Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature

Author: Kaan Kangal
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030343359
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Reading different or controversial intentions into Marx and Engels’ works has been a common but somewhat unquestioned practice in the history of Marxist scholarship. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature, a torso for some and a great book for others, is a case in point. The entire Engels debate separates into two opposite views: Engels the contaminator of Marx’s “new materialism” vs. Engels the self-educated genius of dialectical materialism. What Engels, unlike Marx, has not enjoyed so far is a critical reading that considers the relationship between different layers of this standard text: authorial, textual, editorial, and interpretational. Informed by a historical hermeneutic, this book questions the elements that structure the debate on the Dialectics of Nature. It analyzes different political and philosophical functions attached to Engels’ text, and relocates the meaning of the term “dialectics” into a more precise context. Arguing that Engels’ dialectics is less complete than we usually think it is but that he achieved more than most scholars would like to admit, this book fully documents and critically analyzes Engels’ intentions and concerns in the Dialectics of Nature, the process of writing, and its reception and edition history in order to reconstruct the solved and unsolved philosophical problems in this unfinished work.

Dialectics of Human Nature in Marx's Philosophy

Author: M. Tabak
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137043148
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
A scholarly exploration of Marx's thought without any favorable or critical ideological agendas, this book opposes the compartmentalization of Marx's thought into various competing doctrines, such as historical materialism, dialectical materialism, and different forms of economic determinism.

Dialectics of Nature

Author: Friedrich Engels
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description

The Dialectical Biologist

Author: Richard Levins
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674255313
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Scientists act within a social context and from a philosophical perspective that is inherently political. Whether they realize it or not, scientists always choose sides. The Dialectical Biologist explores this political nature of scientific inquiry, advancing its argument within the framework of Marxist dialectic. These essays stress the concepts of continual change and codetermination between organism and environment, part and whole, structure and process, science and politics. Throughout, this book questions our accepted definitions and biases, showing the self-reflective nature of scientific activity within society.

Toward a Critical Theory of Nature

Author: Carl Cassegård
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350176273
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Challenging the normalization of a capitalist reality in which environmental destruction and catastrophe have become 'second nature', Towards a Critical Theory of Nature offers a bold new theoretical understanding of the current crisis via the work of the Frankfurt School. Focusing on key notions of dialectics, natural history, and materialism, a critical theory of nature is outlined in favor of a more traditional Marxist theory of nature, albeit one which still builds on core Marxist concepts to confirm humanity's central place in manufacturing environmental misery. Pre-eminent thinkers of the Frankfurt school, including, Georg Lukács, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and Alfred Schmidt, are highlighted for their potential to diagnose the interpenetration of capitalism and nature in a way that neither absolutizes nor obliterates the boundary between the social and natural. Further theoretical claims and practical consequences of a critical theory of nature challenge other contemporary theoretical approaches like eco-Marxism, social constructivism and new materialism, to situate it as the only approach with genuinely radical potential. The possibility of utopian idealism for understanding and responding to the current climate crisis is carefully measured against the dangers of false hope in setting out realistic goals for change. Environmental change in turn is seen through the prism of recent cultural currents and movements, situating the power of a critical theory of nature in relation to understandings of the Anthropocene; concepts of apocalypse, and postapocalypse. This book culminates in a powerful tool for an anti-capitalist critique of society's painfully extractive relationship to a deceptively abstracted natural world.

Adorno on Nature

Author: Deborah Cook
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317548035
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
Decades before the environmental movement emerged in the 1960s, Adorno condemned our destructive and self-destructive relationship to the natural world, warning of the catastrophe that may result if we continue to treat nature as an object that exists exclusively for our own benefit. "Adorno on Nature" presents the first detailed examination of the pivotal role of the idea of natural history in Adorno's work. A comparison of Adorno's concerns with those of key ecological theorists - social ecologist Murray Bookchin, ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant, and deep ecologist Arne Naess - reveals how Adorno speaks directly to many of today's most pressing environmental issues. Ending with a discussion of the philosophical conundrum of unity in diversity, "Adorno on Nature" also explores how social solidarity can be promoted as a necessary means of confronting environmental problems.

