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]
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]
It is widely known that Hegel formulates dialectical conceptions of the abstract and the concrete. But Marx is the first to rely on this approach to analyze the conception of capitalist commodities in Capital. Influenced by Marx, Kosik connects dialectics with social reality in proposing a theory of social epistemology, which [read more]
On “Dialectics of the Concrete” in Examining the Academic relationship between Marx and Engels. Analysis Kosik’s Concept of Dialectics and its Contemporary Significance
e-mail: zangfy@ruc.edu.cn
50 years ago, Czech philosopher Kosik presented “Dialectics of the Concrete” in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Marxist context. It provided a new possibility to understand the nature of Marxist philosophy, which made dialectics into specific social and historical phenomenon depths, to avoid falling into the stereotype of “pseudo-concrete [read more]
Ontological Dialectic and A Critique of Modernity: Based on the Interpretation of Kosik’s ‘Concrete Totality’
e-mail: hantion77@gmail.com
“Concrete Totality’ is a crucial concept in Karel Kosik’s book Dialectics of the Concrete. The category ‘totality’ anticipated in modern philosophy since Spinoza and has been elaborated in German classical philosophy as a central concept for distinguishing dialectics from traditional metaphysics. There is no doubt that the basic logical [read more]
A International Conference, Prague, 4– 6 June 2014
