Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Cybernetic Society and the Crisis of Modernity
Part I: In the Courtyard of Babel: Postmetaphysics and the
Failure of Critical Judgment
1. A Critique of the Judgment Paradigm in Contemporary Political
Philosophy
The Dissolution of Political Judgment in Modern Society
An Epistemic Hall of Mirrors
Intersubjectivity and Discourse
The Revolt against Ontology
Toward a Critical Social Metaphysics
2. Hannah Arendt's Reconstruction of Political Judgment
The Flight from the Real
Truth, Power, and Politics
Deliberation and Its Discontents
Democracy Misdirected
Critical Judgment and Radical Politics
3. The Discursive Fallacy: Language and Power in Practical
Reason
In Search of Modern Democracy
The Pragmatist Turn in Contemporary Critical Theory
The Nature of Constitutive Social Power
Two Spheres of Moral Semantics
Constitutive Power, Moral Cognition, and Linguistic
Communication
Reification through the Implicit Validity of Norms
A Critique of Justificatory Reason
4. Recognition Theory and the Obfuscation of Critique
Recognition and Critical Theory
The Contours of Power and Domination
Recognition without Social Ontology
Recognition and Social Pathology: Fromm versus Honneth
Resuscitating Critical Judgment: The Ontological Point of View
Part II: Beyond Babel: Social Ontology and the Reconstruction of
Critical Reason
5. Recovering the Ontological Infrastructure of Political
Judgment
Aristotle's Social Ontology and the Structure of Political
Judgment
Inequality and Rousseau's Ontological Account of Social
Pathology
Hegel and the Metaphysics of Modern Ethical Life
Marx, Labor, and the Ontology of Social Forms
6. The Properties and Modes of Critical Social Ontology
The Concept of Social Ontology
The Two Dimensions of Social Ontology
Properties of an Ontology of Sociality and Social Forms
Modes of Social Ontology
The Concept of a Social Scheme
Structural Levels of Social Ontology
The Basic Model of Critical Social Ontology
7. An Ontological Framework for Practical Reason
The Metaphysical Structure of Reason and the Ontology of Value
The Ontological Ground of Critique and Judgment
The Structure of Critical-Ontological Judgments
Phenomenology, Ontology, and the Structure of Critical Agency
Ontological Coherence: Overcoming Reification and Relativism
8. Obligation and Disobedience: The Practice of Critical
Judgment
Crito's Question, Rousseau's Solution
The Common Interest and the Structure of Democratic Reason
Self and Social Relations: On Expanded Autonomy
Critique, Obligation, and Disobedience
The Ends of Political Obligation: Common Good and Social
Freedom
Democratic Individuality, Solidarity, and Social Transformation
Bibliography
Index
Michael J. Thompson is Professor of Political Theory at William Paterson University. His many books include The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in America and The Domestication of Critical Theory.
"The Specter of Babel is a remarkable achievement … is a deeply
stimulating and much needed book. It continues Thompson's fearless
assault on the shibboleths of neo-Idealism and the decayed state of
contemporary Political Philosophy and Critical Theory." — New
Political Science
"The Specter of Babel is a formidable challenge to anyone intent on
downplaying the continued urgency of either the European
enlightenment or the type of critical theory set on continuing its
unfinished project." — Contemporary Political Theory
"…Thompson's critical social ontology is the specter that surrounds
us like class consciousness theories were at the beginning of the
past century. The main claim of the book is a lesson about how
theory can be dangerous again. After all, no Marxist or Critical
Theorist has attempted to answer this specific sort of normative
task since Lukács and Adorno. In doing so, Thompson seeks to
systematize the vertigo of our falling civilization. But as someone
once said: 'where the danger lies, also grows the saving power'.
This powerful and rebel book is more aware of this than any other."
— Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
"Critical social theorists in a variety of disciplines—including
sociology, political science, philosophy, and cultural studies—will
be challenged and fortified by engaging Thompson's fine book." —
Dan Krier, coeditor of Capital in the Mirror: Critical Social
Theory and the Aesthetic Dimension
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