In this inaugural episode of our new series on aesthetics, we discuss Friedrich Schiller’s 1795 Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man . We begin with his assessment of the French Revolution and its perceived failure to deliver on its lofty republican ideals, focusing on his ascription of this failure to the fragmentation of the modern self and society. We then attempt to wrap our minds around Schiller’s proposed corrective: an ‘aesthetic education’ that mobilizes art and beauty toward the en...
Apr 03, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 63
In this episode, we take a deep dive into Frantz Fanon’s first book Black Skin, White Masks . We discuss his views on racism as a form of alienation and narcissism, assess that status of reason throughout his argument, and interrogate his emphasis on futurity over history. Throughout we defend his theory of social pathology and his embrace of reason and universal humanism. This episode should be a stimulating introduction to the anticolonial and revolutionary work of Fanon for both newcomers and...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 62
In this episode we are joined by Devin Zane Shaw to talk about his book Philosophy of Antifascism: Punching Nazis and Fighting White Supremacy . We discuss the concept of the ‘three-way fight’, what Beauvoir’s analysis of the antinomies of action can teach us about emancipatory violence, and the necessity of community self-defense. Ambiguity may be an inescapable condition for those of us who truly care about freedom, but you just cannot have dinner with nazis, comrades. leftofphilosophy.com | @...
Mar 06, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 61
Feeling alienated? In this episode, we are here for you. We dig into three periods of Herbert Marcuse’s thought. Marcuse was Martin Heidegger’s student in the 1920s, a member of the Frankfurt School in the 1930s, the philosopher of the New Left in the 1960s, and stays haunting the petit bourgeois in the 2020s. We pay our respects and get to the bottom of his influence on critical theory, social movements, and the culture. leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil References: Herbert Marcuse, Heideggeri...
Feb 20, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 60
In this episode we dig into some early writings by the incomparable black radical feminist and communist Angela Davis. We reflect on some of the contradictions involved in the transformation of women’s labor in the development of patriarchal capitalism and the latent potentials for the emancipated life in common that these developments nevertheless carry within themselves. We talk about the radical potential of industrializing housework, discuss strategies for the formation of effective solidari...
Feb 06, 2023•18 min•Season 1Ep. 59
We couldn't put together a new episode for you this week, so we thought we'd unlock an old Patreon exclusive! Thanks to everyone who helped us pick which one by voting in our Twitter poll. We'll be back with a brand new ep next Monday. -- In this episode, the crew takes on a beloved figure of the academic 'left': Michel Foucault. The discussion gravitates around Foucault’s work in the early 1970’s on the ‘punitive society’, power as civil war, and popular rebellion. This post-‘68 period of his l...
Jan 30, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 58
In the second installment of our “What is Liberalism?” series we discuss the relationship between liberalism and the institution of the police. If a core principle of liberalism is the equal application of the law, then some enforcement mechanism is necessary to ensure the stability of the social order. The problem is that in liberal democracies the police are asked to equally apply the law while maintaining an unequal social order. These two tasks create legitimacy crises for the state. We disc...
Jan 16, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 57
In this special holiday episode we bring in the new year by being complete and total haters! We keep it real light and breezy for this short little convo. We drag Auld Lang Syne, the concept of New Years’ resolutions, the very notion of historical dates, and also for some reason the city of Boston. At one point the discussion turns into an unboxing video, which is great content for a podcast, famously a visual medium. Oh and we read Antonio Gramsci’s 1916 essay “I Hate New Year’s Day”. We’re jus...
Jan 01, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was many things, but chill was not one of them. In this patron-exclusive episode we have no chill either, getting into it about the renegade philosopher’s Discourse on Inequality , his totally bizarre fictional state of nature, and his stunningly prescient critique of modern society. You know, we aren’t primitivists at all, but sometimes it’s kinda hard to maintain that this whole civilization thing was worth it. We gave dogs anxiety disorders and spend our spare time licki...
Dec 20, 2022•9 min•Season 1Ep. 55
In this episode we talk with Jacob Blumenfeld about the concept of property in German Idealism. As it turns out, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel each had a pretty different idea of property than their Anglo counterparts who were out there apologizing for private property as a natural right and capitalism as freedom. Some might even say that socialism is what completes the system of German Idealism. They might also say that Fichte is totally bonkers. In either case, the Germans are both way cooler and wa...
