Karl Kosk and the Dialectics of the Concrete: (Historical Materialism)

Karel Kosík (1926-2003) reputation as a creative thinker is owed largely to his philosophical 'blockbuster' Dialectics of the Concrete, first published in Czechoslovakia in 1963. In reintroducing Kosik's philosophy to English-speaking readers, Kosik's work is shown to be important not only as a leading intellectual document of the Prague Spring, but also as an original theoretical contribution with international impact that sheds light on the meaning of labour and praxis, cognition and economic structure, and revolution and the crises of modernity. Contributors include: Ian Angus, Siyaves Azeri, Vit Bartos, Jan Černy, Joseph Grim Feinberg, Diana Fuentes, Gabriella Fusi, Tomas Hermann, Tomas Hřibek, Xiaohan Huang, Peter Hudis, Petr Kužel, Ivan Landa, Michael Lowy, Jan Mervart, Anselm K. Min, Tom Rockmore, Francesco Tava, and Xinruo Zhang.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents IAcknowledgements Notes on Authors Introduction  Joseph Grim Feinberg, Ivan Landa, Jan Mervart Part 1 The Reform Years and the Origins of Dialectics of the Concrete 1 Karel Kosik as a Public Intellectual of the Reform Years  Jan Mervart 2 Karel Kosik and His 'Radical Democrats': The Janus Face of Dialectics of the Concrete Moving from a Historical to a Systematic Approach to Philosophy  Tomas Hermann Part 2 Praxis and Labour 3 Praxis in Progress: On the Transformations of Kosik's Thought  Francesco Tava 4 Labour and Time: Karel Kosik's Temporal Materialism  Ivan Landa 5 Inception of Culture from the Ontology of Labour: The Original Contribution of Karel Kosik to a Marxian Theory of Culture  Ian Angus 6 'The Philosophy of Labour' and Karel Kosik's Criticism of 'Care'  Siyaves Azeri 7 Kosik, Lukacs and the Thing in Itself  Tom Rockmore Part 3 Modernity, Nation, and Globalisation 8 The Ontological Dialectic and the Critique of Modernity: Based on the Interpretation of Kosik's Concrete Totality  Xinruo Zhang and Xiaohan Huang 9 And the 'Thing Itself' Is Man: Radical Democracy and the Roots of Humanity  Joseph Grim Feinberg 10 The Dialectic of Concrete Totality in the Age of Globalisation: Karel Kosik's Dialectics of the Concrete Fifty Years Later  Anselm K. Min Part 4 Intellectual Encounters 11 Kosik's Notion of 'Positivism'  Tomas Hřibek 12 Kosik's Concept of 'Concrete Totality': A Structuralist Critique  Vit Bartos 13 The World of the Pseudoconcrete, Ideology and the Theory of the Subject (Kosik and Althusser)  Petr Kužel 14 Karel Kosik and Martin Heidegger: From Marxism to Traditionalism  Jan Černy Part 5 Influence and Reception 15 A Route of Critical Thought: Between Italian and Czech Intellectuals  Gabriella Fusi 16 Karel Kosik in Mexico: Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez and the Dialectics of the Concrete  Diana Fuentes 17 Karel Kosik and US Marxist Humanism  Peter Hudis Postscript: Looking Backwards 18 Spirit of Resistance: Note for an Intellectual Biography of Karel Kosik  Michael Lowy References Index 

About the Author :
Joseph Grim Feinberg is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of Czech Academy of Sciences. He is author of The Paradox of Authenticity and editor of Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought. Ivan Landa is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has published articles and chapters on Hegel and the history of Marxism. He is a co-editor of the Collected Works of Karel Kosk planned for 7 volumes (in Czech). Jan Mervart is researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has published monographs and articles on the intellectual history of Czechoslovakia. He is the co-editor of Czechoslovakism.