Filozofija i društvo/Philosophy and Society
Philosophy and Society is an academic journal dedicated to interdisciplinary, innovative, and critically engaged research within the fields of philosophy, humanities, and social sciences. It fosters an open and constructive debate, thus cultivating a dynamic space for ongoing dialogue surrounding intellectual and social realities within the global academic community. The journal’s multifaceted approach is essential to its dedication to critically evaluating current social practices, deliberately expanding the range of theoretical debate on both past and present social problems, and investigating forms of emancipatory practices and social participation. Ultimately, Philosophy and Society strives to shed light on phenomena that constitute, encourage or impede social change, as well as to explore alternative avenues of agency and thought.
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Articles published in Philosophy and Society are open-access in accordance with the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.
Pregled tribina i konferencija u Institutu za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju za 2025. godinu
From the Activities of the Institute/Iz rada Instituta
Copyright (c) 2026 Filozofija i društvo/Philosophy and Society http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Capabilitarian Well-Being and the Limits of Contextualism: Against Pluralism and Proceduralism
This paper examines recent challenges to traditional philosophical theories of well-being and proposes a revised framework grounded in the capability approach. Classical theories (hedonism, desire-fulfillment, and objective list accounts) have long dominated philosophical discourse on what constitutes a good life. However, these theories have come under increasing criticism for their abstractness and limited applicability to empirical research and policy-making. Anna Alexandrova (2017) argues that philosophical theories of well-being are too general and removed from real-life concerns, advocating instead for a contextual and pluralist understanding of the concept. Ingrid Robeyns (2020) incorporates this critique into the capability approach, claiming that it is particularly suited to reflect pluralism, contextual variation, and interdisciplinary use. In response, this paper accepts the contextual sensitivity of well-being but rejects the idea that it is a fundamentally plural concept. Drawing on Fletcher (2019) and Hawkins (2019), I argue that different applications of the concept still rely on a unified underlying notion of well-being. Thus, the goal should not be to abandon philosophical theorizing but to develop a context-sensitive yet normatively robust account. The capability approach provides a promising structure for this purpose, but it cannot remain procedurally open-ended. I argue for a monistic version of capabilitarian well-being, grounded in a normatively justified set of capabilities. The paper proceeds by reviewing standard theories of well-being, analyzing Alexandrova’s contextual critique, assessing Robeyns’s proceduralism, and finally defending a unified, normatively grounded version of capabilitarian well-being that retains contextual sensitivity without sacrificing philosophical coherence.
Foucault and the Prisons Information Group’s Counter-subjectivation
Between February 1971 and December 1972, Michel Foucault co-founded and was an active member of the Prisons Information Group (Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons, hereafter GIP). Through demonstrations, direct action, and publications, the GIP sought to intervene in France’s carceral regime and the set of systems, ideas, and practices that sustained it, in order to bring about its transformation. The goal of Foucault and the GIP was not simply to improve prison conditions but to disrupt the constitutive conditions of the institution. The archival material that Foucault’s involvement with the GIP left to society, alongside his lectures and publications, invites scholars to consider a rearticulation of our understanding of subjectivity. Reading Foucault’s tracing of the genealogy of the category “guilty” and the GIP’s analyses of prison uprisings facilitates a thicker understanding of “counter-subjectivation.” In opposition to the structures of carceral subjectivity wherein incarcerated people could never hope to influence the standards according to which prisons seek to “rehabilitate” them, the GIP calls our attention to a more democratic work of subject formation.
New Face of Memes in Student-led Protests in Serbia and their Ethical Implications
The aim of this article is to explore memes created and circulated by students and citizens taking part in the protests in Serbia. Memes from two social media platforms, X and Instagram, were collected and analysed in terms of their visual form and content, with emphasis on recurring themes. Based on these, six types of pictorial and one type of video memes in relation to the Serbian student protest are discussed. The article explores the meanings the memes created and distributed during the protests carried, understanding them as instances of political aims being achieved by non-political means. We further discuss the ethical implications of memes, both pictorial and AI-generated. The general issues the article tackles are those of protest mobilisation, humour, memes, ethics and AI.
