By Wes Tirey · Thursday, June 14, 2012 As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Wes Tirey looks at Alain de Benoist’s “Democracy Revisited,” from Telos 95 (Spring 1993).
 In his book Radical Democracy, C. Douglas Lummis writes that democracy is a “whore among political words.” Indeed, anyone who sees the ideals of inclusionary dialogue and autonomy that democracy is supposed to represent juxtaposed with the “democratic” endeavors of certain political actors knows quite well that democracy and its meaning are in desperate need to be revisited. Alain de Benoist does just that in his article “Democracy Revisited.”
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By Telos Press · Wednesday, June 13, 2012  Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt’s The Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism, now available from Telos Press, explores the fundamental conceptions and political implications of culturalism and multiculturalism. “Multiculturalism” is a term that is used often in mainstream discourse, although its meaning usually goes unquestioned or unchallenged. For Eriksen and Stjernfelt, multiculturalism is either “soft” or “hard.” Soft multiculturalism allows the individual to express his or her cultural identity: it is “a system where the individual can choose to live in whatever way she or he wishes.” Hard multiculturalism, however, describes a community that uses legal and social tools to reproduce and regulate its own values; moreover, “the community may even mobilize its own police force and legal system in order to demand, to some extent or another, the conformity of individuals.”
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By Michael Marder · Thursday, June 7, 2012 Following my recent articles in the New York Times, “If Peas Can Talks, Should We Eat Them?” and “Is Plant Liberation on the Menu,” I have been debating the question of plant ethics with Professor Gary Francione (Rutgers University). The three installments of our debate are now available on the blog of Columbia University Press: part 1, part 2, and part 3. In our discussion, Professor Francione and I have addressed issues surrounding veganism, plant sentience, anthropocentrism, environmental justice, the possibility of non-conscious intentionality, and the controversial difference between vegetal response and a mechanical reaction.
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By Wodek Szemberg · Wednesday, May 30, 2012 Writing at The Inside Agenda blog, Wodek Szemberg examines contemporary radicalism through the lens of Milan Kundera’s notion of “political kitsch”:
Here is another way in which Kundera describes the essence of political kitsch: “Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!” It’s the second tear that is at issue. It’s one of our fundamental individual rights to be moved by children running on grass, or by puppies or kittens. The problem arises when predilection for all things sweet, cute, and peaceful is turned into political action.
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By Tomash Dabrowski · Tuesday, May 29, 2012 As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Tomash Dabrowski looks at Karl Korsch’s “Ten Theses on Marxism Today,” from Telos 26 (Winter 1975–76).
 Although the work of Karl Korsch was cardinal to subsequent theoretical developments within the twentieth-century Marxist canon, the appreciation of his work is usually eclipsed in intellectual history by the long shadow cast by Lukács over the development of what would later be called “Western Marxism.” Nevertheless, the belated rediscovery of Korsch’s work by the New Left was certainly in part due to the fact that Korsch’s position was the more heretical in the eyes of the Soviet variant of Marxist orthodoxy. Although Lukács dismissed the dogmatic hagiography of Marx’s conclusions, he nevertheless introduced his magnum opus, History and Class Consciousness, with the “scientific conviction” in the method of dialectical materialism. Even provided that all of Marx’s findings would be proven false, genuine Marxist method would nevertheless yield a privileged relationship to history.
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By Telos Press · Thursday, May 17, 2012 Congratulations to Adrian Pabst, one of our Telos editorial associates, on the publication of his new book, Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy, published by Eerdmans with the Centre of Theology and Philosophy, as part of their Interventions series.
 “This book does nothing less than to set new standards in combining philosophical with political theology. Pabst’s argument about rationality has the potential to change debates in philosophy, politics, and religion.” (from the foreword by John Milbank)
This comprehensive and detailed study of individuation reveals the theological nature of metaphysics. Adrian Pabst argues that ancient and modern conceptions of “being”—or individual substance—fail to account for the ontological relations that bind beings to each other and to God, their source. On the basis of a genealogical account of rival theories of creation and individuation from Plato to “postmodernism,” Pabst proposes that the Christian Neo-Platonic fusion of biblical revelation with Greco-Roman philosophy fulfills and surpasses all other ontologies and conceptions of individuality.
Please visit the Centre of Theology and Philosophy website for ordering information.
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