Dec 05, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism is probably the most important foundational text for modern sociology, and we think that’s kind of a downer, actually. We talk about how we are thoroughly unconvinced about his central historical claim in the book, which seems to be that the Protestant reformation created the subjective conditions for the emergence of capitalism somehow. We also take him to task for his weak criticism of historical materialism and for his own sorely lac...
Nov 28, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 53
This is a tribute episode to the great Mike Davis, the visionary social theorist and comrade who recently passed away in October 2022. We discuss his pathbreaking social analysis of Los Angeles, his political economy of urban life, his fondness for and reactivation of Marx’s political writings, and his unique ability to locate concrete phenomena within a specific historical conjuncture. Despite his clairvoyance about our disastrous present trajectory, we show why he was not the ‘prophet of doom’...
Nov 14, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 52
In Part Two of our two-part mini-series we discuss the work of Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope . We ask what difference there is between the thought of Bloch and Theodor Adorno, how hope and utopia enable political action, and why so many traditions seem to abhor the concept of utopia. Expand your horizons and come learn how to hope again in this episode! This is just a small clip from the full episode, which is available to patrons: patreon.com/leftofphilosophy References: Ernst Bloch, The ...
Nov 01, 2022•21 min•Season 1Ep. 51
In part one of our two-part mini-series on hermeneutics and utopia we discuss the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer in his 1983 text Praise of Theory . We talk about the importance of prejudice and tradition for self-understanding, ask whether the natural sciences or the human sciences have sole claim to truth, and praise the (qualified) freedom of theory from instrumental reason (continental philosophy even gets a positive shout-out!). The purpose of this mini-series is to assess the insights of he...
Oct 17, 2022•1 hr 3 min
In this episode we are joined by Martin Hägglund to discuss the existentialist's argument for what makes human life meaningful—and why democratic socialism is the logical conclusion to reach after having considered the matter carefully. We also dig into the limits of social democracy, the need for the state, and the revaluation of value that is yet to come. leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil Follow Martin: @martinhaegglund | http://martinhagglund.se References: Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secula...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 49
In this episode we are joined by James Callahan (aka Crane) to talk about Gillian Rose’s book Hegel Contra Sociology . We explore Rose’s critique of early twentieth-century sociology, which she argues was completely hampered by the limitations of its neo-Kantian framework. Looking to break out of this transcendental circle, Rose turns to Hegel and defends a highly original and sophisticated reading of his speculative political thinking, in order to develop a sociological analysis adequate for gr...
Sep 19, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 48
In today’s episode we talk about Guy Debord’s critique of life under modern capitalism by looking at his scathing and provocative The Society of the Spectacle . Is it true that all that was once lived is now mere representation? That the whole of society is mediated by an endless proliferation of passifying images? That the fullness of life has been replaced by its bloodless negation in survival? Because it sure feels like it! We discuss what exactly he means by spectacle, reflect on whether and...
Sep 06, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 47
In this patron-exclusive episode, we continue our series on the concept of dialectics by talking about Adorno’s Negative Dialectics. We reflect on what a non-closed dialectical system would look like, why Adorno is definitely not the defeatist he’s often caricatured as being, and what it means for us to hold onto utopian promises for a better world from within the administered nightmare of modern capitalism. Along the way we try to hone in on what’s special about Adorno’s negative dialectics, es...
Aug 22, 2022•11 min•Season 1Ep. 46
In this episode we are joined by Nathan DuFord to discuss their new book Solidarity in Conflict: A Democratic Theory . We unpack why they believe solidarity ought to be theorized as a political concept rather than moral injunction. For DuFord, we risk missing that solidarity is what the oppressed do with one another and that the oppressed will have disagreements within their solidary groups if we undertheorize the political dimensions of solidarity. We go on to discuss the relationships between ...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 45
In this episode we talk about the most important Marxist thinker during the time of the Second International, Karl Kautsky. We talk about his infamous claim that the breakdown of capitalism is historically inevitable, what he thinks socialist praxis should look like in a liberal democracy, and what the concentration of large-scale capital means for your small business. Plus at some point we realize that almost all anti-socialist arguments are actually just confused anti-capitalist ones, which we...
