Karl Marx (with Friedrich Engels) lays out his method of revolutionary critique in The German Ideology. Not a professional philosopher (like Kant and Hegel, or Feuerbach) and more like an intellectual journalist absorbed in political economy committed to the Revolution, Marx, drawing from the philosophical currents of his day (Hegel’s idealism and Feuerbach’s materialism), nonetheless…
Tag Archives: Technology
[A map of the "American Empire" from Double Standards] Thanks to occasional mentions over at John Protevi’s Blog, I was led to the incisive, large-scale, long-term, and always-thought provoking commentaries on contemporary politics by world systems scholar Immanuel Wallerstein. Analyzing political developments “from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term,”…
[Vincent van Gogh's Peasant Shoes and A Pair of Shoes] [Follows "Technology"] [Based on Martin Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art,” as interpreted by Greg Schufreider] Dis-close a particular cultural-historical world for a people (das Volk), grounded on the earth. Dasein is no longer the opening up of being; the world is opened…
–So, what can I do for you today? –I would like this pain to go away. –Well, you know, external, physical pain is often but an indication of some inner cause, a problem inside, underneath the surface, underneath the pain, that’s causing it . . . –Can you fix it? –(Chuckle) I can make the…
[All citations, except the passing one from Brian Massumi, are from Manuel De Landa’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. Take note of the terminologies species, which refers to the class or genus that the organism, e.g. a particular animal, belongs to.] Despite Charles Darwin’s break with essentialist thinking–the kind of thinking that takes biological species…
[Image from Alternative Fuel Sources] [Follows "What is Dasein Like?"] [Based on Martin Heidegger’s “Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics” and “The Question Concerning Technology,” as interpreted by Greg Schufreider] We in fact started with Dasein, der Mensch, the human being (but even then not, like Husserl and the rest of the tradition, as a transcendental…
The Base-Superstructure model is basically a theoretical framework, a schema, a blueprint, charting the different parts of society, how these elements interact, and how they form a coherent social structure, i.e. the particular shape that society takes at a given moment (hence it is a historical model). The model has two main elements: the base and the superstructure, both of which can be divided further into two parts.
