All posts filed under: marxism

Notes to Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle: Chapters 1 and 2

Tuesday, October 23, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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capitalism / commodity fetishism / consumption / Debord / image / isolation / marxism / materialism / May 68 / reification / representation / separation / simulacrum / Society of the Spectacle / spectacle / Theory / Philosophy

Separation Perfected But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence…illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. –Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity […]

Translation: Alain Badiou and the Concept of the Model: Introduction to a Materialist Epistemology of Mathematics

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
comments 5
abstraction / badiou / Carnap / Dialectical Materialism / epistemology / French Translation / ideology / marxism / mathematics / meta-theory / model / philosophy of science / Quine / Untranslated Theory

The following is the first three sections of Alain Badiou’s first theoretical book Le Concept de modèle: introduction à une épistémologie matérialiste des mathématiques. Paris: Maspero, 1968. p. 7-17 and is an original translation by Taylor Adkins [10/17/07]. Editor’s Advertisement: The beginning of this text continues a talk given on April 29, 1968 by Alain Badiou within the framework of the “Course of philosophy for scientists” given to the National university. This continuation should have […]

Translation: Appendix to Boudot’s Reading in Nietzsche aujourd’hui: Round Table Discussion

Friday, September 28, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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French Translation / marxism / Maurice de Gandillac / method / Nietzsche / Nietzsche aujourd'hui / nihilism / ontology / Pierre Boudot / Zarathustra

Boudot, Pierre. “Discussion de la méthode dia-critique: une méthode de lecture de Zarathoustra.” Nietzsche aujourd’hui (2 vols.). Pierre Boudot et. alia. Publications du centre culturel de Cérisy-a-Salle (Paris: UGE, 1973),vol. 1, pp. 384-393.. This is the discussion following Pierre Boudot’s essay in the Nietzsche aujourd’hui volume translated by Taylor Adkins [9/28/07]. Robert Sasso: I am surprised to hear you presenting your lecture program without many references, some allusive, to works already devoted to readings of […]

‘A Doctrine for Specialists and Philosophers:’ Sartre’s Existential Universalism

Sunday, September 16, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
comments 7
Christianity / existentialism / freedom / marxism / ontology / project / responsibility / Sartre / subjectivity / teleology / universal

In his Existentialism and Human Emotions published in 1947, Sartre notes that what existentialists have in common is the fact that “they believe that existence comes before essence—or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective” (3). Yet immediately after establishing this as his existentialist slogan, Sartre begins to argue that objects have essence because they were made according to a certain plan and because they serve a definite purpose. So the essence […]

Debord: Society of the Spectacle Notes (Part 2)

Friday, May 18, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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capitalism / consumerism / Debord / marxism / May 68 / Society of the Spectacle

Society of the Spectacle 3. Unity and Division within Appearances A lively new polemic about the concepts ‘one divides into two’ and ‘two fuse into one’ is unfolding on the philosophical front in this country. This debate is a struggle between those who are for and those who are against the materialist dialectic, a struggle between two conceptions of the world: the proletarian conception and the bourgeois conception. Those who maintain that ‘one divides into […]

Nothing to Lose

Monday, April 9, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
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death / desire / love / marxism / master / responsibility

Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can […]