Terry Maley – författare

The recent renewal of interest in Max Weber evidences an attempt to enlist his thought in the service of a renewed dream of Enlightenment individualism. Yet he was the first twentieth-century thinker to fully appreciate the pervasiveness and ambiguity of rationalization which threatened to undermine the hopes of the Enlightenment.Asher Horowitz and Terry Maley present a collection of essays tracing the contemporary significance of Weber's work for the tradition of Enlightenment political thought and its critiques. In its critical inquiry into Weber's thought, The Barbarism of Reason continues the exploration of the limits and prospects of politics in a rationalizing society.The first section comprises a set of both historical and philosophical reflections on the political implications of Weber's central concepts such as disenchantment, rationality, and affectivity, the historical understanding, meaning, and domination. The second section examines the institutional and historical context that framed Weber's inquiries into structures of the modern mode of domination, as well as his understanding of the nature of the modern state. Among the topics broached are Weber's strategic intervention into the development of the liberal theory of the state as well as a critical examination of the theoretical and pre-theoretical roots of his construction of the subject. Another of the essays reveals the schizophrenic structure of modern subjectivity. The third and last section attempts to trace the vicissitudes of Weber's seminal problems concerning rationalization, power, and disenchantment through some of the most important responses to his work in the twentieth century.

Max Weber is best known as one of the founders of modern sociology and the author of the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but he also made important contributions to modern political and democratic theory. In Democracy and the Political in Max Weber's Thought, Terry Maley explores, through a detailed analysis of Weber's writings, the intersection of recent work on Weber and on democratic theory, bridging the gap between these two rapidly expanding areas of scholarship.Maley critically examines how Weber's realist 'model' of democracy defines and constrains the possibilities for democratic agency in modern liberal-democracies. Maley also looks at how ideas of historical time and memory are constructed in his writings on religion, bureaucracy, and the social sciences. Democracy and the Political in Max Weber's Thought is both an accessible introduction to Weber's political thought and a spirited defense of its continued relevance to debates on democracy.

Few terms elicit such strong and varied feelings and yet have so little clarity as "democracy." Leaders of large states use "democracy" to designate their nations’ public character even as critics and rivals use the term to validate their own political perspectives. In Envisioning Democracy, the editors and contributors address the following questions: What does democracy mean today? What could it mean tomorrow? What is the dynamic of democracy in an increasingly interdependent world?Envisioning Democracy explores these questions amid the dynamic of democracy as a political phenomenon interacting with forms of economic, ethical, ethnic, and intellectual life. The book draws on the work of Sheldon S. Wolin (1922–2015), one of the most influential American theorists of the last fifty years. Here, scholars consider the historical conditions, theoretical elements, and practical impediments to democracy, using Wolin’s insights as touchstones in thinking through the possibilities and obstacles facing democracy now and in the future.

This book develops Marcuse’s critique of advanced industrial society and deploys it as a lens to critically analyze contemporary neoliberalism and its structural failures. In the chapters, Marcuse scholars explore three related topics: First, Marcuse’s theory as it applies to the relationship between neoliberalism and authoritarianism, including both the historical relationship between the two and the modern re-emergence of authoritarianism and nationalism in neoliberal states today. Second, a re-examination of the relationship between neoliberal subjectivity and technological rationality that seeks to understand the stabilizing forces of neoliberal society and the way these forces register at the level of thought. Third and finally, Marcuse’s conception of socialism in conversation with contemporary neoliberal rationality, and ways in which alternatives to the status quo remain possible. Together, this volume contributes to recent discussions of neoliberalism and contribute to thedevelopment of Marcuse scholarship.

In the chapters, Marcuse scholars explore three related topics: First, Marcuse’s theory as it applies to the relationship between neoliberalism and authoritarianism, including both the historical relationship between the two and the modern re-emergence of authoritarianism and nationalism in neoliberal states today.

Specifically, the case is made throughout this volume that Fromm’s humanist socialism offers a unique set of critical tools for impugning entrenched assumptions and ossified debates within the contemporary radical Left about what struggles against capitalist exploitation and myriad interconnected social oppressions can and should look like.

This book considers the work of Erich Fromm as it can be applied to radical Left political strategy. It aims primarily to demonstrate the relevance of his ideas to contemporary radical Left strategy and to contribute to the revitalization of critical social theory and its relationship to radical praxis. Specifically, the case is made throughout this volume that Fromm’s humanist socialism offers a unique set of critical tools for impugning entrenched assumptions and ossified debates within the contemporary radical Left about what struggles against capitalist exploitation and myriad interconnected social oppressions can and should look like. Four vantage points are identified and explored to this end. The first focuses on the question of what Fromm’s theoretical contributions can teach us about what radical activism and resistance ought to look like across multiple terrains of struggle. The second asks what Fromm’s insights regarding social character can teach us about the forces that stifle productiveness and reproduce domination. In a more utopian vein, it asks what society might look like once domination has been eliminated. The third places Fromm in dialogue with diverse voices on the Left, including prominent psychoanalysts and social and political theorists, with an eye toward lingering tensions and disagreements about radical social change. The fourth asks why the Right has gained ground politically in recent years and what can be done to contain it, and offers psychoanalytically inflected reflections on the pernicious effects of group narcissism on individuals’ political agency.