Aspects of Heidegger in France

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Marx the Fichtean

We ignore the history of philosophy at our peril. Engels, who typically conflates Marx and Marxism, points to the relation of Marxism to the tradition while also denying it. In his little book on Feuerbach, Engels depicts Feuerbach as leading Marx away from Hegel, away from classical German philosophy, away from philosophy and towards materialism and science. This view suggests that Marx is at best negatively related to Classical German philosophy, including Hegel. Yet Engels elsewhere suggests that Marx belongs to the classical German philosophical tradition. In the preface to Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels wrote: “We German socialists are proud that we trace our descent not only from Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen, but also from Kant, Fichte and Hegel” (Marx &amp; Engels, Collected Works). In this paper I will focus on Marx’s relation to Fichte. This relation is rarely mentioned in the Marxist debate, but I will argue, it is crucial for the formulation of Marx’s position, and hence for assessing his contribution accurately. One of the results of this study will be to indicate that Marx, in reacting against Hegel, did not, as is often suggested, ‘leave’ philosophy, but in fact made a crucial philosophical contribution

Fichte, Kant and the Copernican turn

The paper studies Fichte’s views of the cognitive problem, especially his account of the three fundamental principles. I argue three points: fi rst, Kant’s position includes two incompatible approaches to knowledge I will be calling representationalism and constructivism; second, in his early writings Fichte defends a version of the so-called Copernican Revolution or Copernican turn, more specifically a revised conception of “representation”; and, third, though Fichte’s version of the Copernican turn improves on Kant’s, it is not a satisfactory solution to the cognitive problem

Fichte, Kant, the Cognitive Subject, and Epistemic Constructivism

This paper will consider the nature and explanatory limits of the Fichtean view of subjectivity in the epistemic context of German idealism. I will argue that Fichte’s revision of the Kantian conception of the subject is both a basic contribution to the cognitive problem as well as fatally flawed, hence not a viable solution to the cognitive problem. Fichte’s distinctive revision of the Kantian subject goes too far in making the objective overly, even wholly dependent on the subjective dimension. After Kant and after Fichte we still lack an effective solution for the problem of cognition

Hegel and Chinese Marxism

China is presently embarking on the huge task of realizing what President Xi Jinping recently called the Chinese Dream. China is officially Marxist, and Marx thus inspires this dream in his assigned status as the “official guide” to the ongoing Chinese Revolution. This paper will focus on the crucial relation between Hegel and Chinese Marxism. Marx is a key Hegelian, critical of, but strongly dependent on, Hegel. Since the Chinese Dream is not Hegelian, but rather anti-Hegelian, it is unlikely, as I will be arguing, to be realized in a recognizably Marxian form

Alcuni aspetti del sogno di Marx

The purpose of this contribution is to ask whether the world of today can be analysed in terms of hegemony. Firstly, the main features of hegemony in the 19th century, during the period between the two wars and in the post-war period up to the 1970s, are illustrated. Secondly, the elements that allow us to speak, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of a “passive revolution” are described. And finally, the model known as Neoliberalism is compared to these notions. The conclusion is that, though much more restricted in its ambitions, Neoliberalism can ultimately be said “hegemonic” because it tries to articulate the main elements of the hegemonic discourse, despite the fact that the terrain has changed: no longer the national State but the international field of the new “cosmopolitical” bourgeoisie. Hegemony; Passive Revolution; Neoliberalism; Gramsci