2013. vol. 12. No. 1

Hannah Arendt was interviewed by Günter Gaus, a German journalist and politician, for the program “Zur Person” (the channel ZDF in Germany). Arendt speaks of the turning points in her biography, which were essential to her work. Arendt also tells about her attitude toward intellectuals, philosophers, politics, totalitarianism and democracy. She rejects her belonging to philosophers, as she considers herself as a political theorist and notes the general hostility philosophy used to have toward political issues. Arendt says about what her self-awareness of being Jewish. Important was what happened in Germany after Hitler came to power. It was not only the persecution of Jews, but also the willingness of intellectuals to connect to the new regime. It was Coordination Policy (Gleichschaltung) that permanently alienated Arendt from intellectuals willing to explain and support any regime. The next important set of issues linked with her move to the United States and the need to write in English that was so uncomfortable for a woman deeply rooted in German culture. Finally, the key experience that largely determined the intellectual development of Arendt was the knowledge of the extermination camps, especially Auschwitz. “There was something with which we all never could handle”. Arendt and Gaus also address this specific relationships between individuals which Arendt calls love, and she wants to strictly separate this kind of relationships from the concept of the political. She also insists on the importance of publicity for the contemporary politics, which involves large groups of people.

During the 20th century there have been many attempts to reconstitute political knowledge as objective, value-neutral empirical science. One of such attempts was the “behavioral revolution” in political science. However, apart from this tendency a different one can be traced: scholars strived to openly acknowledged political goals and values as a factor in their own work. In this case one can speak of “engaged knowledge”. Pierre Bourdieu, a representative of this tradition, spoke of the need to give up an image of the “scholar who locks himself up in his ivory tower” and stop the “flight into purity”. He urged scientists to bring their knowledge outside academia and join social movements. In the similar vein Michael Burawoy emphasized the necessity to make sociological knowledge available to the wider public. The article reveals the ways in which engaged knowledge distances itself from the image of political and social scholarship as “pure science” as well as from the approach of political philosophy with its emphasis on philosophic contemplation. This perspective opens up the way for the analysis of Max Weber’s ideas on the value neutrality of scientific knowledge, essential features of the “behavioral revolution” in political science, as well as Leo Strauss’ views on the nature of political philosophy. The article develops the ideas of feminist standpoint epistemology, which is contrasted with the scientist’s “gaze from nowhere” and philosopher’s “gaze from above”. Finally, the article gives account of the problematic relation between engaged knowledge and the Marxist tradition.

Discussion of the Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political takes the form of a dialogue. Anatoly Akhutin, a philosopher, raises three questions in a letter to Alexander Filippov, a sociologist. These questions are: (1) On Sovereignty. Sovereign, according to Schmitt, is the one who can introduce a state of emergency. Does it mean that the state of emergency can be a way to the approval and support of dictatorial powers? (2) The concepts Entschlossenheit (resoluteness) in Heidegger’s work and Entscheidung (decision) in Schmitt’s writings are dangerous. The totalitarian bias is apparent here. (3) On speech and democracy. What is political being of humans? Are “friend”, “enemy”, “struggle” the proper concepts to understand and describe it? Alexander Filippov answers these questions. (1) Correct understanding of Schmitt’s point of view is only possible if the distinction made in his book "Dictatorship" (1921) between the commissar and the sovereign dictatorships is taken into account. (2) Schmitt and Heidegger were strongly influenced by the German philosophical anthropology. That is why we should better take into consideration the lectures on the Basic Concepts of Metaphysics instead of Being and Time. One of the most important answers Heidegger has given to his opponents in these lectures concerning the concept “resoluteness” was that Entschlossenheit is not a property of individuals and does not belong to the nature of human existence. (3) At this point, there is no discrepancy between Akhutin and Filippov. Schmitt wrote mainly about the political opposition of one nation to another people and the internal politics in times of crisis.

Review of Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy by Sophus A. Reinert (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).

