Technology Used and Required

This unit uses an ilearn website and Echo360 lecture recordings (https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/login/MQ/). The website contains links to lecture notes, ilecture recordings, and other learning materials you might require for the course.

PHL351 will be delivered using a combination of lectures (live and pre-recorded) and tutorial/seminar discussion groups. Most weeks there will be live lectures that will be recorded via the ECHO360 recording system and made available via the website. On some weeks there will be pre-recorded lectures that I will upload via ECHO360 on the website. Students will be informed as to which lectures will be live and which will be pre-recorded for viewing or listening via the website. Students will therefore require access to a computer and a good internet connection in order to participate in the unit effectively.

 Lecture and Tutorial Times

There are two lectures per week:

Monday 12.00-1pm W5C 309

Thursday 12.00-1pm W6B 315

There is one tutorial class scheduled (at present):

Monday 1.00pm-2.00pm W5C 309

Weekly tutorials will begin in WEEK 2 and will continue until Week 13. There will also be weekly discussion questions that students are asked to answer. 

External students will be required to participate in online tutorials where set questions will be discussed and interaction between students will be encouraged across the semester. I will also participate in these discussions from time to time, maninly in a facilitating role.

Learning and Teaching Strategy

This unit will driven by student-centred learning strategies, combining lectures with active seminar-style discussion. Learning technologies such as ilearn websites, lecture recordings, and other electronic resources will be used throughout to facilitate learning. Active participation and group learning activities will be emphasised throughout the semester. Student feedback concerning the content and delivery of the course will also be encouraged.

The unit is taught through lectures and tutorials (two lectures and one tutorial per week). Tutorials will be run as weekly workshops dealing with questions and problems arising from the weekly readings and lecture material. Students will be expected to attend the weekly lectures and to read set readings in preparation for tutorials. Active participation is encouraged: asking questions, making comments, raising issues for discussion by the group, etc. Students are also encouraged to relate the lecture and reading material to other areas of study and to broader social, cultural and political debates. External students are required to participate in online discussions.

Information about ilearn and other resources:

Very useful information and resources for using ilearn can be found at this website:

http://www.mq.edu.au/iLearn/

The web page for this unit can also be found at the mq ilearn website:

https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/login/MQ/

Changes since the last offering of this unit:

Since last being offered this unit has undergone the following changes:

Revision of learning activities, outcomes, and assessment tasks;

Curriculum mapping of relationship between activities, outcomes, and graduate capabilities;

Addition of new course content including new topics and more updated weekly readings;

Greater emphasis given to active learning and group learning activities.

Required and Recommended Texts and/or Materials

PHL351 Social Philosophy will be using electronically available readings, either via e-reserve at the library or via online open access websites.

Recommended websites, articles, and video clips will also be made available via the PHL351 website. A guide to further reading/recommended bibliography will also be posted for students.

Other material (readings lists)

The following is a list of supplementary readings. Students are not required to read all of this literature but you may wish to consult some of these text when preparing your essays. There is a vast critical literature on social philosophy that is not included in this list; further resources and readings are available via the library.

Adorno, Theodor W., Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ahston (London: Routledge, 1973).

Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. E. Jephcott, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

Bernstein, Jay, Recovering Ethical Life. Jürgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory (London: Routledge, 1995).

—— “Suffering Injustice: Misrecognition as Moral Injury in Critical Theory,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 13:3 (2005), pp. 303-324.

Deranty, Jean-Philippe et al. (eds.) Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French Critical Theory (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Deranty, Jean-Philippe, “Injustice, Violence and Social Struggle. The Critical Potential of Honneth’s Theory of Recognition,” in J. Rundell et al. (eds.) Contemporary Perspectives in Social and Critical Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 297-322.

—— “The Loss of Nature in Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition: Rereading Mead with Merleau-Ponty,” Critical Horizons 6 (2005), pp. 153-181.

—— “Repressed Materiality: Retrieving the Materialism in Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition”, in J.-P. Deranty, et al., Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French Critical Theory (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 137-164.

—— “Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory: A Defence of Honneth’s Theory of Recognition,” in H.-C. Schmidt-am-Busch and C. Zurn (eds.), The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009_.

Deranty, Jean-Philippe and Emmanuel Renault, “Politicising Honneth’s Ethics of Recognition,” Thesis Eleven 88 (2007), pp. 92-111.

Dews, Peter (ed.), Habermas. A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).

