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Arguments Group
The Arguments group was a collection of French intellectuals, mostly ex-Communists, who were active in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The group, whose members had been shaped by their participation in the French Resistance and subsequent disillusionment with the French Communist Party, particularly after the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, sought to revitalize Marxism by engaging with new intellectual currents and social phenomena. Many of the group's members held academic positions in Paris, and their work had a significant influence on the development of the New Left. Key figures and influences Key figures in the Arguments group included Kostas Axelos, Francois Chatelet, Jean Duvignaud, Pierre Fougeyrollas, Henri Lefebvre, and Edgar Morin. The group coalesced around the journal ''Arguments'', founded in late 1956. Modeled on the Italian journal ''Argomenti'', ''Arguments'' aimed to cultivate open Marxist debate and discussion. It welcomed contributio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French People
French people () are a nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common Culture of France, French culture, History of France, history, and French language, language, identified with the country of France. The French people, especially the native speakers of langues d'oïl from northern and central France, are primarily descended from Roman people, Romans (or Gallo-Romans, western European Celts, Celtic and Italic peoples), Gauls (including the Belgae), as well as Germanic peoples such as the Franks, the Visigoths, the Suebi and the Burgundians who settled in Gaul from east of the Rhine after the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as various later waves of lower-level irregular migration that have continued to the present day. The Norsemen also settled in Normandy in the 10th century and contributed significantly to the ancestry of the Normans. Furthermore, regional ethnic minorities also exist within France that have distinct lineages, languages and cultures such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution." Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the culture, cultural and society, social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structure And Agency
In the social sciences there is a standing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behaviour. ''Structure'' is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. '' Agency'' is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. The structure versus agency debate may be understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure. Structure, socialization and autonomy The debate over the primacy of structure or of agency relates to an issue at the heart of both classical and contemporary sociological theory: the question of social ontology: "What is the social world made of?" "What is a cause of the social world, and what is an effect?" "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" Structural functionalists such as Émile Durkheim s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book ''Écrits''. Transcriptions of his seminars, given between 1954 and 1976, were also published. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself. Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing the philosophical dimension of Freud's thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from predicate logic and Topological s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss ( ; ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a Belgian-born French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973 and was a member of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He received numerous honors from universities and institutions throughout the world. Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated in his famous book ''Tristes Tropiques'' (1955) which established his position as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into many fields in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been def ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structuralism
Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is: Blackburn, Simon, ed. 2008. "Structuralism." In '' Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy'' (2nd rev. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. . p. 353."The belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure." History and background The term ''structuralism'' is ambiguous, referring to different schools of thought in different contexts. As such, the movement in humanities and social sciences called structuralism r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse ( ; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German–American philosopher, social critic, and Political philosophy, political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin and then at the University of Freiburg, where he received his PhD.Lemert, Charles. ''Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings''. Westview Press, Boulder, CO. 2010. He was a prominent figure in the Frankfurt-based University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research, which later became known as the Frankfurt School. In his written works, he criticized capitalism, modern technology, Soviet Communism, and popular culture, arguing that they represent new forms of social control. Between 1943 and 1950, Marcuse worked in U.S. government service for the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) where he criticized the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main (today known as Goethe University Frankfurt). Formed during the Weimar Republic during the European interwar period, the first generation of the Frankfurt School was composed of intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents dissatisfied with the socio-economic systems of the 1930s: namely, capitalism, fascism, and communism. Significant figures associated with the school include Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas. The Frankfurt theorists proposed that existing social theory was unable to explain the turbulent political factionalism and reactionary politics, such as Nazism, of 20th-century liberal capitalist societies. Also critical of Marxism–Leninism as a philosophically inflexible system of social organiza ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Existentialism
Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and value, existentialist thought often includes concepts such as existential crises, angst, courage, and freedom. Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought. Among the 19th-century figures now associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning. The word ''existentialism'', however, was not coined until the mid 20th century, during which it became most associated with contemporaneous philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and laws. Specialists in the field are political scientists. History Origin Political science is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political institutions, political thought and behavior, and associated constitutions and laws. As a social science, contemporary political science started to take shape in the latter half of the 19th century and began to separate itself from political philosophy and history. Into the late 19th century, it was still uncommon for political science to be considered a distinct field from history. The term "political science" was not always distinguished from political philosophy, and the modern dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociology was coined in the late 18th century to describe the scientific study of society. Regarded as a part of both the social sciences and humanities, sociology uses various methods of Empirical research, empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. Sociological subject matter ranges from Microsociology, micro-level analyses of individual interaction and agency (sociology), agency to Macrosociology, macro-level analyses of social systems and social structure. Applied sociological research may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, whereas Theory, theoretical approaches may focus on the understanding of social processes and phenomenology (sociology), phenomenologic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Korsch
Karl Korsch (; August 15, 1886 – October 21, 1961) was a German Marxist theoretician and political philosopher. He is recognized as one of the "dissidents" that challenged the Marxism of the Second International of Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhanov and Lenin. Along with György Lukács, Korsch is considered to be one of the major figures responsible for laying the groundwork for Western Marxism in the 1920s. Early years Karl Korsch was born in the small rural village of Tostedt (near Hamburg) to Lutheran parents, Carl August Korsch and his wife Therese (''née'' Raikowski) on August 15, 1886. Although Karl's father worked as a secretary in a city hall bureau, he was deeply devoted to studying the philosophy of Leibniz in his private life. He wrote an unpublished book covering the development of Leibnitz's theories of the monads. Longing for a more urban and intellectual life, Carl August made the decision to relocate his family west, to a village just outside Meiningen in the Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
