Karel Kosík and the Dialectics of the Concrete

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-90-04-32536-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 243, 380 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 781 g

Reihe: Historical Materialism Book Series

Karel Kosík (1926–2003) was one of the most remarkable Czech Marxist philosophers of the twentieth century. His reputation as a creative thinker is owed largely to his philosophical ‘blockbuster’ Dialectics of the Concrete, first published in Czechoslovakia in 1963. In reintroducing Kosík’s philosophy to English-speaking readers, we show that Kosík’s work is important not only as a leading intellectual document of the Prague Spring, but also as an original theoretical contribution with international impact that sheds light on the meaning of labour and praxis, cognition and economic structure, and revolution and the crises of modernity.

Contributors include: Ian Angus, Siyaves Azeri, Vít Bartoš, Jan Cerný, Joseph Grim Feinberg, Diana Fuentes, Gabriella Fusi, Tomáš Hermann, Tomáš Hríbek, Xiaohan Huang, Peter Hudis, Petr Kužel, Ivan Landa, Michael Löwy, Jan Mervart, Anselm K. Min, Tom Rockmore, Francesco Tava, and Xinruo Zhang.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Landa, Ivan

Grim Feinberg, Joseph

Mervart, Jan

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

IAcknowledgements

Notes on Authors

Introduction

Joseph Grim Feinberg, Ivan Landa, Jan Mervart

Part 1 The Reform Years and the Origins of Dialectics of the Concrete

1 Karel Kosík as a Public Intellectual of the Reform Years

Jan Mervart

2 Karel Kosík and His ‘Radical Democrats’: The Janus Face of Dialectics of the Concrete

Moving from a Historical to a Systematic Approach to Philosophy

Tomáš Hermann

Part 2 Praxis and Labour

3 Praxis in Progress: On the Transformations of Kosík’s Thought

Francesco Tava

4 Labour and Time: Karel Kosík’s Temporal Materialism

Ivan Landa

5 Inception of Culture from the Ontology of Labour: The Original Contribution of Karel Kosík to a Marxian Theory of Culture

Ian Angus

6 ‘The Philosophy of Labour’ and Karel Kosík’s Criticism of ‘Care’

Siyaves Azeri

7 Kosík, Lukács and the Thing in Itself

Tom Rockmore

Part 3 Modernity, Nation, and Globalisation

8 The Ontological Dialectic and the Critique of Modernity: Based on the Interpretation of Kosík’s Concrete Totality

Xinruo Zhang and Xiaohan Huang

9 And the ‘Thing Itself’ Is Man: Radical Democracy and the Roots of Humanity

Joseph Grim Feinberg

10 The Dialectic of Concrete Totality in the Age of Globalisation: Karel Kosík’s Dialectics of the Concrete Fifty Years Later

Anselm K. Min

Part 4 Intellectual Encounters

11 Kosík’s Notion of ‘Positivism’

Tomáš Hríbek

12 Kosík’s Concept of ‘Concrete Totality’: A Structuralist Critique

Vít Bartoš

13 The World of the Pseudoconcrete, Ideology and the Theory of the Subject (Kosík and Althusser)

Petr Kužel

14 Karel Kosík and Martin Heidegger: From Marxism to Traditionalism

Jan Cerný

Part 5 Influence and Reception

15 A Route of Critical Thought: Between Italian and Czech Intellectuals

Gabriella Fusi

16 Karel Kosík in Mexico: Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and the Dialectics of the Concrete

Diana Fuentes

17 Karel Kosík and US Marxist Humanism

Peter Hudis

Postscript: Looking Backwards

18 Spirit of Resistance: Note for an Intellectual Biography of Karel Kosík

Michael Löwy

References

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Joseph Grim Feinberg, PhD (2014), University of Chicago, is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of Czech Academy of Sciences. He is author of The Paradox of Authenticity (University of Wisconsin, 2018) and editor of Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought.

Ivan Landa, PhD (2010), Charles University, is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has published articles and chapters on Hegel and the history of Marxism. He is a co-editor of the Collected Works of Karel Kosík (Filosofia, 2019–), planned for 7 volumes (in Czech).

Jan Mervart, PhD (2009), University of Hradec Králové, is researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has published monographs and articles on the intellectual history of Czechoslovakia. He is the co-editor of Czechoslovakism (Routledge, 2021).