It is clear that Levinas’s critique of the dominance within Western philosophy of the concept of totality in Totality and Infinity was intended as a response to totalitarian-ism, but the extent to which this determines the organization of the book and the way in which this takes place has been largely misconceived. This is because of the failure to take seriously the opening question of whether or not we are duped by morality. The ethical resistance of the face of the Other does not adequately address that question until morality is secured against the challenge issued by a philosophy that equates being with war and that takes place only through the account of the infinite time of fecundity. Fecundity concretized in the family is the site of resistance to the totalitarian tendencies of any state that seeks for the sake of its preservation to legislate procreation. Hence fecundity and Eros are “beyond the face.” This reading draws on the important role given to fecundity in Time and the Other as well as the texts newly available in the first three volumes of Levinas’s Oeuvres.
Cities in socialist Czechoslovakia were meant to constitute the setting for an ideal socialist society. The dogmatic embracement of this objective by the ruling Communist Party eventuated in complete intolerance towards any manifestation of free-thinking of alleged opposition to socialism. Starting in the 1960s, part od Czechoslovak youth were inspired by the Western countercultural hippie movement and the Beat generation, as well as by punk subculture beginning in the 1970s. These people openly displayed their alienation from the official cultury by disrupting the established societal standards of appearance, behaviour, and leisure activities.
In §§ 50-51 of his Pensées sur l’interprétation de la Nature, Diderot draws consequences adverse to religion from the hypothesis of the sensibility of living matter in the Système de la Nature, prompting an endangered Maupertuis to respond. Diderot knows that he is reading his own materialistic conception of matter in Maupertuis but is feigning to object to it, while Maupertuis, who knows that the so-called objection is in truth Diderot’s own view, is compelled to defend himself. Through this rhetoric of feigned misunderstanding, real and fundamental questions (living matter, continuity, totality, unity of natural philosophy) raised by the phenomena of organization are being discussed.
The novel The Russian Nights (1844) proved to be a kind of philosophical and pictorial manifesto of Vladimir Odoevsky. The idea of ‘totality’ (целостность), conceived as a structure of internal and external world at the same time, was presented by the author in the concepts drawn from a variety of philosophical and esoteric systems. One of these forms — alchemical imagination — is used in the article to interpret the phenomenon of correlation that exists between the senses and the creative perception of space.
The following experimental text is drawn from my most recent research project War Machines: Utopia and Allegorical Poetics in the Twenty-First Century. The project is an adaptation of the allegorical poetics developed by the French poet Charles Baudelaire in his scathing attacks on the sweeping transformation of Paris being conducted by Napoleon III’s right-hand man, Baron Haussmann. This small excerpt from my new book is a demonstration of my critical and poetical re-framing of Benjamin’s work that orients itself more towards the overlooked elements of Benjamin’s Marxism, as well as his “weak messianic” perspective, in order to re-assert a more radical orientation of his poetics and critical method with the utopian perspectives found in the work of that other great Marxist outlier of the twentieth century, Ernst Bloch, especially as outlined in his book, The Principle of Hope. Thus, unlike the postmodern appropriation of Baudelaire and Benjamin, I want to propose the possibility of bridging the gap between allegorical poetics, Marxism, and utopianism once again as a rigorous, critical option in the twenty-first century.
Artykuł dotyczy wielowymiarowej twórczości rosyjskiej teoretyczki literatury, kultury, a także autorki wspomnień i dzienników – Lidii Ginzburg (1902–1990), która była świadkiem najbardziej newralgicznych momentów dwudziestowiecznej historii ZSRR/Rosji. Urodzona w Odessie, pochodziła z inteligenckiej, żydowskiej rodziny. Kształciła się w Leningradzie w latach 20., otoczona bardzo żywym ówcześnie, pluralistycznym środowiskiem intelektualnym i twórczym. Dotknięta przez stalinowskie represje, przeżyła wojenną blokadę Leningradu. W artykule problematyzowany jest splot trzech wymiarów totalności, które ukonstytuowały tę niebanalną myślicielkę. Pierwszy z nich to totalność doświadczeń biograficznych (represje, oblężenie miasta), drugi to totalność instytucji, w ramach których tworzyła i pracowała (totalitarny Związek Radziecki, cenzura) oraz trzeci, czyli totalność jej myśli i koncepcji, które przekraczały granice dyscyplin i obszarów działalności (precyzyjna i dążąca do kompletności twórczość naukowa oraz refleksyjna, emocjonalna i otwarta w swej formie twórczość wspomnieniowa – dzienniki, listy i zapiski). Totalność traktowana jest w artykule jako nierozerwalność teorii i praktyki, racjonalności i emocjonalności, abstrakcyjnych idei i prywatnego doświadczenia oraz innych przeciwstawnych sobie kategorii.