The article discusses the relationships between Herzen and Slavophiles from the 1840s to the first half of the 1860s. The article highlights 3 periods of relationships: (1) Moscow period (1842–1846), (2) the first phase of Herzen’s emigrant life (1847–1855), (3) the period of Herzen’s maximum influence on Russian public life and thought (1856–1862) and of decline (1863–1870). Special attention is paid to the influence of Slavophil views on Herzen in the 1850s, when Herzen worked upon the idea of so-called “Russian socialism”. Herzen’s first personal acquaintance to Slavophiles occurred at the spring of 1842. Personal contacts have corrected significantly his earlier views and evaluations developed on the basis of his assessments of “Westernizing” camp and quite limited acquaintance to Slavophil texts. Slavophil problems get a new impetus during the emigration period when Herzen, being a part of “European revolutionary emigration”, vividly observes a connection between revolution and national movements. With the beginning of reign of Alexander II, there is a revival of social life and reformatory plans. On this basis occurs the maximum rapprochement of Herzen with Slavophiles, especially with the most liberal part of the movement (I.S. Aksakov, Y.F. Samarin). Break-up between Herzen and Slavophiles took place in 1863 due to the differences in positions concerning January revolt in Poland. The differences, however, refers to a drastically different original perspectives, only manifested themselves during the crisis.

Lev Tikhomirov (1852–1923) was one of the active members of the narodnichestvo movement. From 1879 he was a member of the Executive Committee of “Narodnaya Volya” party. After the assassination of Alexander II by the members of “Narodnaya Volya” and defeat of the party, he went abroad, where, together with P. Lavrov, he edited the "Journal of Narodnaya Volya”. In 1888, in Paris, his pamphlet Why I Ceased to Be a Revolutionary was published, where he criticized the revolutionary path of development. In the meantime Tikhomirov send a petition to Alexander III, in which he expressed remorse for his previous activities and requested permission to return to Russia (which was granted). In monarchist Russian Tikhomirov became one of the leading writers of the conservative camp, and from 1909 to 1913 headed the newspaper “Moscow News”. Being an author of historical and philosophical works and memories, for decades he was considered a renegade who betrayed a revolutionary struggle. In recent years works of Tikhomirov as a monarchist started to arouse a significant interest. However, only the study of all the major events of his life and philosophical evolution can reveal the originality of Tikhomirov’s views as revolutionary and as conservative. These events are reflected in his diary. Tikhomirov kept the diary for over 30 years. Shortly before his death he gave it to the Rumyantsev Museum, where they are preserved today. However, Tikhomirov’s diary virtually unknown to the public.

Ron Eyerman is one of the authors of the cultural theory trauma with an  introduction by Jeffrey Alexander. This text may be seen as a case-study, that underlines and illuminates some of the main features of their theory. Using the examples of three significant social theory texts, Horkheimer and Adorno’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism” and Bauman’s “Modernity and the Holocaust”, this article illustrates the difference between personal, collective and cultural trauma. All of those texts are connected to the same event – the Holocaust – and the outcome of this event. Bauman and Adorno could have become the victims, but instead survived bearing the trauma, conceptualizing it and thus becoming predecessors of the cultural trauma theory. Ron Eyerman shows the complexity of the relationship between personal and collective trauma, and the construction of social theory. In analyzing these texts he goes into history of their creation, finding evidence of the traumatic experience of the authors. He also analyzes aesthetic characteristics of the texts, showing theese texts as not only pieces of social theorizing but also as personal experiences, trying to find meaning in gaps, voids and inconsistency. The aim is also to illustrate how personal trauma can impact the construction and representation of social theory.

The article considers the problem of actions–beliefs link. As author shows, the widespread approach in social science, those origins can be traced back to Hume and Mill and which tries to reveal the causal relations between beliefs and actions, is mistaken. It is mistaken because it proposes that, firstly, beliefs and actions are distinct and separately identifiable social phenomena and, secondly, causal connection consists in constant conjunction. MacIntyre, instead, proposes, taking as a starting point the distinction between physical movement and human action, to consider the actions–beliefs link in terms of the descriptions which the action should correspond to. If we, on being asked for an explanation of what we have done, refer it to an antecedent condition of a Humean kind, we precisely remove it from the class of actions and assign it to, most probably, the class of physical movements. To explain behavior as a genuinely human action, an explanation must refer to the customarily recognized rules of a particular social order. This presupposes that (1) action must fall under some description which is socially recognizable as the description of an action; (2) an action must fall under a description and my actions under a description available to me; and (3) agent can do only what he/she can describe. As an illustration of his approach, author examines the role of Stalin’s philosophical work “Dialectical and historical materialism” in the process of the ideological “closing” of Soviet society.