ART, MEDIA, AND DEMOCRATIC IMAGINARIES IN THE 2024–2025 PROTESTS IN SERBIA
Performing Power, Marcus Morgan, Polity, 2025
Digital Authoritarianism and the Politics of Noise: Co-optation and Narrative Flooding in Serbian Protests
Contemporary electoral autocracies increasingly rely on information abundance rather than censorship to maintain control. This article explores how infotainment has emerged as a key battleground in Serbia’s protest politics (2024–2025), serving both as a tool of resistance and as a mechanism of soft authoritarian control. Utilizing a combined quantitative and qualitative content analysis of six media outlets, three pro-government (B92, Informer, Pink) and three independent (Danas, Južne Vesti, N1), the study traces how the regime constructed a divisive discourse by splitting students into two opposing camps: “ćaci” (a viral misspelling co-opted to represent innocent non-political youth) and “blockaders” (a pejorative for those protesting). The analysis reveals a structural asymmetry: while pro-government outlets aggressively deployed emotive frames and mockery (labeling student protesters as “fascists” or “foreign agents”), independent media were relegated to a reactive role, attempting to debunk these narratives. This discursive aggression is identified as a calculated prelude to the physical violence observed since the summer of 2025. Ultimately, the study concludes that modern authoritarianism thrives not by hiding the truth, but by burying it under layers of irony and manufactured conflict.
Soundtrack of Dissent: Sonic Practices in the 2024/25 Serbian Protests
On November 1, 2024, the collapse of the Novi Sad Railway Station canopy resulted in the death of 16 people. This event catalysed a wave of public outrage which transformed into what is arguably the largest student-led protest movement in Serbia’s history. Starting with 15-minute commemorative silent vigils enacted during traffic blockades, the sonic practices of the protests gradually grew in variety and scope across urban and digital spaces—ranging from public musical performances, posts on social media and performance interruptions. Apart from violent obstructions by government supporters, the alleged deployment of a military-grade sound weapon cemented sound as a political instrument in both its metaphorical and physically harmful manifestations. This paper argues that sonic practices, ranging from orchestrated silences to street-level musical performances and viral soundtracks, were crucial to the articulation of the 2024/25 protest movement. While the musical “soundtrack” of protests often draws from already existing pop-cultural material, their immediate sonic identity emerges through performative action and its rapid reproduction by supporters. The goal of the paper is to explore how aesthetic and affective expression via sound functioned as both an organizing and a destabilizing political force. The sonically shaped propensity for public gatherings during the 2024/25 protests is, the paper argues, instead of being an explicit political articulation, embedded in performative assembly and affective mimesis. To examine this, the paper will examine the sound practices of protests and attempt to identify mechanisms of political expression via silence, music and their obstructions.
Mirrors and Messaging: The Role of Media in Serbia’s Protests, 2023–2025
Over the past few years, Serbia has seen several major protest movements, including the Serbia Against Violence protests in 2023 and the 2024- 2026 student protests after the collapse of the canopy at Novi Sad Train Station. Over the course of these protests, media have served not only as a way to channel and disseminate information about political protests, but have also themselves become a target of critique. Indeed, through protests targeting otherwise obscure bodies such as REM (the national regulator of electronic media) and the framing of seemingly unrelated issues (such as interpersonal violence) through narratives of media, these protests have highlighted the role of media capture, censorship, and suppression as key tactics of the state in Serbia. Through discussions of media as a “mirror” for society, media is framed as indistinguishable from or even synonymous with politics, corruption, and the problems perceived to exist in Serbian society. Drawing on a year of ethnographic research in Serbia, including interviews, participant observation, and media analysis, this chapter situates the relationship of media to democracy, authoritarianism, and protest in the context of the successive social movements that have taken place in Serbia over the last several years.
Being Moved and Moving, Non-Metaphorically: The Case of the Protest Movement in Serbia
Within the past year, the ongoing student-led protest movement in Serbia has been deeply reshaping the landscape we live and move in. We ask ourselves, as artists and cultural workers, how may we offer our expertise? More specifically, beyond the affective and reflective framework that we operate in, what are the practices and know-hows that could be used to strategize and change the course of social and political movements? By addressing different notions of performativity, and the relationship between kinetic and ideological movement, we reflect on what it takes for a body to move politically and freely. We look into what dynamics come into play when bodies gather, move, and chant, and explore the choreographic and dramaturgical implications of a protest, suggesting how they can be situated outside the predetermined and consensual spaces of artistic expression. Ultimately, we argue for artistic tools, knowledge and the stage offered by public space to be seen not as metaphors, but effective operational strategies that can be integrated in the protest movement and offer a new kind of understanding of the mechanisms needed for enacting change.
