False Moves In Philosophy And Social Theory

This book considers diverse philosophical topics unified by the identification of false moves commonly found in modern philosophy, mainstream Anglo-American philosophy, and social theory. The authors expose the sources of fundamental problems that recur in philosophy—basic problems with what the authors call "factoring philosophy." Factoring philosophy fails to attend to the phenomenological task of determining when what is distinguishable is separable and when not. Consequently, factoring philosophy makes phenomenological mistakes—false moves—when it treats as separable what is only distinguishable. Analytic philosophy is prone to false moves when it fails to recognize that phenomenology is the necessary complement to analysis. There is nothing wrong with analysis—we might as well give up thinking as give up analysis—and nothing is wrong with the values prized by analytic philosophy. As Hegel observed, “philosophizing requires, above all, that each thought should be grasped in its full precision and that nothing should remain vague and indeterminate.” Ultimately, this book contends that false moves prevail in philosophical analysis and social theory when they neglect their phenomenological foundations.

This book considers diverse philosophical topics unified by the identification of false moves commonly found in modern philosophy, mainstream Anglo-American philosophy, and social theory. The authors expose the sources of fundamental problems that recur in philosophy—basic problems with what the authors call "factoring philosophy." Factoring philosophy fails to attend to the phenomenological task of determining when what is distinguishable is separable and when not. Consequently, factoring philosophy makes phenomenological mistakes—false moves—when it treats as separable what is only distinguishable. Analytic philosophy is prone to false moves when it fails to recognize that phenomenology is the necessary complement to analysis. There is nothing wrong with analysis—we might as well give up thinking as give up analysis—and nothing is wrong with the values prized by analytic philosophy. As Hegel observed, “philosophizing requires, above all, that each thought should be grasped in its full precision and that nothing should remain vague and indeterminate.” Ultimately, this book contends that false moves prevail in philosophical analysis and social theory when they neglect their phenomenological foundations.

This book extends the approach that Murray and Schuler develop in their companion volume, False Moves in Philosophy and Social Theory: Losing Public Purpose. The chapters form a connected inquiry into consequences of capital, a far-reaching social form, through a critique of political economy and the mindset it shares with much modern philosophy and social theory. The authors call this bifurcating mentality factoring philosophy. Factoring philosophy mistakes the distinguishable for the separable. It splits the subjective and objective, form and content, and it takes the object of social theory to be an impossible economy-in-general, stripped of constitutive social forms. The critique of factoring philosophy structures the collection, which makes a wide-ranging contribution to the research field of the critique of political economy as critical social theory. Ultimately, this book solidifies Murray and Schuler’s impact on the study of political economy, political philosophy, modern philosophy, Hegel, Marx, and critical theory.

This book extends the approach that Murray and Schuler develop in their companion volume, False Moves in Philosophy and Social Theory: Losing Public Purpose. The chapters form a connected inquiry into consequences of capital, a far-reaching social form, through a critique of political economy and the mindset it shares with much modern philosophy and social theory. The authors call this bifurcating mentality factoring philosophy. Factoring philosophy mistakes the distinguishable for the separable. It splits the subjective and objective, form and content, and it takes the object of social theory to be an impossible economy-in-general, stripped of constitutive social forms. The critique of factoring philosophy structures the collection, which makes a wide-ranging contribution to the research field of the critique of political economy as critical social theory. Ultimately, this book solidifies Murray and Schuler’s impact on the study of political economy, political philosophy, modern philosophy, Hegel, Marx, and critical theory.

In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one.

