Fourth Workshop in Social and Political Thought at Michigan State University: Global Ethics and Capitalism. Rethinking Critical Theory

Fourth Workshop in Social and Political Thought at Michigan State University

with Carol C. Gould, Moishe Postone, and Tony Smith 

Friday: 9am-6pm, Saturday: 9am-1pm

Description:

This workshop will be a forum for addressing the provocative ways in which recent scholarship situates Critical Theory in contemporary analyses of Capitalism in relation to normative questions ‘of a global scale.’ In this sense, the workshop will discuss the status and relevance of a critique of Capitalism in its global form in contemporary Critical Theory. An important aspect of this discussion is the extent to which a normative analysis of Capitalism can be related to an analysis of the immanent tendencies of Capitalism. Participants will confront and examine recent shifts of Critical Theory away from a Marxian notion of the critique of political economy, and the viability of critiques of Capitalism in light of recent conceptions of economic crises and accelerating globalization.

Main Speakers (with brief commentators)

Carol C. Gould (Hunter College, CUNY Graduate Center)

Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2013; Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy, and Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Marx's Social Ontology: Individuality and Community in Marx's Theory of Social Reality, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1978,

Moishe Postone (University of Chicago)

Critical Theory and the Twentieth Century, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (in preparation); Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory, New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Tony Smith (Iowa State University)

Globalization: A Systematic Marxian Account, Brill Press (2005); Technology and Capital in the Age of Lean Production: A Marxian Critique of the “New Economy,” State University of New York Press, 2000; Dialectical Social Theory and Its Critics: From Hegel to Analytical Marxism and Postmodernism, State University of New York Press, 1993; The Role of Ethics in Social Theory: Essays from a Habermasian Perspective, State University of New York Press, 1991; The Logic of Marx’s Capital: Replies to Hegelian Criticisms, State University of New York Press, 1990.

Organization and RSVP

Prof. Christian Lotz

Prof. Kyle Whyte

Prof. Todd Hedrick

Michigan State University

Dept. of Philosophy

503 South Kedzie Hall

East Lansing, MI 48824

517.355.4490 (Dept.)

[email protected]/[email protected]/[email protected]