Our Art Is Our Struggle! Our Works, Our Voice! Transformative Art Practices in the Current Student Protests: The Case of the ‘stUUdenti’ Exhibitions
This article analyzes the transformative role of student-led artistic practices within the ongoing student movement and recent protests in Serbia, focusing on two exhibitions titled “stUUdenti”. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s concept of aesthetic experience, the study explores the exhibitions’ content, organization, and social context to understand how collective art practices operate as forms of resistance, social critique, and community building. Research findings indicate that these practices disrupt traditional hierarchies within the art system, foster participatory engagement, and produce new social relations through embodied gestures, collective silences, and performative interventions. The exhibitions show how art can function as a tool for social transformation by merging aesthetic experience with activism, emphasizing care, vulnerability, and mutual empowerment. By foregrounding the intersections of art, activism, and social engagement, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of art’s role in facilitating societal change and fostering collaborative, community-oriented cultural practices.
The Use of Arts and the Performativity of Architecture within the Culture of Resistance – The Case of Central Station in Novi Sad
The paper focuses on the interconnection between the artistic means used within protests and the architectural performativity of the central station in Novi Sad, following the collapse of its canopy on November 1, 2024, which killed 16 people. It first presents theoretical approaches to the concept of performativity in relation to the commemorative function of architecture, pointing out the limitations of previous research on the topic. It is further argued that the Novi Sad central station expanded these concepts by demonstrating that a single architectural object can be performative beyond its spatial boundaries, in multiple locations simultaneously. For this purpose, the paper analyzes the artistic means used within the massive protests that enabled this – signs, a scale model, large marionettes, and an appropriated Monopoly game in which the Novi Sad central station appears as a property. The paper concludes that during the 2024–2025 protests in Serbia and abroad, which had a strong commemorative dimension, the Novi Sad central station became performative in the sense that it acted as a catalyst for social transformation and public engagement. It mobilized the wider public to empathize with the victims, preserve the memory of them, and demand transparency and accountability in political discourse. As such, it became an actant that transformed people, changed their behaviors, and co-created collective identity, knowledge, and meaning, in relation to other non-human and human entities.
This thematic issue of Philosophy and Society examines the 2024–2025 protests in Serbia through two analytical perspectives: art and media. Both played significant roles in the movement, shaping its forms of expression, visibility, and collective action. Serbia’s captured media landscape, widely recognized by civil society as a mechanism of authoritarian consolidation, became a direct target of protest action. Artistic practices including collective exhibitions, street performances, sonic rituals, and choreographed marches emerged as integral components of the movement. The decision to frame this thematic issue through these two lenses reflects an editorial interest in the cultural and communicative dimensions of protest, which often remain secondary in po-litical analysis focused primarily on institutional actors and formal demands. The articles in this issue examine artistic practices and media environments as forms of political action, showing how art, sound, architecture, movement, images, and mediated communication operate within protest as practices rather than metaphors.
ORDINARY ANIMAL: MACCORMACK, LARUELLE AND THE RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES
This article seeks to extend Patricia MacCormack’s abolitionist ahuman project through François Laruelle’s non-philosophy. To this end, it takes the “animal remainder” produced by Laruelle’s dualysis of the “rational animal” and rethinks it as radical immanence. Once doubly dualyzed, this animal remainder becomes the ordinary animal, in contrast to the exceptional animality produced within environmental humanities through the ontologic of predication. The article pursues three aims. First, it critically examines Laruelle’s account of the animal, which is still an underexplored aspect of his nonphilosophical project. Second, it exposes the presuppositions within environmental humanities that sustain the ontico-ontological positioning of the animal as exceptional. Finally, it advances the notion of radical environmental humanities as a critical, philo-fictional practice informed by non-philosophy. The non-philosophical ordinary animal demands a restructuring of ways of thinking, feeling, and acting through gnosis, iconoclasm, and augury, as part of its perpetual struggle against the production of beasts of ontological burden.
THE POPULIST MATRIX OF OBSESSIVE-OPPRESSIVE POWER AND ITS PHANTASMATIC NOVELTY: TOWARDS A DELIRIC SAMENESS OF CHANGES
Contemporary changes in favor of the populist matrix thematization involve examination of the signifier-inaugural power of conspiratorial discourses as a symptom and political method of Serbian society democratic structure marginalization. Admittedly, the state’s re-dramatization of conspiracists’ phantasms of the enemy’s horrifying hidden actions is not interpreted exclusively in the light of the political contagion that global, populist mind employs to write contemporary history. It is neither the central epistemic structure of the post-factual world which mandates the state’s manipulation of paranoid fear should be exclusively interpreted as part of the competition of multiple discourses for a hegemonic position. This study suggests political effects of creating phantasmatic content are reflected in maintaining the counter-revolutionary fervor of populist rule and traditional affiliation politics. Fully comprehending democratic standards’ self discrediting relies on psychoanalytical assumptions about the predetermination of the subject by its phantasms having been placed in the field of the unconscious and the Lacanian anticipation of the permanent impossibility of bearing one’s own self and desires. Ensuring proofs that the systemic incitement of irrational suspicion through the regime’s media supports the self-establishment of ruling-class credibility, as well as getting to know the way in which the familiar dramaturgy of guilt is applied to ensure new legitimization procedures points to the interpretation of change as a difference in the relationship between social and phantasmatic forces.
