In capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history ... more In capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history of modern philosophy. Indifference and Repetition examines how modern philosophy, largely coextensive with a particular boost in capitalism’s development, registers the reductive and regressive tendencies produced by capitalism’s effect on individuals and society.
Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern, especially rationalist philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead the subjects of these interpretations to no longer act and think freely. They are often unwillingly led into unfreedom. It is thus possible that even “freedom” enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk.
Inhalt Was wäre, wenn es sich nicht immer lohnte, die »Freiheit« zu verteidigen? Wenn gerade die ... more Inhalt Was wäre, wenn es sich nicht immer lohnte, die »Freiheit« zu verteidigen? Wenn gerade die Verteidigung der »Freiheit« zu einer perfiden Rechtfertigung von Unterdrückung und Herrschaft führte? Und wenn gerade eine fatalistische Haltung nicht nur vernünftig, sondern die einzig denkbare Vorbedingung wirklicher Freiheit wäre? Wäre das nicht ein komischer Gedanke? Gegen-Freiheit geht von einer trivialen und zugleich verblüffend selten gemachten Beobachtung aus: Die großen Denker der Freiheit (etwa Descartes, Kant, Hegel und Freud) waren zugleich
Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capita... more Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Yet the nature of its relevance and some of its key tenets remain poorly understood. This bold intervention brings together the work of leading Marx scholars Slavoj Žižek, Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda, to offer a fresh, radical reinterpretation of Marxism that explains the failures of neoliberalism and lays the foundations for a new emancipatory politics. Avoiding trite comparisons between Marx's world view and our current political scene, the authors show that the current relevance and value of Marx's thought can better be explained by placing his key ideas in dialogue with those that have attempted to replace them. Reading Marx through Hegel and Lacan, particle physics and modern political trends, the authors provide new ways to explain the crisis in contemporary capitalism and resist fundamentalism in all its forms. This book will find a wide audience amongst activists and scholars.
It was always a mistaken assumption that one could account for totality in a neutral, unengaged, ... more It was always a mistaken assumption that one could account for totality in a neutral, unengaged, and nonpartisan manner. Against this, already the early Marx argued that one can only conceive of the capitalist system in its entirety from the subjective perspective of those who are essential for its reproduction yet-politically-excluded from it. And the early Hegel assumed that any form of rational thought relies on positing a "totality of reason," for only in this way does it comply with its own demand, namely to go to-and thus to think (to)-the end, to think "all" of it. This is the only way that thinking can remain open to what it cannot anticipate, the contingencies of real historical life. In this sense, totality "is not something one ends with, but something one begins with." We can only understand the world and its history if we totalizingly assume that it can be understood, that there is reason in it. Only then we can identify the rationality of that which otherwise seems devoid of it-the rationality even of the illegitimate or the exceptionally extraordinary. This insight has often and rather harshly been contested in the last decades, but some contemporary thinkers have stuck their necks out and defended it against the critiques waged by so many that it seems (almost) impossible to list them.
The article addresses the strange relationship between politics and philosophy, a relationship ... more The article addresses the strange relationship between politics and philosophy, a relationship that is determined by peculiar asymmetries, by critically discussing the work of French anthropologist, Sylvan Lazarus. It demonstrates from a Hegelian perspective that philosophy is able to think that and what "politics thinks" in a historically singular way and thereby does not fall prey to the criticisms raised against it from the "thinking of politics in its interiority'' (Lazarus).
In capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history ... more In capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history of modern philosophy. Indifference and Repetition examines how modern philosophy, largely coextensive with a particular boost in capitalism’s development, registers the reductive and regressive tendencies produced by capitalism’s effect on individuals and society.
Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern, especially rationalist philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead the subjects of these interpretations to no longer act and think freely. They are often unwillingly led into unfreedom. It is thus possible that even “freedom” enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk.
