[FRA:] Totalizing critiques

[Ralph Dumain]

I'll have to find my notes, since I can't remember what I thought of 
this book, which I read some time ago.

I have not read, and am curious about:

Alford, C. Fred. Science and the Revenge of Nature: Marcuse and 
Habermas. Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1985.

There is also this article I have yet to read:

Vogel, Steven. 'Marcuse and the "New Science"', in Herbert Marcuse: A 
Critical Reader, edited by John Abromeit and W. Mark Cobb (New York: 
Routledge, 2003), pp. 385-394.

Marcuse's position is definitely the weakest.  One must note that 
there were times when Adorno and I think Horkheimer made gestures 
toward the natural sciences while admitting their unpreparedness to 
tackle them.

Their more serious weakness was their failure to distinguish 
positivism as an ideology of natural science from natural science 
itself.  But I could be wrong, as I have not been able to consult THE 
POSITIVIST DISPUTE IN GERMAN SOCIOLOGY.

All of this, though, is quite obsolete, as is Lukacs.  The problem 
remains the problem of the "two cultures"; you can't claim 
universality when you are only a specialist, and the Frankfurters, 
and even worse, their footnote-whores today, were trapped within just 
one of these cultures.  But the Frankfurters at least were pioneers 
in addressing real problems.  Whereas today's grad students have 
nothing to say, nothing at all, but to narcissistically regurgitate 
the same old tired shit.

But in fact, there really is work to be done, in light of the 
multifarious obscurantism that rules the contemporary scene, as 
science and the popular consciousness fall to pieces as civilization 
itself teeters on the brink--thanks to the extremely retrograde 
political situation in the USA.


At 11:45 PM 1/14/2008, matthew piscioneri wrote:

>An outstanding book on the issue of nature and CT (broadly speaking 
>as Western Marxism) is Steven Vogel's:
>
>_Against Nature: The concept of nature in Critical Theory_
>
>an online version:
>
>http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7l0a0EMzwRQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=vogel+critical+theory&ots=Tmh05xSssF&sig=RTaOIjN7sf7MytHnY2UBqCo2kT0#PPA6,M1
>
>
>I say outstanding cos of the clarity of Vogel's writing and the 
>depth of his analysis even though I "suspect" Vogel of leaning over 
>into the abyss of Idealism albeit via a social constructivist epistemology.
>
>It's an interesting (and I think slightly "devious") move to abstain 
>from ontology in favour of epistemology to then make claims that 
>have huge implications for ontology :-).
>