FROM TECHNOLOGICAL UTOPIANISM TO THE THEORY OF UNEQUAL DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMATION
The article counters popular predictions of a coming “post-work society” with the argument that the capitalist development of technology leads to an uneven introduction of automation into production processes, paralleled by the expansion of wage labour in the service sectors of social reproduction and the circulation of capital in the centre of the capitalist world-system, as well as in labour-intensive production in the periphery. We draw our argument from a critical reading of Italian operaismo whose development we trace in the terms of the sequence “from official Marxisms to a re-interpretation of Capital, from Capital to Grundrisse and back to Capital”. The operaists made an epistemological break in the study of the relationship between the forces and relations of production by identifying the capitalist development of technology as a key site of class struggle. They also introduced a theoretically fruitful distinction between the concepts of the technical composition of labour power and the political composition of the working class. By introducing the concept of the social composition of labour power, we aim to draw attention to certain negative tendencies within operaismo that led to its vulgarisation by post-operaismo authors, while at the same time correcting it in line with contemporary processes of capital accumulation on a world scale.
political composition of the working class
BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND REPRESSION: DRAGICA VITOLOVIĆ SRZENTIĆ AND THE YUGOSLAV-SOVIET SPLIT
This article tells the story of Dragica Vitolović Srzentić (1912-2015), a partisan and revolutionary, who, after the liberation of Yugoslavia from fascism, received the most confidential tasks in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia deteriorated in 1948, she was entrusted with delivering Josip Broz Tito’s letter to Stalin. As a result of this letter, Yugoslavia exited the Eastern Bloc, and the course of the Cold War in Europe took an unexpected turn. However, upon returning from Moscow, Dragica was accused of siding with the Soviets and sentenced to prison for several years. In 2007, she was rehabilitated by the court, and the renowned director Želimir Žilnik made a film about her. In this article, the authors reconstruct key moments of her life, the historical context, and the content of her most confidential diplomatic mission, as well as subsequent accusations, legal processes and contemporary rehabilitation. This case study surpasses the personal fate of one woman and is of broader significance for the history of Yugoslavia and the Cold War. To that end, this article is of broader significance for three strands of literature: on women in intelligence and diplomatic services, the history of Yugoslavia, and the Cold War. It aims to surpass the sexist portrayal of women in intelligence by celebrating their important contributions to intelligence and diplomatic operations in various official and unofficial roles.
Monstrous Matter: The Microbial Foundations for a Living Planet
To confront the escalating climate emergency, a new twenty-first century mythos of matter is essential—one that moves beyond the extractive, industrial paradigms of modernity. This emerging worldview centres on the concept of “monstrous matter:” the unruly, dynamic materiality of life that resists categorization yet operates fully within the laws of physics and chemistry. This matter finds its ultimate expression in Gaia—not as a harmonious globe, but as a dynamic, disruptive, and planetary-scale negotiation between living and non-living forces. Rather than being chaotic or lawless, this matter is profoundly creative, having given rise to the rich biodiversity and material vitality of Earth. Embracing this perspective invites a transition in human development—away from control and exploitation, and toward regenerative practices that align with nature’s own cycles of change and renewal. Architecture, as a material and cultural practice, plays a critical role in this transformation. By designing with and for the vitality of monstrous matter—refusing rigid geometries and inert materials—architects can develop environments that support life, adaptability, and ecological flourishing. This mythos offers a hopeful, imaginative framework for rethinking our relationship with the living world.
