hiding in the forest, in the woods. Up in the mountains. In the wild. I hadn’t gone back to town for some time now. Ryan, as I see, has taken care of this place. He proves, as always, responsible and competent. Ever mindful of the many unhomes that, fortunately or otherwise, we share.…

The Prison and the Delinquent in the Carceral Continuum

[The "reformatory" of Mettray, north of Tours, France] [Continues "The Panoptic Society (of Surveillance)"] Despite (modal/technological) changes in the way that power is exercised—despite, that is to say, the (systemic/structural) change in the regime of power—one function/element remains central to society: namely, penality. This is true even of the panoptic society (of surveillance). The disciplinary…

Change in the Regime of Power

[Jacques-Louis David's rendering of Napoleon's coronation] In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault traces the genealogy of social control, specifically the ways in which the State has disciplined (made manageable, kept in line, made to obey) its populace (usually by punishing)—whether in confronting criminality, disease, (preparation for) war, (economic) production, education, . . .—activities in general…

Five Years On, Four Decades Later: Morality of Our Cause

[The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street; Image from the New York Times] [Continues "Blood on Our Hands"] Roughly four decades earlier, in the midst of another war, the major newspapers performed an act against the government analogous to the exposés we witnessed of late. In 1971, the New York Times and the Washington…

Five Years On, Four Decades Later: Blood On Our Hands

[Image from masternewmedia.org] [Continues "The Surge"] As the war effort was going on abroad, another war was being waged at home: the war of information, with the news media at the forefront. Frontline chronicles how the mainstream media was used by the White House to help build its case for war in Iraq. The media,…