Essays

A Mills Revival?

By Stanley Aronowitz
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Prologue Perhaps you know Foucault’s remark that despite the torrent of criticism directed against his philosophical system, “Hegel prowls through the twentieth century.” Consigned to a kind of academic purgatory for the last three decades of the twentieth century, at a time when social theory had migrated from the social sciences obsessed with case studies…

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The Rise of Trumpism

By Larry N. Gerston
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In today’s politics, Donald Trump supporters praise him as welcome relief to what they consider failed politics and policies.  Trump opponents see him as narrow minded and intemperate.  But there’s more.  In a December 2023 national poll, 51 percent of the respondents agreed that Trump would be “a threat to democracy if he is elected…

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Trump and Trumpism: An American Brand of Fascism

By Andrew Kolin
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All too often, pundits depict Trump and Trumpism as a unique expression of political extremism, but Trumpism is not entirely unique. When the defining characteristics of his campaign were made public in 2016, Trump and Trumpism began to amplify forms of hate and violence that were pre-existing in the political culture of the United States. …

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Vision of the Gods: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Photography

By Ali Hossaini
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Photography is ubiquitous within global culture, but we hardly understand its meaning. And we have only a dim comprehension of its origin. Unlike cinema, which contains the complexities of motion and montage, the photograph is simple and, for the most part, brutally realistic. Perhaps the photograph has seemed too obvious to merit prolonged scholarly attention.…

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Kant After Three Centuries

By Allen Wood
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April 22, 2024 was Immanuel Kant’s three-hundredth birthday. Kant is the most influential modern European philosopher, viewed as a direct ancestor by both the European continental and the Anglophone “analytical” traditions. His philosophy, and the revolution (or revolutions) it set in motion, mark the point of division between early modern and later modern philosophy. Kant…

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Marcuse’s Most Famous Student: Angela Davis on Critical Theory and German Idealism*

By Joy James
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*This article is adapted from a chapter in Joy James’s new book, Contextualizing Angela Davis: The Agency and Identity of Icon. We thank Bloomsbury Press for permission to publish this excerpt. Angela Davis’s interactions with the famous philosopher of critical theory, Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), shaped not only her university studies but stages within her intellectual and…

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Africa, We the Underdeveloped: Wynter’s Discontent in the Light of Hegel’s Conception of Development

By Frank M. Kirkland
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*Originally presented at the Caribbean Philosophical Association, Brown University, June 2019 Introduction A passing note, couched in one of the various editions of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, states the following. “A human being, in the process of necessarily forming itself, is historical, i.e., belongs in time, in the history prior to freedom. Prior to freedom,…

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Erich Fromm’s Contribution to Critical Theory

By Rainer Funk
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Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1900, Erich Fromm completed a sociological dissertation with Alfred Weber at the University of Heidelberg in 1922 and then became acquainted with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis (for Fromm’s biography, see Funk 2000, pp. 78-103; 2019; Hardeck 2005, pp. 30-40; Friedman 2013, pp. 28-62). In 1930, he completed his therapeutic training…

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After October 7th: Israel’s Search for Victory

By Menachem Klein
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Prologue: A Personal Statement on the War I am not neutral. As a citizen of Israel, I hurt and cry with my fellow Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs, victims of Hamas’ barbaric attack. Struggle for national liberation does not justify a crime against humanity and war crime. Glorifying the murder and abuse of innocent human…

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The Dangerous Mythology That Still Surrounds Justice Antonin Scalia

By Eric J. Segal
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Justice Antonin Scalia passed away in 2016 but his legacy and the myths surrounding his jurisprudence still impact our politics and our courts despite his often controversial and bigoted views on most of the important civil rights issues of our day. For example, not long after his death, George Mason University received a substantial amount…

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Latest Issue

2025: Vol. 24, No. 1-2

Latest Issue

2025: Vol. 24, No. 1-2


Between The Issues