The Desire for Mutual Recognition is a work of accessible social theory that seeks to make visible the desire for authentic social connection, emanating from our social nature, that animates all human relationships. Using a social-phenomenological method that illuminates rather than explains social life, Peter Gabel shows how the legacy of social alienation that we have inherited from prior generations envelops us in a milieu of a "fear of the other," a fear of each other. Yet because social reality is always co-constituted by the desire for authentic connection and genuine co-presence, social transformation always remains possible, and liberatory social movements are always emerging and providing us with a permanent source of hope. The great progressive social movements for workers' rights, civil rights, and women’s and gay liberation, generated their transformative power from their capacity to transcend the reciprocal isolation that otherwise separates us. These movements at their best actually realize our fundamental longing for mutual recognition, and for that very reason they can generate immense social change and bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice. Gabel examines the struggle between desire and alienation as it unfolds across our social world, calling for a new social-spiritual activism that can go beyond the limitations of existing progressive theory and action, intentionally foster and sustain our capacity to heal what separates us, and inspire a new kind of social movement that can transform the world.

“Empowering and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest threats to democracy.” —Kirkus Reviews Editors’ choice, The New York Times Book Review Recommended reading, Scientific American Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not? The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know. If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively. “[The authors] deftly apply sociological models to examine how misinformation spreads among people and how scientific results get misrepresented in the public sphere.” —Andrea Gawrylewski, Scientific American “A notable new volume . . . The Misinformation Age explains systematically how facts are determined and changed—whether it is concerning the effects of vaccination on children or the Russian attack on the integrity of the electoral process.” —Roger I. Abrams, New York Journal of Books

In the course of fifty years, director Stanley Kubrick produced some of the most haunting and indelible images on film. His films touch on a wide range of topics rife with questions about human life, behavior, and emotions: love and sex, war, crime, madness, social conditioning, and technology. Within this great variety of subject matter, Kubrick examines different sides of reality and unifies them into a rich philosophical vision that is similar to existentialism. Perhaps more than any other philosophical concept, existentialism—the belief that philosophical truth has meaning only if it is chosen by the individual—has come down from the ivory tower to influence popular culture at large. In virtually all of Kubrick’s films, the protagonist finds himself or herself in opposition to a hard and uncaring world, whether the conflict arises in the natural world or in human institutions. Kubrick’s war films (Fear and Desire, Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket) examine how humans deal with their worst fears—especially the fear of death—when facing the absurdity of war. Full Metal Jacket portrays a world of physical and moral change, with an environment in continual flux in which attempting to impose order can be dangerous. The film explores the tragic consequences of an unbending moral code in a constantly changing universe. Essays in the volume examine Kubrick’s interest in morality and fate, revealing a Stoic philosophy at the center of many of his films. Several of the contributors find his oeuvre to be characterized by skepticism, irony, and unfettered hedonism. In such films as A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick confronts the notion that we will struggle against our own scientific and technological innovations. Kubrick’s films about the future posit that an active form of nihilism will allow humans to accept the emptiness of the world and push beyond it to form a free and creative view of humanity. Taken together, the essays in The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick are an engaging look at the director’s stark vision of a constantly changing moral and physical universe. They promise to add depth and complexity to the interpretation of Kubrick’s signature films.

Aesthetic objects, crafted as poetic reflections of the contradictory worlds that they inhabit, are simultaneously theorized and theorizing. In Capital in the Mirror, eminent critical theorists explore the aesthetic dimension for reflective visions of capital that are difficult to obtain through even the most rigorous statistical analyses. Chapters address inequality, alienation, ideology, warfare, and other problems of contemporary capitalism through the cultural prisms of Herman Melville, Thomas Mann, Charles Dickens, J. W. Goethe, Friedrich Hölderlin, Walt Whitman, Bertolt Brecht, and science-fiction cinema. Famous narrative elements in their works, such as Ahab's pursuit of the white whale in Melville's Moby-Dick, demonic production and perverse desire in Mann's Doctor Faustus, socially electrified bodies of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and dystopian projections of current sci-fi cinema, are theorized as stylistically distorted reflections of social life within capital. The authors reveal theoretical powers latent within these condensed images that prefigure the dark dynamics of capitalism. Focusing on dark images of domination and also prophetic images of transformation, the book points the way toward emancipation, social regeneration, and human flourishing.

This book joins five key debates in the current theoretical literature that have been largely taking place in isolation and identifies common strands of argument and their shared problems to developed a unified way forward for practice-based political theory.