Düttman, Alexander, Between Cultures: Tensions in the Struggle for Recognition, trans. K. Woodgate (London: Verso, 2000).

Feenberg, Andrew, Heidegger and Marcuse: Catastrophe and Redemption of History (New York: Routledge, 2005).

Feldman, Leonard, “Redistribution, Recognition, and the State: The Irreducibly Political Dimension of Injustice,” Political Theory 30:3 (2002), pp. 410-440.

Foster, Roger, “Recognition and Resistance: Axel Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” Radical Philosophy 94 (1999), pp. 6-18.

Fraser, Nancy, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997).

—— “Rethinking Recognition,” New Left Review 3 (2000), pp. 107-120.

—— “Recognition without Ethics,” Theory, Culture and Society 18:2-3 (2001), pp. 21-42.

Freundlieb, Dieter, “Rethinking Critical Theory: Weaknesses and New Directions,” Constellations 7:1 (2000), pp. 80-99.

Habermas, Jürgen, Toward a Rational Society, trans. J. Shapiro (London: Heinemann, 1971).

—— Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro (Cambridge: Polity, 1987).

—— The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. T. McCarthy (New York: Beacon Press, 1984).

—— Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, trans. W. M. Hohengarten (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).

—— The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. F. G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1990).

—— Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt and S. Weber Nicholsen, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).

—— Justification and Application (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).

—— Between Facts and Norms, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).

—— The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, C. Cronin and P. De Greiff (eds.), (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1999).

—— The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003).

Honneth, Axel, Critique of Power. Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. K. Baynes, (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT, Press, 1991).

—— The Fragmented World of the Social. Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, C. C. Wright (ed.) (New York: 1995).

—— The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. J. Anderson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).

—— Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).

—— Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Horkheimer, Max, Between Philosophy and Social Science, trans. F. Hunter, M. Kramer, J. Torpey (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1993).

—— Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. M. O’Connell et al. (New York: Continuum, 2002).

Marcuse, Herbert, Negations, Essays in Critical Theory, trans. J. Shapiro (London: Penguin, 1968).

—— Studies in Critical Theory, trans. J. De Bres (London: NLB, 1972).

—— An Essay on Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).

—— Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972).

Marx, Karl, Early Writings, trans. R. Livingstone and G. Benton (London: Penguin Books, 1992).

—— Capital I, trans. B. Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1990).

McCarthy, Thomas, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (London: Hutchinson, 1978).

Pippin et al., Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1988), pp. 215-224.

Thompson, Simon, The Political Theory of Recognition: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 2006).

—— “Is Redistribution a Form of Recognition? Comments on the Fraser-Honneth Debate,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8:1, pp. 85-102.

Whitebook, Joel, “The Problem of Nature in Habermas”, in D. Macauley (ed.), Minding Nature (New York: Guilford Press, 1996).

Zurn, Christopher, “Anthropology and Normativity: a Critique of Axel Honneth’s ‘Formal Conceptions of Ethical Life’”, Philosophy and Social Criticism 26:1 (2000), pp. 115-124.

—— “Identity or Status? Struggles over ‘Recognition’ in Fraser, Honneth, and Taylor,” Constellations 10:4 (2003), pp. 519-537.

—— “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” European Journal of Philosophy 13:1 (2005), pp. 89-126.

Week 1: Defining social philosophy (February 25)

Social philosophy as an original way of looking at contemporary society; definition and characterisation of key problems; overview of the main questions linked to social philosophy.  

Readings:

-            Axel Honneth, “Pathologies of the Social,” in D. Rasmussen (ed.), Handbook of Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 369-398 / 2-16.

-            Axel Honneth, “A Social Pathology of Reason,” in F. Rush (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 336-360 / 18-30.

Part I: Key concepts and arguments in the tradition of social philosophy

Week 2: The ‘total administration’ thesis I (March 4) 

Adorno and Horkheimer’s idea of a ‘dialectic of Enlightenment’; the paradox of a rational progress leading to self-destruction; late capitalism as ‘total administration’ of life. Marcuse’s diagnosis of ‘new forms of control’; technology; the repression of nature within and without; the idea of a ‘liberation of nature’.

Readings:

-           Theodor Adorno, “Psychology and Sociology (Part One),” New Left Review 1:46 (1967), pp. 1-10 / 116-125. 

-           Herbert Marcuse, “The New Forms of Control,” “The Conquest of the Unhappy Consciousness: Repressive Desublimation,” One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society(London: Routledge, 1964), pp. 1-18, 70-81 / 127-142.