Copyright (c) 2025 Filozofija i društvo/Philosophy and Society http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Spirituality, Consciousness and the Emancipation of Life: Michel Henry’s Spiritualist and Catholic Interpretation of Karl Marx
Michel Henry is quite a unique figure in the phenomenological movement, as well as in philosophy more generally. In his work, apparently contradictory and heterogeneous motifs were integrated – in my opinion – into a harmonious, organic and synthetic unity. We can find in his philosophy firstly four leading and orientating traditions that articulated the main framework of his thought: phenomenology, Catholicism, philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie), and the philosophy of Marx, the latter of which he sharply juxtaposed to the entire tradition of Marxism. In this regard, perhaps the two most important philosophical authors for him were Edmund Husserl and Karl Marx, the latter of which was considered by Henry to be the most crucial philosopher in the entire history of Western philosophy, and the most original and authentic phenomenologist (even in comparison to the founding father of the phenomenological movement, namely Husserl). Michel Henry believed that modern global society was in such a crisis from which only Marx’s philosophy could provide a way out, in a theoretical regard as well as in a normative, practical respect. Henry was of the opinion that without drastically overcoming capitalism, Western civilization – as well as humankind globally – would collapse in intellectual, spiritual and also physical regard. Barbarism, which was vigorously criticized by Henry as a fundamental and intrinsic feature of capitalism, reifies everything and renders things under the viewpoints of utility and profitability, including phenomena like subjectivity and consciousness. We must emancipate human and non-human, conscious and non-conscious, life by radically surpassing capitalism. With this gesture, we can reach a genuinely authentic society, which also relies on an emancipated form of consciousness and spirituality. In this paper, we attempt to show how Henry reformulates the Marxian idea of emancipation, based on the aforementioned four traditions.
Consciousness, Spirituality, and Ontological Depth
This paper aims to achieve two complementary goals. The first goal is to outline and motivate a general account of spirituality along the lines of the so-called perennial philosophy. From this perspective, the essence of spirituality lies in establishing an orientation towards, and an inspirational connection to, a cosmic consciousness where the latter serves both as the ground of all infra-cosmic subjects and as an ultimate source of meaning and value. The second goal is to demonstrate that one of the advantages of this outlook on the nature of spirituality consists of the fact that it opens up the door for a potential rehabilitation of an important yet neglected idea, namely, the idea that concrete reality admits various grades of intension, or ontological depth.
Spirituality and Consciousness: An Emerging Vision for the Twenty-First Century
The rise of science over the past four centuries has undeniably brought with it a wealth of extraordinary intellectual and practical achievements, but it has also arguably contributed to a host of serious and worsening societal problems including destructive commercial exploitation of our planet’s natural resources with its cumulative negative effects on the environment and global climate; relentless commodification, marketing and consumption; extreme and increasing inequity in the distribution of wealth and opportunity; the prevalence of zero-sum “transactionalist” approaches to relationships at scales ranging from individuals to nations; widespread militarism and the ever-present threat of nuclear holocaust; and the pervasive “disenchantment” of contemporary civilization. Numerous social commentators have connected these problems directly or indirectly with the deep split between science and spirituality that has been fostered in particular over the past century by advocates of physicalism, a philosophical doctrine anchored in late nineteenth-century physics that claims to speak for science as a whole and that sees nothing in our human spiritual traditions but irrational vestiges of our intellectual childhood. In this paper I will describe how a path has opened up toward a radically different but still science-based picture of reality, one that takes consciousness as ontologically fundamental and celebrates human spiritual experiences and capacities, that is more consistent than physicalism itself with leading-edge science, and that can potentially help prevent our struggling modern civilization from sleep-walking into self-annihilation.
The Philosophers Have Only Interpreted the World
Many political philosophers happily repeat Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach (inscribed on his gravestone) ‘The Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.’ Marx had a theory of change: proletarian revolution. But what theory of change is appropriate in current circumstances? In this paper I will consider the steps that typically foreshadow and lead to policy change and the potential for philosophy and philosophers to contribute.
Theoretical-Political Renewal in Education and its Contradictions under Neoliberalism: An Inquiry into the Debates and Challenges of the Chilean Case in the Twenty-First Century
The article presented here focuses on the New Public Education (NPE), established by Law 21.040, which represents a substantial change in the understanding of the right to education in Chile. The fieldwork is organized around three key areas: 1) the administrative structure supporting public schools, the SLEP (Servicio Local de Educación Pública / Local Public Education Service); 2) the effects and aftermath of inequality exacerbated in school communities during the pandemic; and 3) the strategies implemented by schools with the SLEP to ensure equity and equal opportunities in dynamics of participation, communication, and democratic dialogue within the framework of education for citizenship and democracy as outlined in the law’s principles. The methodology of this research is based on a qualitative and hermeneutic epistemological paradigm, aligned with the goal of deeply understanding the reality of local public education services through a multiple and retrospective case study design. The emerging results from the analytical processes of discourse and documentary material collected in five case studies across the country are built around three categories: 1) teachers as the foundation and pillar of public education; 2) neoliberal managerialism; and 3) the deep gap or fracture between what Law 21.040 declares and the daily reality of schools. These categories were constructed to contrast theory with practice in the Chilean educational context, demonstrating that these three axes allow for a rethinking of the current situation, an understanding of dominant conflicts and debates or tensions, and the charting of new perspectives to address current challenges.
