Published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg

Volume 7 Issue 2

Issue of Analyse & Kritik

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

Wer verdrängt was warum? - Schwierigkeiten in Freuds Begriff der Verdrängung

Rüdiger Bittner

Page range: 103-118

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Abstract

Freud’s concept of repression should be discarded because we do not understand what supposedly is being repressed, nor what is repressing, nor why it is done. Freud’s answers to the first two questions fall short of the dynamic picture of forces and counterforces implicit in the idea of repression. The answer to the last question invokes an unacceptable separation of agencies in the person.

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

Wie Freud Bitter verdrängt: Eine Verteidigung des Freudschen Verdrängungsbegriffs

Martin Löw-Beer

Page range: 119-123

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Abstract

The author refutes Bittners attempt to show that Freuds use of “repression” is senseless. In contrast “repression” is introduced as a valuable psychological concept that makes perfectly good sense.

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

Understanding Irrationality

Marcia Cavell

Page range: 124-140

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Abstract

Recent philosophical work attempts to understand irrational acts on the model of practical reasoning. Such acts are regarded as intelligible in the light of ordinary propositional attitudes which are nevertheless conjoined in a way that explains the irrationality. It is here argued that some irrational acts cannot be so understood; that they are not actions, per se; and that Freud’s notion of “primary process”, particularly in its emphasis on hallucinatory wish-fulfillment and on what he calls “omnipotence of thought”, provides a useful description of such acts. Where hallucinatory wish-fulfillment (or phantasy) is operative, an anxiety or need causes an agent to see the world as one in which the anxiety-provoking state does not exist or has- somehow been dealt with satisfactorily. The need or lack is not acknowledged, as it is when one can properly speak of desire and of a reasoning that attempts to implement it.

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

The Deceptive Self: Liars and Layers

Amelie Oksenberg-Rorty

Page range: 141-161

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Abstract

This paper gives an account of the picture of the self that saves the phenomena of self-deception. On one theory of the self, the phenomena of selfdeception are incoherent: the self as a unified critically reflective rational inquirer cannot deceive itself. On another theory of the self, the phenomena evaporate: the self as a loosely organized system composed of relatively independent subsystems can be conflicted, mistaken, ignorant, compartmentalized. But it does not deceive itself. Our practices as moral agents and rational inquirers are explained by the first theory; our capacities as adaptive survivors are explained by the second. Neither picture can be reduced to the other; neither can be abandoned. The phenomena of selfdeception appear - and are saved by the superimposition of the two theories.

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

Anmerkungen zur Theorie des Selbst innerhalb der Psychoanalyse

Brigitte Weidenhammer

Page range: 162-179

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Abstract

The concept of self is imbedded in the psychoanalytic theory of object relations. The theory of object relations poses the question of the constitution of the person’s inner life or ‘representational world’. It will be discussed, in what respect the concept of self serves the description of dependency relations, in which the psychic relations of the person to the social and cultural reality are expressed. The significance of the concept of self lies in the explicative role it takes in the portrayal of the individual’s developing participation in human community.

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

Eine individualistische Theorie sozialen Handelns. Zu Raimo Tuomelas ‘A Theory of Social Action’

Anton Leist

Page range: 180-205

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Abstract

This critical review concentrates on four important parts of Raimo Tuomela’s analytical theory of social action. It examines the book’s reconstructions of social action, of practical reasoning in this context, of social norms and it investigates its claim to a conceptual individualism. The result is critical in several aspects. Tuomela’s most original idea in the analysis of joint action, that of we-intentions, is not broad enough to cover more than a part of social action in the commonly understood sense. His ‘social’ practical reasoning incorporates an implausible premiss. The game-theoretical reconstruction of social norms strikes one as unlikely to be fulfilled in social reality. Hardly any of these analyses back up the individualist claims of Tuomela’s project.

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

Modernity and Conflict

Gerald Doppelt

Page range: 206-233

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Abstract

In this essay, seek to provide a plausible alternative to Maclntyre’s bold and provocative conception of modernity. I contest his claim that modern social life is marked by (1) the absence of any shared paradigm of the good, tradition, and social morality; (2) rationally interminable normative conflict; (3) characteristically instrumental poweroriented social relations; and (4) the impossibility of genuine human achievement and virtue. I argue that modern conflict is rooted not in the absence of a shored paradigm of the good or the moral; but rather in a structure of social irrationality built into the modern conception of the good or the achievement of individual recognition in and through socioeconomic activity. I argue that while this conception has affirmative dimensions and does permit genuine virtue, the way it is culturally interpreted and institutionally embodied in modern capitalist society reproduces destructive scarcities in human recognition and the degradation of ordinary persons’ capacity for virtue. Where Moclntyre argues for a restoration of the pre-modern (Aristotelian) conception of the moral to be realized in spheres of activity external to socio-economic life, I argue for on immanent critique of modern liberal individualism which would humanize the meaning, conditions, and results of lobar and livelihood.

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

Rights, Practices and Marxism: Reply to Six Critics

Alasdair Maclntyre

Page range: 234-248

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Abstract

The first part of the paper expands and strengthens the criticism of appeals to human or natural rights in After Virtue. It is argued that Gewirth’s responses to various objections are inadequate and that Flathman’s historical analysis is incompatible with the evidence. Baier’s charge that the treatment of Hume in After Virtue is inadequate is acknowledged to be true. A comparison of an Aristotelian account of rational cooperation with a Humean account is made the basis for a rejection both of Baier’s assimilation of the two standpoints and of the treatment of the concept of a practice by both Miller and Doppelt. Doppelt’s rival account of the moral structures of modernity is held to be undermined both by facts which he himself recognizes and by the Marxist critique of liberal individualism. Marxism’s positive moral stance, as defended by Nielsen, is too impoverished to achieve what Nielsen claims for it.

Publicly Available May 12, 2016

A Brief Rejoinder

Alan Gewirth

Page range: 249-250

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Abstract

Two main points in Maclntyre’s reply to my Rights and Virtues are shown to be incorrect. First, the right-claims I attribute to every agent are based on the needs of action, and the correlative “must” hence falls within the recognized language of practical advocacy. Second, the ‘conative normality’ I attribute to all agents is not confined to ‘the individualistic social order of modernity’ but instead characterizes every agent who wants to act for the fulfillment of his or her purposes.

About this journal

ANALYSE & KRITIK

is devoted to the fundamental issues of empirical and normative social theory
is directed at social scientists and social philosophers who combine commitment to political and moral enlightenment with argumentative rigour and conceptual clarity
develops social theorizing in connection with analytical philosophy and philosophy of science
promotes the dialogue between Anglo-American and Continental traditions in the social sciences and ethics
publishes articles in English