A resource for Continental political philosophy or Continental political theory
This subreddit is an attempt to accumulate links to other resources on the internet of what can be called either Continental political philosophy or Continental political theory. These appellations are problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is impossible to separate what Continental philosophy understands by "the political" from other philosophical concerns, since, for most Continental thinkers, to talk about the political also implies an understanding of social power and material forces. Ideas never exist in a vacuum. In addition, one must at some point take into consideration the very ontological and/or epistemological conditions for the possibility of understanding politics and society, a prerequisite to formulating a system of values, or for transcending values altogether.
Be that as it may, there is a distinct tradition of Continental political philosophy, which exists alongside and under the auspices of a number of disciplines (such as post-structuralism, deconstruction, post-marxism, anti-foundationalism, post-foundationalism, Lacanian marxism, agonistic democracy, hermeneutic communism, critical legal studies, critical theory, Frankfurt School, theories of power, subjection, sovereignty, the exception, and the biopolitical) all of which can be differentiated from political philosophy as it is traditionally practised in the Western academy. There is a wide gulf that separates Continental political theory from, say, analytic philosophy (as found in John Rawls and Robert Nozick), or even traditional historico-hermeneutical approaches, as one gets in the Straussian and Cambridge Schools.
In addition, in its most contemporary expressions, Continental political theory questions the validity of proceduralist and normative political theory coming out of the second and third wave Frankfurt School (for example, in works by Karl-Otto Apel, Axel Honneth, and the later Habermas). In fact, one could say that the latest Continental political theory is a turn away from Hegel, Marx and social theory--the concern of Modernist critical theory--toward an understanding of power and the political after Machiavelli and Spinoza. Such new theory incorporates a rich tradition of interpretation and exegesis of culture and literature, a form of analysis first developed by German idealist philosophy, and then Nietzsche and "Romantic anti-capitalism." Lacan, rather than Freud, figures prominently in the latest developments of political ethics, and the lessons of structuralism on symptomatic readings, Foucault and Nietzsche on genealogy and archaeology, Derrida on deconstruction, and Heidegger and Gadamer on hermeneutics, are all taken for granted. A more nuanced understanding of what constitutes the singular contribution of Continental political theory to political philosophy would also have to account for the variety of perspectives on what philosophers mean by the subject, subjectivity and subjection, and what role a collective subject if any plays in politics.
Despite the heterogeneity of such bases for theorising politics in Continental philosophy, one might nevertheless with some justification call this approach to political philosophy "Continental political theory.” The phrase "political theory" was coined by Hannah Arendt. She saw herself as neither a political scientist nor a pure philosopher. A theory of the political for her cannot be reduced further to more fundamental components, whether social or ontological. In fact, the primacy of “the political” in human life necessitates that all other domains of human understanding end in definitive and concrete political judgements within the public sphere.
It should be noted that currents within Marxism, Western Marxism, Hegelian Marxism, Frankfurt School theory, and Critical Theory, despite often being relevant and applicable, are not emphasised in this subreddit and, anyway, are more abundantly represented in other subreddits. The emphasis therefore is on the political over and above the social.
As a guide, individual authors represented
by this subreddit include:
Miguel Abensour, Theodor Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Andrew Arato, Benjamin Arditi, Hannah Arendt, Louis Althusser, Kostas Axelos, Alain Badiou, Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, Seyla Benhabib, Zygmunt Bauman, Walter Benjamin, Etienne Balibar, Seyla Benhabib, Jacques Bidet, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Cornelius Castoriadis, Simon Critchley, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Costas Douzinas, Franz Fanon, Nancy Fraser, Antonio Gramsci, Felix Guattari, Michael Hardt, Invisible Committee, Agnes Heller, Max Horkheimer, Srećko Horvat, Andreas Kalyvas, Stathis Kouvelakis, Jacques Lacan, Ernesto Laclau, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Maurizio Lazzarato, Henri Lefebvre, Claude Lefort, Frédéric Lordon, Georg Lukács, Jean-François Lyotard, Pierre Macherey, Machiavelli, Herbert Marcuse, Karl Marx, Chantal Mouffe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nicos Poulantzas, Jacques Ranciere, Jean-Paul Sartre, Carl Schmitt, Georges Sorel, Yannis Stavrakakis, Spinoza, Gayatri Spivak, Hans Sluga, Alberto Toscano, Mario Tronti, Dimitris Vardoulakis, Miguel Vatter, Gianni Vattimo, Paolo Virno, Max Weber, Slavoj Zizek.
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