Filosofie als praktijk. Krisis na 40 jaar

Ido De Haan

doi:10.21827/krisis.40.1.36975

Abstract

In its forty years of existence, Krisis, as a journal of contemporary philosophy, has aimed to develop a new philosophical praxis. This praxis is sketched here in the first place as the practical work of making a journal, in the context of a community of philosophers discussing a canon of contemporary thinkers as well a range of shared problems. Yet beyond that, Krisis has always struggled with the question how, as a philosophical practice, it is related to other practices. The debate about “empirical philosophy” forms a crucial episode in this debate, in which Krisis has explored analytical, existentialist, pragmatist and Marxist approaches to a philosophy as praxis. Since then, this debate has shifted along four dimensions, of science, culture, politics and economy. In conclusion, it is argued that the entanglement of the praxis of Krisis with these four other practices makes it difficult to identify what is philosophical about Krisis.

Highlights

Bahr, that despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that almost all of its members were Jews, the early Frankfurt School was not interested in antisemitism (Bahr 1978)
Jay made this more explicit in his 1980 article “The Jews and the Frankfurt School: Critical Theory's Analysis of Anti-Semitism” by arguing that antisemitism only became a topic of manifest concern in 1939 with Max Horkheimer’s article “Die Juden und Europa.”
Despite this initial lack of attention to antisemitism, Rensmann argues that “the full-fledged “Freudian turn” of the Frankfurt School theorists implies that they began to view the rise of authoritarianism and antisemitism as symptoms of the irrationality and prevailing patterns of social domination of the time” (PU 30-31). This claim carries a threefold burden of proof, first to demonstrate that the early Frankfurters at the time were aware of these implications; secondly, that antisemitism had a separate and even primary status in relation to authoritarianism; and thirdly, that antisemitism was not just a symptom, but a constitutive element of patterns of contemporary social domination. This is the starting-point for a detailed analysis of the psychoanalytically inspired arguments of Critical Theory about “postliberal subjectivity” in support of the position defended in the Dialektik der Aufklärung, that “all historical forms of subjectivity have been entangled in domination, producing identities plagued by powerful conflicts and precariously holding the self together in sadomasochistic structures” (PU 60)

Summary

Introduction

That despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that almost all of its members were Jews, the early Frankfurt School was not interested in antisemitism (Bahr 1978).

Results

Conclusion