-           Herbert Marcuse, “Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society,” Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (London: Free Association Books, 1988), pp. 248-269 / 144-154.

Week 3: Habermas: The ‘colonisation’ thesis I (March 11)

Jürgen Habermas’ key intervention in social philosophy; the increase in complexity of contemporary society; system versus lifeworld.

Readings:

-           Jürgen Habermas, “The Concept of the Lifeworld,” “The Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld,” “The Tasks of a Critical Theory,” The Theory of Communicative Action vol. 2 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 134-152, 153-155, 382-397 / 156-173.

-            Jürgen Habermas, “The Dialectic of Rationalisation,” in P. Dews (ed.), Autonomy and Solidarity(London: Verso, 1986), pp. 104-115 / 174-188.

Week 4: Habermas: The ‘colonisation’ thesis II (March 18)

Habermas’s thesis on the ‘colonisation’ of the lifeworld by ‘functionalist’ reason: the nefarious invasion of non-economic spheres by economic rationalist logic. Communication as a core mechanism of social integration.

Readings:

-            Jürgen Habermas, “The Concept of the Lifeworld,” “The Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld,” “The Tasks of a Critical Theory,” The Theory of Communicative Action vol. 2 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 134-152, 153-155, 382-397 / 156-173.

Background Reading:

-            Samir Gandesha, “Marcuse, Habermas and the Critique of Technology,” in J. Abromeit and W. Cobb (eds.), Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 188-208 / 180-190

Week 5: Multiculturalism and liberalism (March 25)

The question of human rights and globalisation: bulwark against barbarism or instrument of political domination? Habermas on human rights and multiculturalism. Taylor on multiculturalism and recognition

[N.B. Public holiday on Friday March 29 (Good Friday): lecture will be pre-recorded]

 Readings:

·        J. Habermas, Multiculturalism and the Liberal State Stanford Law Review, Vol. 47, No. 5. (May, 1995), pp. 849-853. (Online:http://homepage.univie.ac.at/herbert.preiss/files/Habermas_Multiculturalism_and_the_Liberal_State.pdf)

·        S. Benhabib, ‘The liberal imagination and the four dogmas of multiculturalism’:  The Yale Journal of Criticism, Volume 12, Number 2, Fall 1999 

·        C. Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in C. Taylor and A. Gutman (ed.) Multiculturalism, Expanded Paperpack Edition, Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 25 ff.  (http://elplandehiram.org/documentos/JoustingNYC/Politics_of_Recognition.pdf)

Weeks 6: Global Capitalism, Human Rights, and Liberal Democracy (April 1)

The question of human rights and globalisation. Challenges for liberal democracies in a globalised world: human rights, the global economy, liberal democracy. Habermas and Ranciere on rights, politics, and democracy.

Readings: 

·        Jurgen Habermas, The Concept Of Human Dignity And The Realistic Utopia Of Human Rights’,Metaphilosophy,Volume 41, Issue 4, pages 464–480, July 2010

·        Jacques Ranciere, "Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?" South Atlantic Quarterly vol.103, no2/3 , 2004, pp. 297-310.

Week 7: The Critique of Human Rights and Liberal Democracy (April 8)

Is the ethical-moral critique of human rights' violations under conditions of globalisation enough? Badiou's critique of human rights discourse and liberal democracy. The relationship between philosophy, politics, and democracy. Zizek on the GFC and its broader political and ideological implications.

Readings: 

·        Alain Badiou, "Does Man Exist?" and "Ethics as a Figure of Nihilism" from his Ethics, pp. 4-17, and pp. 30-37.

·        Badiou, "Philosophy and Politics", from his Infinite Thought, pp. 69-78.

·        Badiou, "A Speculative Disquisition on the Concept of Democracy", from his Metapolitics, pp. 78-85.

·        S. Zizek, ‘It’s Ideology, Stupid!’, First as Tragedy, then as Farce (London: Verso Books, 2009), pp. 9-37.

MID-SEMESTER BREAK (April 15-26)

N.B. Case Study due Monday, 15 April (1st week of mid-semester break)

Part II: Contemporary social philosophy

Weeks 8: Honneth’s Theory of Recognition (April 29)

Problems with the ‘colonisation thesis’; recognition as core mechanism of social integration; the spheres of recognition: love, rights, social esteem; modernity as moral progress; the centrality of social movements for social progress.