Aug 01, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 44
In this episode we talk with the wonderful Jason Read about his work on the concept of transindividuality and what it means for critical social theory, Marxist notions like alienation and reification, and traditional conceptions of freedom and equality. It’s bad news for anyone who thinks politics can be directly derived from ontology, but incredibly productive theoretically and practically if you're willing to think social relations as processes. Also Will admits he’s almost ready to confess hi...
Jul 26, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 43
In this episode we talk psychoanalytic theory and practice. With Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle as our touchstone, we get speculative about human desire, the death drive, and the relationship between psychoanalysis and political struggle. We discuss the problem of scaling up from individual psychology to collective organizations, the opacity of the subject, and some of the psychosocial pathologies peculiar to the United States here in the twenty-first century. We could all use a bit more ...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 42
In this episode we discuss James Boggs’s 1963 The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook . We talk about Boggs’s materialist conception of rights as “what you make and what you take.” In Boggs we find a novel conception of rights that are grounded in social power. We delve into the dangers automation and structural unemployment present to rights to life and happiness while wondering if a “workless” society would truly be a better one. In the end, we extend a figleaf to egalita...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 41
In this episode we kick off our new series called “What is Liberalism?” with private property, conquest, and a discussion about John Locke’s apologia for both. We appreciate the efforts of the left to civilize liberalism in the wake of its own civilizing efforts across the globe, but we ask whether it’s really possible to separate economic and political liberalism to make liberalism work for the left. Our experiences in DEI workshops suggest not, although many who are smarter than Locke have tri...
Jun 13, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 40
In this episode we discuss the work of György Lukács, focusing on the reification essay from his seminal 1923 book History and Class Consciousness . We talk about why it’s not great that the commodity form has penetrated every aspect of social life, why we need to retain the category of totality in spite of loud protests from postmodernists, and what’s special about the standpoint of the proletariat. Welcome to capitalism, folks: real contradictions and necessary illusions abound. But it’s not o...
May 30, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 39
In this episode, we discuss the infamous Nazi jurist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt, with particular focus on his 1923 book The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy . We attempt to better understand the right-wing, Schmittian case against both liberal ‘parliamentarianism’ and ‘Marxist socialism’, while trying to discern his positive political vision. Doing so requires assessing his paradoxical claim that democracy and dictatorship are perfectly compatible, and that dictatorship is good, act...
May 16, 2022•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 38
What do we mean when we call something a ‘structural injustice’? In this episode, we take up some of Iris Marion Young’s work and ask what makes the difference between interpersonal injustice and structural injustice. Along the way, we investigate concepts such as political responsibility, social connection, and the character of global injustice. As an extra special treat listeners will find out what is preventing Gil from being a revolutionary (the answer may surprise you)! The full episode is ...
May 02, 2022•10 min•Season 1Ep. 37
In this episode, we talk with Owen Alldritt about justice. We come to Plato’s defense against the Western philosophical canon, mostly in spite of ourselves, and insist on the True coinciding with the Good. What does this all have to do with utopia, you ask? As it turns out, Plato is a realist and he thinks we can know the Good in itself, organize our cities accordingly, and realize justice…or at least philosophers can. Good luck to everyone else! patreon to support | follow us @leftofphil Refere...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 36
In this episode, we talk with Aaron Rabinowitz of Embrace the Void and Philosophers in Space about the paradoxes of moral luck, the problematic nature of our everyday notions of responsibility, and what good pedagogy looks like when you’ve agreed – as you must – that spontaneous, volitional free will is merely an illusion. We do some Kantian maneuvering, form provisional alliances, and all things considered have as good a time as is possible given our total lack of freedom. References: Thomas Na...
Apr 05, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 35
In this episode we talk about Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment , focusing on their notion of reason as abstractive domination and their understanding of the culture industry as a means of producing mass complicity with the machinations of capital. The good news is that we've got a much better sense of humor than either of them, so it's not as miserable as all that might sound. The bad news is we're not sure if they're wrong to be so pessimistic. We also drag a fair bit of popul...
Mar 22, 2022•9 min•Season 1Ep. 34