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This article concerns the multidimensional work of Lydia Ginzburg (1902–1990), a Russian literary and cultural theoretician and author of memoirs and diaries, who witnessed the most momentous events in the Soviet Union. The author of the article discusses the intersection of three dimensions of totality characterizing this remarkable thinker. The firstwas her biographical experience (the repressions, the siege of the city). The second concerns the institutions within which she worked (the totalitarian Soviet Union, censorship). The third was the nature of her thoughts andconcepts, which crossed the boundaries of various disciplines and formsof activity (her academic work aimed at completeness and precision; heremotional, reflective memoirs were open in form). “Totality” is understood in this article as the inseparability of theory and practice, of rationality and emotionality, of abstract ideas and private experience.
W artykule zaprezentowano koncepcję inteligencji Karla Mannheima oraz usytuowano ją w kontekście teorii wiedzy socjologa. We wstępnej części pracy dookreślone zostały terminy wykorzystywane przez Mannheima. Na podstawie teorii socjologicznej przedstawiono znaczenie pojęć „inteligencja” oraz „intelektualiści”. Sławna teza o istnieniu „względnie oderwanej inteligencji” opiera się na założeniu, że ta wyróżniona warstwa społeczna nie uczestniczy bezpośrednio w walce grupowych świadomości (utopii i ideologii). W ramach procesu historycznego nastąpiła jej alienacja, umożliwiło jej to dostrzeżenie historycznie zdeterminowanej prawdy. Część inteligencji, która wypełnia swoją misję poszukiwania tej prawdy, zostaje w artykule nazwana intelektualistami totalnymi, posiada ona bowiem zdolność oglądu totalności społeczeństwa. W pracy przeanalizowano koncepcję totalności oraz jej heglowskie źródła. Dystans wobec problemów społeczeństwa klasowego, który jest skutkiem nowoczesnego wykształcenia intelektualisty, pozwala mu na eksplorację pełnego obrazu różnych ścierających się światopoglądów. Wykształcenie sprawia jednak, że staje się on obcym elementem dla społeczeństwa. Ta cecha intelektualisty została omówiona przez pryzmat eseju Georga Simmla pt. "Obcy". W końcowej części artykułu poruszony został problem społecznej roli intelektualistów totalnych, którzy pomimo swojego odosobnienia powinni zaangażować się w politykę i przyjąć na siebie rolę społecznego doradcy.
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This article concerns Karl Mannheim’s theory of the intelligentsia and its importance for his sociology of knowledge. The terms used by Mannheim are defined in the introductory part of the article. The meaning of the words “intelligentsia” and “intellectuals” are based on diverse sociological theories. The famous concept of a “relatively unattached intelligentsia” derives from the assumption that this social stratum does not participate directly in the struggle between different group consciousnesses (utopias and ideologies). As a result of historical processes it became alienated from society and was thus able to gain a wider understanding of historical truth. In the article, the type of intellectual who is seeking this truth is called a total intellectual, because such a person has the ability to see society as a totality. The concept of totality and its Hegelian sources are also analysed in the paper. Being distanced from the problems of class society is a result of modern education and allows the intellectual to explore the holistic picture of the struggle between different worldviews. However, because of their education, intellectuals are seen as a foreign element in society. This feature of the intelligentsia is discussed in reference to Georg Simmel’s essay “The Stranger.” The final part of the article deals with the problem of the social role of total intellectuals, who should try to become engaged in politics despite their isolated position.