Political Categories: Thinking Beyond Concepts

Description

Western philosophy has been dominated by the concept or the idea--the belief that there is one sovereign notion or singular principle that can make reality explicable and bring all that exists under its sway. In modern politics, this role is played by ideology. Left, right, or center, political schools of thought share a metaphysics of simplification. We internalize a dominant, largely unnoticeable framework, oblivious to complex, plural, and occasionally conflicting or mutually contradictory explanations for what is the case. In this groundbreaking work, Michael Marder proposes a new methodology for political science and philosophy, one which he terms "categorial thinking." In contrast to the concept, no category alone can exhaust the meaning of anything: categories are so many folds, complications, respectful of multiplicity. Ranging from classical Aristotelian and Kantian philosophies to phenomenology and contemporary politics, Marder's book offers readers a theoretical toolbox for the interpretation of political phenomena, processes, institutions, and ideas. His categorial apparatus encompasses political temporality and spatiality; the revolutionary and conservative modalities of political actuality, possibility, and necessity; quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of political reality; the meaning of political relations; and various senses of political being. Under this lens, the political appears not as a singular concept but as a family of categories, allowing room for new, plural, and often antagonistic ideas about the state, the people, sovereignty, and power. Title Page......Page 2 Copyright......Page 3 Dedication......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 Preface......Page 7 Categorial Reduction; or, Reductio ad Conceptum......Page 11 The Real Problem of Republicanism......Page 17 Categories, Not Classifications......Page 24 Infrapolitics and Intrapolitics......Page 28 Ordinary Language Politics......Page 32 A Categorial Politics of Truth......Page 38 2. The Initial Approach: Aristotle......Page 43 Ousia-Beingness-Presence......Page 44 Quantity......Page 52 Space......Page 58 Relation......Page 62 Positionality and Correlationality......Page 66 Quality......Page 71 A Form of Politics......Page 81 Political Figurations......Page 85 The Categories “Themselves”......Page 89 An Excursus on Transtranscendental Reason......Page 96 “Before” the Categories: Forms of Judgment......Page 101 “After” the Categories: Schematism......Page 109 State......Page 116 Revolution......Page 130 Power......Page 142 Sovereignty......Page 156 Appendix 1: Aristotle’s Categories—a Political Interpretation......Page 167 Appendix 2: Kant’s “Transcendental Analytic” (Critique of Pure Reason)—a Political Interpretation......Page 178 Notes......Page 189 Bibliography......Page 195 Index......Page 199