Primary Text:  

·        Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (MIT Press, 1995), chapter 5.

Secondary Texts:

·        Axel Honneth, “Habermas’ Theory of Society,” Critique of Power (Cambridge Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), pp. 282-303.

·        Axel Honneth, “Disrespect and Resistance,” The Struggle for Recognition (London: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 160-170 / 204-209.

·        Axel Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition” and “The Point of Recognition,” in N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003), pp. 138-143, 180-189.

Week 9: Recent debates in Critical Theory (May 6)

Primary recognition as foundation of the spheres of recognition. The subject of recognition; Critical Theory and psychoanalysis; reification and alienation in contemporary Critical Theory. The problem of the environment and natural objects in contemporary Critical Theory.

Primary Text:

·        Extracts from Axel Honneth, Reification. A New Look at an Old Idea (OUP, 2008), 40-63.

Secondary Texts:

• Joel Whitebook, “The Problem of Nature in Habermas”, from Minding Nature (Guilford Press: New York, 1996), 283-318.
• Joel Whitebook, “Mutual recognition and the work of the negative”, in Pluralism and the Pragmatic Turn: The Transformation of Critical Theory, ed. W. Rehg & J. Bohman, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001), 257-290.
• Axel Honneth, “Facets of the Presocial Self: A Rejoinder to Whitebook”, in The I and the We. Studies in the Theory of Recognition (Cambridge: Polity, 2012), 217-231.
• Johanna Meehan, “Recognition and the Dynamics of Intersubjectivity”, in Axel Honneth. Critical Essays, Danielle Petherbridge (ed) (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 89-124.

Week 10: The critique of contemporary capitalism (May 13)

What are the specific features of contemporary capitalism? Fordism and post-fordism, neoliberal capitalism. Can contemporary capitalism be critiqued from the perspective of recognition? The “redistribution-recognition” debate. Contemporary critique of political economy. 

Primary texts:

·        Redistribution as Recognition” and “The Point of Recognition,” in N. Fraser and A. Honneth,Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003), 21-223, 248-256. 

·        Martin Hartmann and Axel Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism”, Constellations 13:1 (2006), pp. 41-58 / 304-321.

Secondary texts:

·        Christopher Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution and Democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s Social Theory”, European Journal of Philosophy, 2005, 13(1), 89-126.

·        Nicholas Smith, “Recognition, Culture and Economy: The Debate of Honneth with Fraser”, in Axel Honneth. Critical Essays (Brill, 2011), 321-345.

·        J-P Deranty, “Marx, Honneth and the Tasks of Critical Theory”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2013.

·        Emmanuel Renault, “From Fordism to Post-Fordism: Beyond or Back to Alienation?”, Critical Horizons

Week 11-12: Subjectivities under pressure: the contemporary experience of work; intimate and self-relations (May 20)]

The different dimensions of contemporary work. How should contemporary work organizations and work experiences be critiqued? Subjective life and interpersonal relations as “factors of production”. Identity and relationships as commodities.

Primary texts:

·        Axel Honneth, “Organised Self-Realisation”, European Journal of Social Theory 7:4 (2004), pp. 463-478 / 288-302.

·        Axel Honneth, “Recognition and Work. A New Definition”, English version of German article published in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 56:3 (2008), pp. 327-341 / 344-366.  

·        Christophe Dejours, extract from “From the Psychopathology to the Psychodynamics of Work”, Smith/Deranty (eds) New Philosophies of Labour (Brill, 2012), 221-251.

Secondary texts:

·        Eva Illouz, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism (London: Polity, 2007), Chapter 4. “Romantic Webs,” pp. 74-114 / 323-343.

·        J-P Deranty, “Cooperation and Expression as Norms of Contemporary Work”, in Smith/Deranty (eds)New Philosophies of Labour (Brill, 2012), 151-181. 

·        Nicholas Smith and J-P Deranty , “Work and the Politics of Misrecognition”, Res Publica, 18, 2012, 53-64.

·        J-P Deranty and Craig MacMillan, "The ILO's Decent Work Initiative: Suggestions for an Extension of the Notion of "Decent Work", Journal of Social Philosophy, 43(4), 2012, 386-405.

Week 13: Reading Week (June 3)

No scheduled lectures: tutorials will be devoted to essay writing workshops.

N.B. Essay due Monday, 10 June (first week of exam period)