Franck Fischbach

Adorno and Schelling: How to ‘Turn Philosophical Thought Towards the Non-Identical’

This paper explores the relationship between Adorno and Schelling. It argues that Adorno resorted to Schellingian motifs (whether he acknowledged them or not, or acknowledged them only partially) to counteract the influence of Hegelian thought. In defending this thesis, I examine the various stages in the development of Adorno’s thought, beginning with two texts from the 1930s and concluding with Negative Dialectics and ‘Skoteinos’. This allows us to see that Adorno’s concern to discover a way of thinking that is capable of doing justice to the ‘non-identical’ was present throughout his philosophical career.

Adorno’s theory of philosophical and aesthetic truth

and objective dimensions’ (143). Rockmore’s chapter on Hegel, while the longest, is also the most jammed – too many ideas are left undeveloped and not worked out with careful textual analysis. In his conclusion, Rockmore appears to endorse a quasi-Hegelian form of constructivism as an epistemic project for largely pragmatic reasons: it is a fallible cognitive approach that does not pretend to grasp immutable, transhistorical or non-revisable truths about reality (174). Rockmore tackles, no doubt, an important topic in German Idealism. He has a breadth of knowledge about the period and the history of philosophy. Many readers will find useful insights and summaries of challenging texts. One hopes his book will inspire more extensive reflection on the role of constructivism during the period, both in its theoretical and practical aspects.

Travail et éthicité démocratique

Une defense de l’hypothese de la centralite du travail doit faire face au risque d’une derive qui serait celle de l’absolutisation du travail. On court ce risque a partir du moment ou on decouple l’hypothese de la centralite du travail de la critique des formes prises actuellement par le travail, c’est-a-dire a partir du moment ou on assimile la centralite du travail a la forme particuliere que les societes capitalistes lui ont donnee. On absolutise alors la forme presente, c’est-a-dire capitaliste, prise par la centralite du travail et on risque d’etre conduit a une metaphysique du travail d’ou toute dimension critique a disparu. On peut contrer cette derive toujours possible en ouvrant l’hypothese de la centralite du travail sur l’horizon normatif d’une exigence de maitrise democratique exercee sur les conditions du travail par les travailleurs eux-memes, et en donnant a cet horizon normatif un ancrage realiste dans la division sociale du travail comprise comme l’element d’une cooperation sociale formatrice d’une ethicite democratique.

Refaire le social

Les trois dernieres decennies ont ete l’epoque du grand recul du social : aussi bien dans la realite, avec la remise en question systematique des conditions du fonctionnement des institutions du social, que dans la theorie avec (a droite) la construction de l’individu concurrentiel et (a gauche) le retour du commun. Les uns accusent le social (comme discours et comme institutions) de demobiliser les individus, les autres lui reprochent d’avoir substitue la simple gestion des « problemes sociaux » a la « bonne » conflictualite politique et d’avoir ainsi occulte les formes de privatisation des communs qui etaient a l’œuvre. Cet article entreprend de dissiper les malentendus autour du social, sur la base du rappel de ce que le privateur des mondes communs n’est pas le social, mais le capital, et qu’il faut donc savoir ne pas se tromper d’adversaire.

Les mésaventures de la critique. Réflexions à partir de Jacques Rancière

The Misadventures of Critique. Reflections from the Work of Jacques RanciereThe article puts forward an argument which has two stages. It begins by an acknowledgement of the criticism addressed by Ranciere to a postmodern mode of social critique which basically explains that if social critique is no longer effective, it is because the system subjected to the critique has the capacity to digest all the various types of criticism which can be levelled against its actual mode of operation. The conclusion to be drawn from this can only be that the status of such a discourse is a paradoxical one, insofar as it denounces the illusions of critique while preserving its own position as a lucid agent of critique. The article then seeks to formulate its reservations concerning the position of Ranciere, when the latter argues that the paradox or contradiction exposed in this respect is in fact inscribed in social critique from the beginning, in other words since Marx. The article demonstrates that the critical procedure, as envisaged by Marx, in no sense posits a hierarchical distinction between the lucid critic and the mass of those to whom the social critic addresses a discourse explaining the causes of the illusions of which they are inevitably the victims.