Prolegomenon to a Philosophy of Meditation
This prolegomenon sketches issues central to a philosophy of meditation, develops only some of them here, and refers readers to other works where some not covered here are addressed. A complete philosophy of meditation would include accounts of: the differences between meditative practices, states, and traits; religion-based meditative traditions; novel contemporary meditative practices and research; meditative practices that are and aren’t philosophical practices and vice versa; ‘McMindfulness’; whether any such practices reveal metaphysical truths or lead to enlightenment; what physics/metaphysics might make the paranormal corollaries of mystical experiences possible; and the pros and cons of these issues. The author shares some personal experiences, speculative hypotheses, and arguments for the central claim that meditative practices are one of the most powerful forms of spiritual and philosophical practice.
Is Meditation the Royal Road that Leads to Pure Consciousness?
Over the past 30 years, there has been an increasing scientific and philosophical attention to what contemplative and spiritual traditions for millennia have known as pure consciousness, free from concrete empirical content and egoic self-awareness. The article addresses whether meditation is the best candidate for the research of pure consciousness, as Thomas Metzinger claims in his book The Elephant and the Blind. The article calls this the Royal Road Thesis (RRT). The article first critically analyzes the concept of meditation, then uses descriptions of non- meditation to further deconstruct the concept of meditation. A section is devoted to an analysis of Metzinger’s claim that minimal phenomenal experience (and pure consciousness) is not mystical in itself, and finally, this is all interpreted in the context of consciousness culture and spirituality. The article concludes that RRT is very problematic and should be replaced by a more nuanced approach.
Deviations in the dark. About bats, veterans, visionaries and philosophers
This article explores psychosis not primarily as a medical disorder but as a phenomenon that calls for understanding rather than explanation. While psychiatry and neuroscience focus on causal, biological or psychological mechanisms, such approaches fail to capture what it is like to be psychotic. Through three figures of thought – the bat, the veteran, and the visionary – I aim to develop a plural, imaginative, and philosophical understanding of madness. Drawing on Thomas Nagel’s notion of the “single point of view,” the bat symbolizes the limits of empathy and the need for narrative multiplicity. The veteran reveals the moral and social dimensions of trauma and conflict underlying psychosis. The visionary represents the blurred boundary between madness, spirituality, and insight. The final sections argue that psychosis involves “perplexity” and “hyperreflection,” concepts closely related to philosophical wonder and reflection. Madness, then, can be viewed as a proto- or hyper-philosophy: a radical questioning of meaning and reality. This article concludes that psychiatry requires not only doctors and patients but also sages – philosophers – to engage madness as a “livable deviation in the dark.”
Cosmopsychism attributes subjectivity to the universe as a whole. What might that subjectivity be like? There are differing opinions in the philosophical literature, ranging from “simply a mess” to highly advanced. Mystical experience, if it genuinely brings unity or identity with the universe, could provide some insight. The evidence points to conscious mind of extraordinary quality and perhaps a universe with many cosmic subjects, an intersubjectivity that can be interpreted through the lens of a modified Leibnizian monadology.
Kees de Groot (ed.), Comics, Culture and Religion: Faith Imagined, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023
Seminar on Tiziana Andina’s Book "A Philosophy for Future Generations"
Liberal Provocations: Why Carlo Rosselli Is still Relevant Today
Liberal and socialist worldviews are often seen as being in a fundamental opposition. This is reinforced immensely either by Francis Fukuyma’s apostrophised end of history or by the thesis put forward by authors such as Patrick Deneen that liberalism has failed. The question that arises on closer examination of this assumption is whether or not it is accurate. Based on Carlo Rosselli’s work Socialismo Liberale (Liberal Socialism), this article attempts to systematically challenge this thesis. Against the backdrop of the rise of fascism in Italy, Rosselli comes to the realisation – contrary to many representatives of orthodox Marxism – that the liberal and socialist worldviews are not necessarily antagonistic to one another. In fact, they may even be mutually dependent – an important insight to think social change anew.