Bulletin Philosophy and Society 2021-4

The fourth issue of Philosophy and Society from 2021 presents a collection of papers that are united around the topic regarding the academic work and the public engagement of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. These papers are the result of the international conference Horizons of Engagement: Eternalizing Bourdieu which took place at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory in 2020. In addition, this issue of the journal covers topics such as alienation, the place of spiritual and pedagogical sciences in a functionalized world, theories of resilience, victory and heroism, political legitimacy in the cases of antisocial personality disorder and COVID-19, moral responsibility for pandemics and animal farming, as well as the hermeneutics of memory. Finally, this issue of the journal contains two critical essays, a book review, and an interview with the Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič.

The first article by Marc Crépon, “The Importance of Pierre Bourdieu Today: On Consent to Misery,” deals with the erroneous dichotomy between “democratic reason” and “raging passions” as well as with the demo-phobia that often derives from it in order to provide a voice to all those who do not have the right to public space. Reflecting on the crisis of political reason through the analysis of demagogic rhetoric, Crepon makes a compelling case for the crisis of political reason through a nuanced elaboration of a political discourse that has lost touch with “all the misery of the world” and thus points out to a new age of inequality.

Miloš Jovanović further develops the emphasis on the importance of discourse in social life in  his paper entitled “Bourdieu’s Theory and the Social Constructivism of Berger and Luckmann.” In his paper, Jovanović compares Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological approach with those of Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger. These approaches are brought together in the article by their intention of overcoming the gap between “objectivism” and “subjectivism” in social theory as well as their critique of the relativistic tendencies of postmodernism. The author then goes on to elaborate the deepening thematization of the body as a locus of social influences, a topic central to Bourdieu’s work through the notion of incorporation – the pivoting point of theory as well as the practical core of the habitus.

In their paper, “Bourdieu’s Theorization of Social Capital in the Analysis of South-East European Societies,” Mirko Petrić and Inga Tomić Koludrović discuss the usefulness of the idea of social capital in Bourdieu-inspired analyses of contemporary South-East European societies. More precisely, the authors argue that the Bourdieusian concepts of “social capital of solidarity” and of “social capital of informal connections” which were developed by Predrag Cvetičanin are highly relevant for the study of class relations in post-socialist societies in South-East Europe highlights the advantages of a consistent application of the Bourdieusian framework in a contemporary (post-Bourdieusian) context.

The final part of this thematic section, “Discussion: Pierre Bourdieu and Politics,” brings a lively round-table debate between Philip Golub, Fredric Lebaron, Ivica Mladenović, Franck Poupeau, Gisele Sapiro, and Zona Zarić. This discussion introduces readers to Bourdieu’s public engagement through direct and enticing recollections of those who have closely collaborated with him over the years or those who have been influenced and inspired by his work. Using the tools of empirical sociology, and bringing up phenomena which are not easily understood, this discussion aims to provide more clarity to those who actually need to use these concepts from the social sciences to be able to own their own lives and become self-determining actors.

Recognizing the basic idea of alienation as non-belonging to something, or deprivation of something, Asger Sørensen’s paper “Aliénation, Entfremdung – and Alienation. Hegel’s Solidary Displacement of Diderot” emphasizes that alienation implies a movement towards the borders of the human being, that it implies ways in which social pathologies cause potential mental problems, and that this problem requires social criticism. To substantiate this claim, the author shows that Diderot’s satire is an uncompromising materialist social critique, but also that this critique does not use the term ’aliénation’ which he reserved for borderline madness. In this sense, the author shows that in Goethe’s translation of Diderot’s dialogue, Hegel finds the general key for the conceptual critique of the spirit of modernity.

 In their joint paper entitled “„Das Verstehen öffnet ein weites Reich von Möglichkeiten...“. Geistes- und Erziehungswissenschaften in einer funktionalisierten Welt,” Christoph Hubig and Željko Radinković start from Wilhelm Dilthey’s concept of understanding and re-examine the modalities of forming competencies within the experience of reflective education. In terms of the modern notion of science, the authors define the role of science as an example of possible real values (optional values), while in terms of meaningful options, the spiritual sciences are attributed the role of opening the horizons. In this context, the authors point out the problem of the nature of enabling spiritual and pedagogical sciences due to the commercialization of university teaching and research activities.

 In his paper entitled “Expositioneiner Theorie der Widerständigkeit”, Klaus Wiegerling seeks to show that the concept of resilience is a reflective notion which is concerned with relations and not objects and the relation of things that can be expressed in qualities and quantities. In addition, the author claims that the concept of resilience has a positioning function that is important both in the epistemic as well as in the ethical and anthropological sense. According to Vigerling, resilience is central, although not the only characteristic of reality. As an ethical category, it is articulated in the idea of dignity which should be understood as resistance to mere typology and subordination to calculation.

In “The Messiness of Victory and Heroism: A Brief Response to Carl Schmitt”, Petar Bojanić and Edward Djordjević question one passage from Karl Schmitt’s book Ex Captivitate Salus. In that passage, as the authors explain, Schmitt relies on a detail from a Serbian folk epic song to argue for his understanding of historiography, victory and the figure of heroes. Analyzing the whole song Marko Kraljević and Musa Kesedžija from which Schmidt takes an anecdote about the hero Marko, Bojanić and Djordjević point out that the concepts of victory, winner, hero and heroism in the song are much more complicated and messy than the one Schmitt presents. Addressing the audience, which he knows very well, namely, the Serbian singer undermines the simplified expectations about the heroism and the victory of the Serbian hero Marko Kraljević.

 In his paper “Consent or Public Reason? Legitimacy of Norms Applied in ASPD and Covid-19 Situations”, Elvio Baccarini expands Alan John Simmons’ conceptual distinction between the Lockean conception of legitimacy (based on consent) and the Kantian conception of legitimacy (based on justification) of public decisions. The author criticizes the concept of legitimacy based on consent that Simmons advocates and defends the Rawlsian version of the concept of legitimacy which is based on justification from objections. This paper is characterized by the fact that these two conceptions of legitimacy are assessed through examining, using the method of reflexive balance, their appropriate responses regarding the treatment of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and epidemiological measures.

 By looking at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as at the existence of industrial animal farms, in his paper entitled “Relationship between Moral Responsibility for Zoonotic Pandemics Outbreaks and Industrial Animal Farms”, Josip Guć considers the notion of responsibility and applies reflections about this notion to the aforementioned problems. The main goal of the paper is to point out the falsity of attributing moral responsibility to people involved in activities that directly caused the transmission of COVID-19 virus from animals to humans as well as to humanity as a whole who created the conditions for transmission.

 In the final paper of this issue of the journal, “Hermeneutics of Recollection: Gadamer and Ricoeur”, Aleksandar Ostojić analyzes the notion of memory in Hans Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur in the context of temporal distance as “obstacles” in understanding the past.  The author pays special attention to the phenomenon of “death” as a time gap between the past and the present. The key questions that the author raises are: what does death mean in terms of understanding history and what death means for hermeneutics? How should we understand time distance? Is it possible and is it necessary to overcome it? What is the role of memory and how does it participate in understanding? Through the interaction of the thoughts of Gadamer and Ricoeur, Ostojić emphasizes the meaning and the significance of the hermeneutics of memory in relation to the mentioned issues.