What's Left of Philosophy

Some news! We are going to livestream our 100th episode recording session at 1pm Eastern / 12 noon central standard time on our YouTube channel on Sunday October 27th.We will be answering questions! There's a form on our website's home page where you can submit yours. Tell us what you want to hear about!We're really looking forward to it. See you soon.https://www.leftofphilosophy.comhttps://www.youtube.com/@whatsleftofphilosophyMusic: Smoke by SoulProdMusic

In this episode, we discuss the philosopher of science Roy Bhaskar and his essays in Reclaiming Reality. We discuss whether it is possible for the human sciences to overcome the fact/value distinction, what role knowledge has in self-emancipation, and what to do about middle-class surburbanites who would rather watch the world burn than take a hit on their property values. Some highlights include the pod disagreeing on Althusser, Spinoza’s joy saving the day, and settling accounts with the ro...

In this episode we take on a Marxist classic, Rosa Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution,” in which she skewers Eduard Bernstein for being a feckless opportunist and for relinquishing the goal of socialism. Luxemburg takes on his argument that it’s possible for socialists to take increasing control of the capitalist state and progressively implement reforms that socialize the economy. Best diss track of all time. But don’t worry, we take Bernstein seriously, too. A ghost is haunting twenty-first ...

In this episode we take up the question: what is the State? With 1978’s State, Power, Socialism by Nicos Poulantzas as our guide, we talk about what it means to grasp the state as a historically specific form inseparable from the economy, find ourselves torn between the mutual dissatisfactions of Althusser and Foucault, and ask whether it is even possible to conceptualize ‘the capitalist state’ as such. Doing so might be necessary for political strategic reasons, but O, abstraction! Along the...

In this episode we talk about the weird little unfinished utopian novel The New Atlantis, written by founding enlightenment figure Francis Bacon. We talk about his fetish for differential novelty, his understanding and valorization of knowledge production, and his ambivalent status as a pivotal figure between medieval and modern science. He’s right that European rationality is sickly, but what can orgiastic science deliver for utopian consciousness? Not clear! But it definitely would be cool ...

In this episode, we discuss the educational philosophy of the American pragmatist John Dewey. Focusing on his 1938 treatise Experience & Education we explore questions concerning the ends of education, what it means to be an effective educator, and the relationship between experience and history. Dewey advocates for a form of education that focuses less on knowledge accumulation and more on cultivating the capacities of students for freedom through the enrichment of their experience. Othe...

In this episode, we discuss the contributions of political theorist Norman Geras to socialist debates about revolutionary ethics, movement democracy, and justice. He argues for a right to revolution, but that there’s a difference between political and social revolution, and that this difference tells us something about which ends justify which means. Other topics include state theory, dual power, and the role that Marxism can play in social movements today.patreon.com/leftofphilosophyReferenc...

In this episode, we talk about the late, great Charles Mills and his landmark book The Racial Contract. Forcefully arguing that the modern discourse of egalitarianism and freedom is underwritten by a tacit commitment to global white supremacy, Mills develops an immanent criticism of liberalism that remains faithful to many of its core values. We discuss the limits and promises of liberal universalism, the potential reform of contractarian logic, and whether white people really mean it when th...

In this episode, we discuss Robert Nozick’s libertarian political philosophy as presented in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. We consider his challenges to leftist thought, especially the sort of left liberalism championed by the likes of John Rawls. We take seriously his demand for an argument for egalitarianism and his critique of patterned accounts of distributive justice. But we also give him a hard time for some of his more absurd arguments, from those about swimming pools to th...

In this episode, we tackle the concept of violence as it appears in the revolutionary and anticolonial work of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Throughout the episode we link together Fanon’s endorsement of revolutionary violence against colonial domination with his work as a psychiatrist. How could Fanon argue for the necessity of violence while bearing witness to its regressive effects on both those who suffer violence and those who deploy it? What makes the revolutionary violence ...

In this episode, we are joined by Jeff Diamanti to discuss what it looks like to watch the climate change. Our conversation shifts from analytical, aesthetic, and political perspectives, as we turn our attention from critical raw materials to the future cartographies already being carved out. We explore Jeff’s notion of the terminal as the kind of space where capitalism abstracts matter and value becomes concrete. As it turns out, there’s more to see in the logistics than philosophers might t...

In this episode, we discuss essays from throughout G.A. Cohen’s philosophical career. Cohen is known as one of the founders of Analytical Marxism, so we talk about what this tradition in Marxist thinking is about and how it handles the problems of political let-down and disillusionment that affect us all. We also get into his polemics against the libertarians and John Rawls in his essays on exploitation, freedom, and justice.This is just a short clip from the full episode, which is available ...

In this episode, we are joined by Alberto Toscano to talk about his analysis of contemporary far-right movement and ideology. We discuss his new book Late Fascism and consider the strategic and rhetorical downsides of analogizing the present moment to past instantiations of fascist politics in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. We try to get a grip on what distinguishes contemporary fascism, why liberal discourse’s fixation on ‘totalitarianism’ fails to grasp the specificity of fascism...

In this episode, we are joined by Ajay Chaudhary to discuss his book The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World and the political, economic, and affective sites of exhaustion reproduced through climate degradation. We examine the expanding colonial relations of what Chaudhary calls the “extractive circuit” between the both the Global South and Global North as well as widening segments of the working classes in the Global North. We dispel fantasies of both the hope that climate ch...

In this episode, we are joined by Matt McManus to discuss his research into the history and philosophy of right-wing politics in his book The Political Right and Equality. We discuss the nature of conservatism as an irrationalist reaction to modernist ideas about human egalitarianism, the rhetorical strategies of the right, and the historical conditions under which moderate conservatism turns over into extremist fascist reaction. We pay special attention to Edmund Burke’s aestheticization of ...