Reclaiming Communist Philosophy

Author: Wilson W. S. Au
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1681237458
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
This book is unique in its utilization of the natural sciences to explain and illustrate key concepts of communist philosophy. In its recapitulation of the spirit of Engels’s unfinished manuscript, The Dialectics of Nature, it relies on the physical sciences developed since Engels’s time to reaffirm the validity of materialist dialectics, a point which is more easily made in the context of natural phenomena than it is in social phenomena. The basic philosophical tenets underlying Communist ideology are all supported by the natural sciences. The book is situated within the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist tradition. Its overarching theme is the need to reclaim our most fundamental weapon of that tradition—it’s methodology or philosophy—which has been vitiated or even scrapped by well-intentioned revolutionaries throughout the 20th century. In particular, some of Mao’s philosophical formulations are found to be erroneous and in opposition to his practice. With the rapidly accelerating deterioration of the global capitalist order in progress since 2007, the urgency of this reclamation cannot be over-emphasized.

The Return of Nature

Author: John Bellamy Foster
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
ISBN: 1583679286
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 688

Book Description
Winner, 2020 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize A fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology Twenty years ago, John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature introduced a new understanding of Karl Marx’s revolutionary ecological materialism. More than simply a study of Marx, it commenced an intellectual and social history, encompassing thinkers from Epicurus to Darwin, who developed materialist and ecological ideas. Now, with The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, Foster continues this narrative. In so doing, he uncovers a long history of the efforts to unite questions of social justice and environmental sustainability, and helps us comprehend and counter today’s unprecedented planetary emergencies. The Return of Nature begins with the deaths of Darwin (1882) and Marx (1883) and moves on until the rise of the ecological age in the 1960s and 1970s. Foster explores how socialist analysts and materialist scientists of various stamps, first in Britain, then the United States, from William Morris and Frederick Engels, to Joseph Needham, Rachel Carson, and Stephen J. Gould, sought to develop a dialectical naturalism, rooted in a critique of capitalism. In the process, he delivers a far-reaching and fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology. Ultimately, what this book asks for is nothing short of revolution: a long, ecological revolution, aimed at making peace with the planet while meeting collective human needs.

Critical Ecologies

Author: Andrew Biro
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802098401
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Book Description
Environmental movements are the subject of increasingly rigorous political theoretical study. Can the Frankfurt School's critical frameworks be used to address ecological issues, or do environmental conflicts remain part of the "failed promise" of this group? Critical Ecologies aims to redeem the theories of major Frankfurt thinkers--Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse, among others--by applying them to contemporary environmental crises. Critical Ecologies argues that sustainability and critical social theory have many similar goals, including resistance to different forms of domination. Like the Frankfurt School itself, the essays in this volume reflect a spirit of interdisciplinarity and draw attention to intersections between environmental, socio-political, and philosophical issues. Offering textual analyses by leading scholars in both critical theory and environmental politics, Critical Ecologies underscores the continued relevance of the Frankfurt School's ideas for addressing contemporary issues.

Reason in Revolt

Author: Alan Woods
Publisher: Wellred Books
ISBN: 1900007568
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 557

Book Description
The achievements of science and technology during the past century are unparalleled in history. They provide the potential for the solution to all the problems faced by the planet, and equally for its total destruction. Allegedly scientific theories are being used to "prove" that criminality is caused, not by social conditions, but by a "criminal gene". Black people are alleged to be disadvantaged, not because of discrimination, but because of their genetic make-up. Of course, such "science" is highly convenient to right-wing politicians intent on ruthlessly cutting welfare. In the field of theoretical physics and cosmology there is a growing tendency towards mysticism. The "Big Bang" theory of the origin of the universe is being used to justify the existence of a Creator, as in the book of Genesis . For the first time in centuries, science appears to lend credence to religious obscurantism. Yet this is only one side of the story.