Inhalt Was wäre, wenn es sich nicht immer lohnte, die »Freiheit« zu verteidigen? Wenn gerade die ... more Inhalt Was wäre, wenn es sich nicht immer lohnte, die »Freiheit« zu verteidigen? Wenn gerade die Verteidigung der »Freiheit« zu einer perfiden Rechtfertigung von Unterdrückung und Herrschaft führte? Und wenn gerade eine fatalistische Haltung nicht nur vernünftig, sondern die einzig denkbare Vorbedingung wirklicher Freiheit wäre? Wäre das nicht ein komischer Gedanke? Gegen-Freiheit geht von einer trivialen und zugleich verblüffend selten gemachten Beobachtung aus: Die großen Denker der Freiheit (etwa Descartes, Kant, Hegel und Freud) waren zugleich
Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capita... more Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Yet the nature of its relevance and some of its key tenets remain poorly understood. This bold intervention brings together the work of leading Marx scholars Slavoj Žižek, Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda, to offer a fresh, radical reinterpretation of Marxism that explains the failures of neoliberalism and lays the foundations for a new emancipatory politics. Avoiding trite comparisons between Marx's world view and our current political scene, the authors show that the current relevance and value of Marx's thought can better be explained by placing his key ideas in dialogue with those that have attempted to replace them. Reading Marx through Hegel and Lacan, particle physics and modern political trends, the authors provide new ways to explain the crisis in contemporary capitalism and resist fundamentalism in all its forms. This book will find a wide audience amongst activists and scholars.
It was always a mistaken assumption that one could account for totality in a neutral, unengaged, ... more It was always a mistaken assumption that one could account for totality in a neutral, unengaged, and nonpartisan manner. Against this, already the early Marx argued that one can only conceive of the capitalist system in its entirety from the subjective perspective of those who are essential for its reproduction yet-politically-excluded from it. And the early Hegel assumed that any form of rational thought relies on positing a "totality of reason," for only in this way does it comply with its own demand, namely to go to-and thus to think (to)-the end, to think "all" of it. This is the only way that thinking can remain open to what it cannot anticipate, the contingencies of real historical life. In this sense, totality "is not something one ends with, but something one begins with." We can only understand the world and its history if we totalizingly assume that it can be understood, that there is reason in it. Only then we can identify the rationality of that which otherwise seems devoid of it-the rationality even of the illegitimate or the exceptionally extraordinary. This insight has often and rather harshly been contested in the last decades, but some contemporary thinkers have stuck their necks out and defended it against the critiques waged by so many that it seems (almost) impossible to list them.
The article addresses the strange relationship between politics and philosophy, a relationship ... more The article addresses the strange relationship between politics and philosophy, a relationship that is determined by peculiar asymmetries, by critically discussing the work of French anthropologist, Sylvan Lazarus. It demonstrates from a Hegelian perspective that philosophy is able to think that and what "politics thinks" in a historically singular way and thereby does not fall prey to the criticisms raised against it from the "thinking of politics in its interiority'' (Lazarus).
In the mid-eighties and thus before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Alain Badiou published a bo... more In the mid-eighties and thus before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Alain Badiou published a booklet addressing the then-already unfolding crisis of Marxism. His suggestion was that what was needed was a new Communist Manifesto. He thus called for a repetition of the very founding gesture of Marxism in its nineteenth century and then twentieth century version, accounting for-but not invalidated by-its practical failures and misadventures. Badiou thereby pointedly repeated the claim that Marx and Engels themselves made in the preface to the 1872 edition of the Manifesto-wherein they identified it as a 'historical document', which they already had lost the 'right to alter', indicating that the Manifesto had become the transhistorical property of mankind. In 2018, Brian Massumi published a short book that can be read as an attempt to take up the difficult task formulated by Badiou and anticipated by Marx and Engels. Even though it does not make any explicit reference to the Communist Manifesto, it is a 'manifesto' that shares with Marx and Engels's text its open emancipatory aim. Massumi presents his manifesto in almost one hundred (99) theses. Therein, he attempts to update not only its predecessor but Marxism itself-if we for a moment grant that this is the name for the thought of emancipation-on a vast number of economic, ideological and political issues. The main aim of Massumi's manifesto is to give an answer to a highly complex question: how to conceive and imagine the transition out of capitalism. How to imagine what comes 'after'? This 'after' is a state, or maybe not a state, or time that Massumi does not directly identify as 'communist', but rather speaks of it in a determinately indeterminate manner. His name for it is 'postcapitalism', and he seeks affirmatively to defend the very possibility of there being an 'after' of capitalism at all. Massumi's manifesto has set its own task: it must tell its reader what 'postcapitalism' is, and it must tell its reader how to get there. The Marxist tradition accounted for the transition-if it is one-out of capitalism in quite diverse terms
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Books by Frank Ruda
Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern, especially rationalist philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead the subjects of these interpretations to no longer act and think freely. They are often unwillingly led into unfreedom. It is thus possible that even “freedom” enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk.
Papers by Frank Ruda
Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern, especially rationalist philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead the subjects of these interpretations to no longer act and think freely. They are often unwillingly led into unfreedom. It is thus possible that even “freedom” enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk.