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Karel Kosík (1926-2003) reputation as a creative thinker is owed largely to his philosophical 'blockbuster' Dialectics of the Concrete, first published in Czechoslovakia in 1963. In reintroducing Kosik's philosophy to English-speaking readers, Kosik's work is shown to be important not only as a leading intellectual document of the Prague Spring, but also as an original theoretical contribution with international impact that sheds light on the meaning of labour and praxis, cognition and economic structure, and revolution and the crises of modernity.
Contributors include: Ian Angus, Siyaves Azeri, Vit Bartos, Jan Černy, Joseph Grim Feinberg, Diana Fuentes, Gabriella Fusi, Tomas Hermann, Tomas Hřibek, Xiaohan Huang, Peter Hudis, Petr Kužel, Ivan Landa, Michael Lowy, Jan Mervart, Anselm K. Min, Tom Rockmore, Francesco Tava, and Xinruo Zhang.
“This handbook is already a classic, as an excellent introduction to both Kosík and Czech Marxism in a global context.”
—Isabel Jacobs, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
Joseph Grim Feinberg is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of Czech Academy of Sciences. He is author of The Paradox of Authenticity and editor of Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought.
Ivan Landa is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has published articles and chapters on Hegel and the history of Marxism. He is a co-editor of the Collected Works of Karel Kosík planned for 7 volumes (in Czech).
Jan Mervart is researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has published monographs and articles on the intellectual history of Czechoslovakia. He is the co-editor of Czechoslovakism.
Table of Contents
IAcknowledgements
Notes on Authors
Introduction
Joseph Grim Feinberg, Ivan Landa, Jan Mervart
Part 1 The Reform Years and the Origins of Dialectics of the Concrete
1 Karel Kosik as a Public Intellectual of the Reform Years
Jan Mervart
2 Karel Kosik and His 'Radical Democrats': The Janus Face of Dialectics of the Concrete
Moving from a Historical to a Systematic Approach to Philosophy
Tomas Hermann
Part 2 Praxis and Labour
3 Praxis in Progress: On the Transformations of Kosik's Thought
Francesco Tava
4 Labour and Time: Karel Kosik's Temporal Materialism
Ivan Landa
5 Inception of Culture from the Ontology of Labour: The Original Contribution of Karel Kosik to a Marxian Theory of Culture
Ian Angus
6 'The Philosophy of Labour' and Karel Kosik's Criticism of 'Care'
Siyaves Azeri
7 Kosik, Lukacs and the Thing in Itself
Tom Rockmore
Part 3 Modernity, Nation, and Globalisation
8 The Ontological Dialectic and the Critique of Modernity: Based on the Interpretation of Kosik's Concrete Totality
Xinruo Zhang and Xiaohan Huang
9 And the 'Thing Itself' Is Man: Radical Democracy and the Roots of Humanity
Joseph Grim Feinberg
10 The Dialectic of Concrete Totality in the Age of Globalisation: Karel Kosik's Dialectics of the Concrete Fifty Years Later
Anselm K. Min
Part 4 Intellectual Encounters
11 Kosik's Notion of 'Positivism'
Tomas Hřibek
12 Kosik's Concept of 'Concrete Totality': A Structuralist Critique
Vit Bartos
13 The World of the Pseudoconcrete, Ideology and the Theory of the Subject (Kosik and Althusser)
Petr Kužel
14 Karel Kosik and Martin Heidegger: From Marxism to Traditionalism
Jan Černy
Part 5 Influence and Reception
15 A Route of Critical Thought: Between Italian and Czech Intellectuals
Gabriella Fusi
16 Karel Kosik in Mexico: Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez and the Dialectics of the Concrete
Diana Fuentes
17 Karel Kosik and US Marxist Humanism
Peter Hudis
Postscript: Looking Backwards
18 Spirit of Resistance: Note for an Intellectual Biography of Karel Kosik
Michael Lowy
References
Index