The Freedom and Necessity Dialectic: Marcuse, Kosik, and Today
e-mail: russellrockwell@hotmail.com
In Dialectics of the Concrete, Karel Kosik sharply focuses on the realm of necessity and realm of freedom as the core concepts underlying the dialectic of labor, praxis, and post-capitalist society. On the way to disclosing the central position of this dialectic, Kosik criticizes a central concept of Herbert Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution, the [read more]
Kosik’s Dialectics of Concrete Totality
e-mail: deskalovski@yahoo.com
Setting out from the categories of totality and histori(ci)sm in Kosik’s dialectics of the concrete, we look at the relationship between theory and practice: empty, abstract totality versus conrete, reified and alienated practice (Lukacs, Habermas, Honneth); a bad totality, in which the real polydimensional subject is replaced
[read more]
Dialectic of Unfolding in Hegel, Marx, and Kosík
e-mail: mt91@nyu.edu
My paper focuses on three important aspects found in Kosík’s book: the theory of essence; the conception of the character of the concrete; and the conception of dialectic as a process of unfolding. I draw from both Hegel and Marx to supplement Kosík’s arguments, and propose the following scheme of the dialectic of the concrete: (1) The [read more]
Was ‘Revisionist’/’Humanist’ Marxism the Beginning of the End? or, Was Dissidence Doomed to Become Liberal?
e-mail: gmtamas@gmail.com
A Red Thread Between Milan and Prague. Guido Neri´s Interpretation of Kosík´s Dialectics of the Concrete
e-mail: frtava@hotmail.it
The aim of this presentation consists in showing the tight bond between Karel Kosík and the Italian philosopher Guido Neri. The philosophy of Neri, whose grounds were both Husserlian phenomenology and Marxism, was deeply influenced by the thought of Kosík, who became a friend
[read more]
How Kosík´s Thinking Changed the Meaning of 1989?
e-mail: stephan-immanuel.teichgraeber@univie.ac.at
1989 is typically celebrated as a victory over Communism. Exactly whose victory this was is, however, less clear: democracy, market economics, capitalism, or neoliberalism? It was therefore somewhat strange when, for anniversary celebrations in 2009, both Thatcher and Gorbachev were invited to Prague. In my brief presentation I would like to show that perestroika could have represented a development of the thought of Karel Kosík [read more]
From Kosik to Havel: Debating the meaning of 1968
e-mail: avitucker@yahoo.com
The historical end of humanist Marxism as a viable political philosophy in Czechoslovakia and the rise of non-Marxist alternatives can be traced to the conflicting interpretations of the collapse of reformed Communism between Karel Kosik and Vaclav Havel. The debate on the final issues of the journals Flamen and Tvař, [read more]